You Don't Have to Be Jewish to Love Levy's
Ad Agency
DDB - Doyle Dane Bernbach
Photographer
Howard Zieff
United States, 1927 - 2009
Art Director
William Taubin
United States, 1916 - 1998
Copywriter
Judy Protas
United States, 1922 - 2014
Date1967
MediumOffset Lithograph
Dimensions45 x 29 1/2 in. (114.3 x 74.9 cm)
ClassificationsPoster
Credit LinePoster House Permanent Collection
Object numberPH.5689
DescriptionThe campaign for Levy’s bread featuring photographs of apparently non-Jewish New Yorkers, accompanied by the slogan “You don’t have to be Jewish” ran from 1961 through the 1970s. This robed choirboy blissfully enjoying a pastrami on rye was part of a series that also featured Asian and Native American men and a Black boy. The campaign itself was conceived by William Bernbach, the founder of the Doyle Dane Bernbach advertising agency, and its art director William Taubin. However, the now-legendary slogan was invented by Judy Protas, a copywriter at the agency. As she told the New York Times in 1979, there was no point in promoting this traditional Jewish product to Jews. “We had a local bread, real Jewish bread, that was sold widely in Brooklyn to Jewish people. What we wanted to do was enlarge its public acceptance. Since New York is so mixed ethnically, we decided to spread the good word that way.” The New York subway was the ideal vehicle for these posters, which became so popular that they were ultimately sold individually as collector’s items.On View
Not on view
