Remembering the Quasi-Hip "The Jewish Catalog"

Oh, 1971—what a grand-time for hand-lettered, oversized do-it-yourself catalogues! Eco-theorist Stewart Brand's Whole Earth Catalog was first published in 1968 but reached the zenith of its influence in 1971, when a new edition, expanded to 452 pages, ran on its cover the great Apollo 4 photograph of the Earth as seen from space. In 1971 the Boston Women's Health Collective published the first edition of Our Bodies Ourselves, the pioneering gyno-manual that treated the female orgasm, masturbation, lesbianism, and zaftig body types as natural variations rather than oddities, sins, or imperfections. And three members of Havurat Shalom, the still-extant havurah-in-a-house in Somerville, Mass., began writing The Jewish Catalog, the first edition of which was published, in all its black-and-white, photo-and-illo-spotted glory two years later.