Navigate to News section

Steimatzky Tells Israelis to Bring a Book to Bed

The bookseller’s new campaign runs across the genres

by
Elissa Goldstein
May 20, 2013

Well, this is probably the strangest, most compelling advertising campaign I’ve seen in a while: Steimatzky, the iconic Israeli bookstore chain founded in 1925, has issued a series of images of readers asleep in bed with their books… and the fictional—or non-fictional—protagonists of said books. (h/t to Liora Halperin for the Facebook tip-off.) Each image in the series is accompanied by the caption, “With the right book, you’re never alone.”

Quite sweet when the reader in question is a nine-year-old girl curled up with the eponymous Pippi Longstocking, but really, really unsettling when the reader is a sixty-something man in flannel pajamas lying beside a comatose/embalmed Stalin. Yes, Stalin: friend of Jews, Israelis, and book-lovers the world over.

Sweet dreams, Israel!

Elissa Goldstein is Tablet’s director of audience development. She also produces Unorthodox. Follow her on Twitter here.