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At a Jewish comic book festival, fans and creators take time to celebrate joy
(New York Jewish Week) — More than 400 comic book lovers flocked to Manhattan’s Center for Jewish History on Sunday for the first-ever Jewish Comics Experience, a pop culture convention that was billed as the “ultimate comics and pop culture event.”
Some 35 comics creators participated in the inaugural JewCE, including “Sin City” creator Frank Miller and underground comics legend Barbara “Willy” Mendes. Others participating were artists who specialize in depicting Torah stories, creators of Jewish superheroes, autobiographical writers who just happen to be Jewish and non-Jewish authors and artists who create Jewish content.
“It’s high time that Jewish creators are recognized for their contribution to comic culture, a culture that was for the most part created by Jewish people,” JewCE co-founder Fabrice Sapolsky told the New York Jewish Week.
Though the event was planned long before Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel and the subsequent war, the continued violence in the Middle East and its reverberating effects was resonant across the convention. In myriad panel conversations and in one-on-one discussions, the situation in Israel, increased antisemitism across the globe and the acute need for Jewish joy were frequent themes. For many creators and attendees, “showing up” and supporting the Jewish community was at the top of mind, while others noted the camaraderie among individuals who all shared a a love of Jewish culture.
According to Miriam Mora, the co-founder of JewCE and the director of programming at the Center for Jewish History, the difficult moment made a Jewish comic convention more relevant than ever. “Comics are worth paying attention to because there’s no better way to lift up our community and to fight antisemitism than to educate people about Jewish contributions, Jewish identities, Jewish stories than to celebrate them,” she said.
Indie “comix” icon Mendes, best known for the classic comic “It Ain’t Me, Babe,” agreed. “We just need people to know how wonderful we are because there’s a lot of propaganda out there that we’re terrible,” she told the New York Jewish Week. “We need to counteract that with proof that Jews are wonderful, and that’s what this is all about — and that’s why I’m so happy to be part of the convention.”
The history of Jews and comics is a long and rich one, beginning with the earliest comic book creators — nearly all Jews — to the continued presence of Jewish stories in both popular comics and more esoteric ones. For example, Marvel briefly had a Jewish Black Panther character, while, more recently, author Yehudi Mercato drew upon his Mexican-Jewish family for his middle-grade graphic memoir, “Chunky.” Meanwhile, some traditional Jewish texts have gotten the graphic novel treatment, including Mendes’ recent takes on the weekly Torah portion.
Indie comics icon Barbara “Willy” Mendes poses in front of her mural depicting Torah portions. (Elizabeth Karpen)
JewCE was created to spotlight this rich, diverse history, and the convention was born out of smaller Jewish comic cons that Sapolsky had organized in 2016 and 2018 at Congregation Kol Israel in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. In 2022, Mora reached out to Sapolsky to propose the idea of a larger Jewish comic con at the Center for Jewish History. A lifelong comic book fan herself, Mora thought the center, with its central location near Union Square, was the perfect locale.
“I always regretted that I couldn’t do more Jewish comic cons and Miriam said the magic words. She said ‘let’s be creative,’” Sapolsky told New York Jewish Week.
That creativity was on full display Sunday as creators spoke at panels such as “Jewish Folklore in Comics,” “Queering Jewish Comics” and “Getting Past Ashkenormativity and Secularism in Comics.” Jewish publishers sold a variety of books and individual creators signed their work and mingled with fans. One table was run by the mother of a writer of a Holocaust education comic who couldn’t make the trip from Los Angeles.
Miriam Libicki, an artist and author, traveled many hours from her home in Vancouver to attend the inaugural event. “I knew I really would love to be part of this new con starting up,” Libicki, the author of “But I Live: Three Stories of Child Survivors of the Holocaust,” told the New York Jewish Week. “All the creators are so many people that I’m huge fans of, or colleagues and just Jews in comics who have found each other.”
For some attendees, JewCE was their entry into the world of Jewish comics.
Friends Tracy Weiss and Chavi Kahn had planned to see the Yeshiva University Museum exhibit “The Golden Path: Maimonides Across Eight Centuries” at the center when they discovered it closed for convention day. So instead, they attended JewCE, describing it as “completely out of our comfort zones.” And yet, they were surprised at how much they learned about the Jewish origins of the comic industry.
“You could really see the theme of trying to rise above our enemies and challenges,” Kahn said. “And I think it’s particularly resonant in this moment when there are so many challenges, and the depth of this expression is really impressive.”
