Session Report, in which we play around with the cards from the American Jewish edition of Apples to Apples

The latest Jerusalem Strategy Gaming Club session report is up here. Games played: Cosmic Encounter, Power Grid, San Juan, Tichu, Bridge.

Jewish Educational Toys was kind enough to send me an evaluation copy of Apples to Apples Jewish Edition. I asked them for a list of cards, and they send me the game; sweet.

I haven't played it yet, so I can't give a review. But we did look at the cards.

Obviously, when you are producing a game like this, you have a number of fine lines to walk: between being funny and being offensive, between being ethnic and being stereotyping, between including content for different levels of knowledge and observance.

And of course, we had our opinions as to when they crossed over the wrong sides of these lines in either direction. Before I get to that in a future post (and after communicating with JET first), let me only note:

- The cards are American cultural Jewish. All personalities are American Jews.
- Many of the cards are yiddishisms that would be familiar to New York Jews, or followers of stereotypical portrayals of ethnic Jewish characters from television. E.g. a green card "Meshuganeh", or a red card "B'shert".
- About a third of the cards are not specifically Jewish in nature, but simply filler cards.
- The production is good quality and the rules still dirt simple.

David took the game home to test with his family.

Yehuda