May 9, 2008
A graphic novel about Algerian-Jewish life
It’s not often that I get enthused about a graphic novel but after reading this review on Salon.com I’m looking forward to checking out Joann Sfar’s “The Rabbi’s Cat 2.”
Of course, I should probably start with the first installment, “The Rabbi’s Cat,” published in 2005.
Here’s more from the Salon review written by Douglas Wolk:
In the Algiers of the ’30s, a nameless, scrawny gray cat belonging to a cheerful old rabbi, Abraham Sfar, eats the rabbi’s parrot and discovers that he can talk. The cat loves the rabbi’s daughter, Zlabya, and the rabbi is uncomfortable with the talking cat hanging around her: he’d better study the Torah and the Talmud, lest he give her bad ideas.
That’s the premise that begins the French cartoonist Joann Sfar’s graphic novel series “Le chat du rabbin.” (The first three volumes were collected in English in 2005 as “The Rabbi’s Cat”; the fourth and fifth have just appeared as “The Rabbi’s Cat 2.”) The joy of the series, though, is that it hasn’t quite stuck with that setup. Instead, it has become a loose, playful exploration of a lost moment in Jewish culture, riffing on the Sfar family’s history and drifting freely between precise historical details, enthusiastic tall tales and meditations on what it means to live as a person of faith in a world that doesn’t share it.
Sounds kind of heavy for a comic book, huh? You might be surprised to learn how ‘literary’ these graphic novels have become in the last decade or so. Check out ‘The Rabbi’s Cat’ to find out for yourself.
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This was included as part of the latest edition of Haveil Havalim.
interesting. thanks for letting us know, jack.