In addition to the convention, a concurrent exhibit at the Center for Jewish History, “The Museum and Laboratory of the Jewish Comics Experience,” will be on view through the end of the year. Curated by Mora, the “museum” portion of the exhibit consists of five mini exhibits from the five partner organizations that make up the CJH. The Leo Baeck Institute, for example, has an exhibit on how superheroes fought fascism, while the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research’s exhibit is about Yiddish cartoons — as well as a reading library made up of hundreds of Jewish comics.
The laboratory, meanwhile, is an interactive, kid-friendly exhibit that allows museum-goers to try their hand at drawing comics and even dress up to become the Jewish superhero they’ve always dreamed of.
Miriam Mora, co-founder of JewCE and the director of programming at the Center for Jewish History, inside the concurrent exhibit The Museum and Laboratory of the Jewish Comics Experience. (Courtesy the Center for Jewish History)
A preview event on Saturday evening included the first-ever JewCie Awards, designed to highlight excellence in Jewish comics. Awards were handed out to numerous creatives for categories like best diverse representation, best historical narrative and best autobiographical comic. Among the winners were Neil Kleid, Asaf Hanuka and Dani Kolman, while famed satirist and Pulitzer Prize-winner Jules Feiffer and Eisner-nominated author Trina Robbins won the respective Macher and Macherke Awards for their lifetime contributions to comics.
Chari Pere, who was nominated as Artist of the Year, told the New York Jewish Week on Sunday that she relished the opportunity to connect with Jewish peers and to find new audiences for her work.
“This is something that people were hoping about for years,” Pere said of the Jewish con. “As a Jewish cartoonist, what could be better to be among your peers and to be able to have your Hebrew-themed illustrations and ‘Shabbos Tales’ comics featured in an environment where people know what that means?”
Artist and comedian Danielle Brody began drawing cartoons during the pandemic, and only recently became a comics creator, publishing the “Don’t Fuhaggadahboudit” Haggadah in the spring and the soon-to-be-released “Hot Hanukkah Book.”
She said she loved basking in the overwhelming Jewishness that surrounded the convention. “Sometimes when you’re a creator, it feels like sometimes you’re the only person doing something and it can get lonely,” she said. “So to be in a space where everyone’s a Jewish creator, and is channeling their Judaism into art and comics and telling stories, is everything.”
Chicago-based writer Paul Axel, author of “Rotten Roots,” emphasized that it was empowering to be in a space where participants shared both a love of comics and a love of Judaism — and how it was incredibly important to keep pushing for Jewish spaces in the comics industry.
“When you go to a comic con, everybody’s a comic book fan — everyone loves some aspect of that,” he said. “To have a second layer, a deeper layer of the shared culture and ethnicity and identity and religion adds so much more to the show.”
Sapolsky said that JewCE’s first run in New York City is far from its last. The exhibit will run through the end of 2023 and those it are already in talks to take the exhibit to other cities
“For us, creating JewCE is not the end of the journey, it’s the beginning of the journey,” Sapolsky said. “We’re ready to think that this event is bigger than any of us. It’s something that has to count because Jews do count, but on top of counting, it’s also important for non-Jews to discover who we are.”
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The post At a Jewish comic book festival, fans and creators take time to celebrate joy appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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US Clamps Sanctions on Israel-bashing UN Rights Monitor Albanese
Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, attends a side event during the Human Rights Council at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, March 26, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
The Trump administration has imposed sweeping sanctions against Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, citing the UN official’s lengthy record of singling out Israel for condemnation.
In a post on X, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the sanctions under a February executive order targeting those who “prompt International Criminal Court (ICC) action against U.S. and Israeli officials, companies, and executives.” He accused Albanese of waging “political and economic warfare” against both nations and asserted that “such efforts will no longer be tolerated.”
“Today I am imposing sanctions on UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese for her illegitimate and shameful efforts to prompt [International Criminal Court] action against U.S. and Israeli officials, companies, and executives,” Rubio announced on X/Twitter.
“Albanese’s campaign of political and economic warfare against the United States and Israel will no longer be tolerated,” declared the Trump administration’s top foreign affairs official. “We will always stand by our partners in their right to self-defense.”
Rubio concluded: “The United States will continue to take whatever actions we deem necessary to respond to lawfare and protect our sovereignty and that of our allies.”
