A Christmas Gift Guide For Your Jewish Friend

You’re throwing a Christmas party and your Jewish friend is coming. A Jew on Christmas? Oy vey! What should you get them as a present? Jews have very specific tastes after all and they’re doing you a solid by skipping Chinese food and The Hobbit to be there. Lo L’Phached Clal, my friend. Here’s some ideas of gifts to get your non-goy guest for Christmas. Let this Jew (me!) show you to the best gifts for other Jews.

Movie Gift Card

Jews love movies. A big night out consists of waiting for Shabas to be over so you can go catch the latest Natalie Portman flick at the Superplex. They’ll get to see a couple movies for free, which basically takes care of their Saturday night plans for the next two weeks. Do you like Seth Rogen? You’re welcome to see The Guilt Trip with me! All hail queen Babs Streisand.

Bar Mitzvah Disco

‘Bar Mitzvah Disco’ by Roger Bennett, Nick Kroll and Jules Shell is a hilarious book of essays and photos chronicling the weirdest time in a young Jews life: their bar/bat mitzvah. The Bar Mitzvah is a strange initiation ritual where a young Jew or Jewess becomes a counted adult member of the Jewish community, at thirteen years old. Bar Mitzvahs are usually awkward and looking back on the overbearing family members, bizarre themes and horrible dance music is a Jew’s favorite past time. This book is an adorable, spot-on reminder that thirteen year olds are certainly not adults.

Funny Yarmulkes

If your Jewish friend wears a kippah or yarmulke, you should know that there are tons of awesome pop-culture-y kippot out there to dress up the back of your head. Hit up Etsy.com and type in a yarmulke with whatever theme you want — for example, do they cheer for the Washington Redskins? There’s a yarmulke for that. Do they love ‘Batman?’ There’s a yarmulke for that. Do they have nostalgia for 90s cartoons? There’s a yarmulke for that.

Drake, “Take Care”

Did you know the rapper Drake is Jewish? Your Jewish friend did. We like to keep tabs on every Jew experiencing success in the world so we can claim responsibility for how well they’re doing. Your Jewish friend probably loves Drake on principle. Especially after seeing this picture of him reading Torah.

The New York Times Jewish Cookbook

Jews love to cook. In college, I used to make kugel for my gentile roommates and they would go apeshit every time. Don’t know what kugel is? Don’t worry. Your Jewish friend does and they will gladly make it for you. (Think: sweet noodle cake. YUM.) This is the official Jewish cookbook of the Jew’s favorite newspaper. (Besides the Jerusalem Post and the Jewish Daily Forward and Ha’artez. We’re a well-informed people.) Get this cookbook for your Jewish friend and you’ll be eating cholent from now ’til Rosh Hashanah.

The Woody Allen Collection

This is a box set of a bunch of Woody Allen movies including ‘Annie Hall,’ ‘Bananas’ and ‘Manhattan.’ Woody Allen is basically a Jewish prophet at this point. You can not go wrong getting this for a Jew.

Nalgene Bottle

Look, I don’t know that I can fully explain this one but Jews love Nalgene water bottles. Nalgenes are great, reliable hydraters that won’t even break if you run over one with a car. In my entire life experience as a Jew, I have never seen more Jews with these clipped on their belts than during every summer I have been alive. Whether it’s that some Jews love nature and hiking and want to be ready to go at any time or that their nagging mothers taught them the importance of drinking enough water, the Chosen people have a chosen water bottle.

Anything from Marc Jacobs

Now if you do have money, you might want to go in on anything from designer Marc Jacobs for your Jewish buddy. Remember how I said we keep track of our own? Marc Jacobs is a good little mensch-y Jew. We like to support him. Plus, his stuff is awesome.

Don’t want to spend too much? I just got a great (small as hell) Marc Jacobs wallet for very cheap from their Soho store in New York. Or you can head into Chinatown and get a knockoff. Not really supporting Jews, but definitely supporting your own bank account.

A flat iron

If you’ve got a Jewish lady friend, you might try getting her a really nice flat iron. What’s that? Your Jewish friend has straight hair? No, she doesn’t. I promise you she doesn’t. She flat irons the shiz out of that hair. Like, every day. Help a girly out and splurge on a nice hair iron. Trust me. Her natural hair is a frizzy mess. (JK, JK I love you all.)

A mix of Jewish song parodies

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If you don’t have a lot of money, no worries. You can make your fav Heeb a mix CD of Youtube’s best Jewish song parodies. There are TONS of them. From the Maccabeats to Jewish Style (Gangnam Style), download the mp3s and put them on a mix for your Jewish friend. I guarantee they flip their latkes in the air sometimes, saying ay-o, spin the dreidel.