The decision to impose sanctions on Albanese marks an escalation in the ongoing feud between the White House and the United Nations over Israel. The Trump administration has repeatedly accused the UN and Albanese of unfairly targeting Israel and mischaracterizing the Jewish state’s conduct in Gaza.
Albanese, an Italian lawyer and academic, has held the position of UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories since 2022. The position authorizes her to monitor and report on alleged “human rights violations” by Israel against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
Last week, Albanese issued a scathing report accusing companies of helping Israel maintain a so-called “genocide economy.” She called on the companies to cut off economic ties with Israel and warned that they might be guilty of “complicity” in the so-called “genocide” in Gaza.
Critics of Albanese have long accused her of exhibiting an excessive anti-Israel bias, calling into question her fairness and neutrality.
Albanese has an extensive history of using her role at the UN to denigrate Israel and seemingly rationalize Hamas’ attacks on the Jewish state.
In the months following the Palestinian terrorist group’s atrocities across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Albanese accused the Jewish state of perpetrating a “genocide” against the Palestinian people in revenge for the attacks and circulated a widely derided and heavily disputed report alleging that 186,000 people had been killed in the Gaza war as a result of Israeli actions.
The action comes as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits Washington, where he has received a warm reception from the Trump administration. Netanyahu has been meeting with US officials to discuss next steps in the ongoing Gaza military operation.
Gideon Sa’ar, Minister of Foreign Affairs for Israel, commended the Rubio announcement with his own post on X/Twitter, exclaiming: “A clear message. Time for the UN to pay attention!”
The post US Clamps Sanctions on Israel-bashing UN Rights Monitor Albanese first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Hardball: Trump Administration Reports Harvard to Accreditor Over Antisemitism Allegations
US President Donald Trump speaks during a Cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, DC, July 8, 2025. Photo: Kevin Lamarque via Reuters Connect.
The Trump administration escalated its showdown against Harvard University on Wednesday, reporting the institution to its accreditor for alleged civil rights violations resulting from its weak response to reports of antisemitic bullying, discrimination, and harassment following Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 massacre across southern Israel.
The US Department of Education (DOE) announced the action on Wednesday. Citing Harvard’s admitted failure to treat antisemitism as seriously as it treated others forms of hatred in the past, the DOE called on the New England Commission of Higher Education to review and, potentially, revoke its accreditation — a designation which qualifies Harvard for federal funding and attests to the quality of the educational services its provides.
“Accrediting bodies play a significant role in preserving academic integrity and a campus culture conducive to truth seeking and learning,” said Secretary of Education Linda McMahon. “Part of that is ensuring students are safe on campus and abiding by federal laws that guarantee educational opportunities to all students. By allowing anti-Semitic harassment and discrimination to persist unchecked on its campus, Harvard University has failed in its obligation to students, educators, and American taxpayers.”
The DOE, McMahon added, “expects the New England Commission of Higher Education to enforce its policies and practices, and to keep the Department fully informed of its efforts to ensure that Harvard is in compliance with federal law and accreditor standards.”
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, Harvard’s Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism has acknowledged that the university administration’s handling of campus antisemitism fell well below its obligations under both Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and its own nondiscrimination policies.
In a 300-plus-page report, the task force compiled a comprehensive record of antisemitic incidents on Harvard’s campus in recent years — from the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Committee’s endorsement of the Oct. 7 terrorist atrocities to an anti-Zionist faculty group’s sharing an antisemitic cartoon depicting Jews as murderers of people of color. The report identified Harvard’s past refusal to afford Jews the same protections against discrimination enjoyed by other minority groups as a key source of its problem.
Coming several weeks after President Donald Trump ordered the freeze of $2.26 billion in federal research grants and contracts for Harvard, the task force report found it was “clear” that antisemitism and anti-Israel bias have been fomented, practiced, and tolerated not only at Harvard but also within academia more widely.”
The university is now suing the federal government over the funding halt.
President Trump has spoken scathingly of Harvard, calling it, for example, an “Anti-Semitic, Far Left Institute … with students being accepted from all over the world that want to rip our Country apart” in an April post to his Truth Social platform.
In recent weeks, however, both Trump and McMahon had commended Harvard’s constructive response in negotiations over reforms the administration has asked it to implement as a precondition for restoring federal funds. The requested reforms include hiring more conservative faculty, shuttering diversity, equity, and inclusion [DEI] programs, and slashing the size of administrative offices tangential to the university’s central educational mission.
The administration has since changed its tone in the wake of a report by The Harvard Crimson that interim Harvard President Alan Garber has said “behind closed doors” that he has no intention of doing anything that would make Harvard more palatable to conservatives.
Earlier this month, the Trump administration’s Joint Task Force to Combat Antisemitism issued Harvard a formal “notice of violation” of civil rights law. Charging that Harvard willfully exposed Jewish students to a flood of racist and antisemitic abuse both in and outside of the classroom, it threatened to strip whatever remains of Harvard’s federal funding.
“Failure to institute adequate changes immediately will result in the loss of all federal financial resources and continue to affect Harvard’s relationship with the federal government,” wrote the federal officials comprising the multiagency Task Force. “Harvard may of course continue to operate free of federal privileges, and perhaps such an opportunity will spur a commitment to excellence that will help Harvard thrive once again.”
In Wednesday’s announcement, US Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Harvard’s conduct “forfeits the legitimacy that accreditation is designed to uphold.”
“HHS and Department of Education will actively hold Harvard accountable through sustained oversight until it restores public trust and ensures a campus free of discrimination,” he said.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Hardball: Trump Administration Reports Harvard to Accreditor Over Antisemitism Allegations first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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IDF Strikes Hezbollah Sites in South Lebanon as Terror Group Pushes to Rebuild Amid US Disarmament Talks
IDF operating in southern Lebanon. Photo: IDF Spokesperson
Israeli forces uncovered and destroyed Hezbollah weapons caches in southern Lebanon on Wednesday, as a new report indicated that despite ongoing U.S.-led efforts to secure a disarmament deal, the Iran-backed group is making repeated, largely concealed attempts to rebuild its military presence in the area.
Troops carried out several operations targeting Hezbollah infrastructure in southern Lebanon on Wednesday morning, destroying weapons depots, explosives and multibarrel launchers concealed in forested terrain, the IDF said, in violation of the November ceasefire, which requires Hezbollah to withdraw its forces 20 miles from the Israeli border.
A new report released this week by the Alma Research and Education Center found that Hezbollah is focused on rebuilding in three areas: operational deployment, weapons acquisition, and financial recovery.
“Hezbollah didn’t give up its resistance narrative and motivation,” Alma’s director, Lt. Col. (Res.) Sarit Zehavi, told The Algemeiner.
“It wants to rebuild its capabilities and infrastructures, whether it’s the villages that will be used as human shields or the military infrastructure in South Lebanon and in Lebanon in general.”
According to Zehavi, Hezbollah is attempting to return Radwan fighters to positions south of the Litani River as part of a wider plan to restore its elite forces to operational readiness. The IDF on Monday killed Radwan commander Ali Abd al-Hassan Haidar in a targeted strike. The action came hours after US Special Envoy for Syria Thomas Barrack met with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri in Beirut to discuss a long-term deal that would include an Israeli withdrawal and complete disarmament of Hezbollah.
Barrack described the Lebanese response to the proposal as positive. Later, he issued a blunt warning to Hezbollah in response to a vow by the terror group’s leader, Naim Qassem, not to lay down its arms. “If they mess with us anywhere in the world, they will have a serious problem with us,” Barrack said in an interview with Lebanese news network LBCI. “They don’t want that.”
Zehavi said it was premature to predict the outcome of the diplomatic efforts. She warned that the challenge of disarming Hezbollah remains enormous and emphasized that the Lebanese Armed Forces have not demonstrated the capability or willingness to confront the group.
“It’s too soon to be optimistic or pessimistic,” she said, noting that no firm commitments have emerged from the Beirut talks.
Hezbollah’s efforts to smuggle and manufacture weapons have been complicated by both Israeli strikes and the regional realignment over recent months. While Israeli strikes have disrupted many supply routes, according to Zehavi, Syrian authorities have intercepted far more Hezbollah-bound weapons than the Lebanese Army, which claims to have uncovered 500 arms caches but has provided no evidence.
The financial front marks the third aspect of Hezbollah’s rebuilding effort. Last week, the group halted cash payments to Shiite civilians whose homes were damaged in the war, citing liquidity problems. Zehavi attributed the shortfall to disruptions in Iran’s funding networks — an outcome of the 12-day war against the regime in Tehran — and said the constraints would likely hamper Hezbollah’s ability to compensate its base and sustain operations.
“I hope they will continue to have problems with the cash flow, that way it will be very difficult for them to recover,” she said.
The post IDF Strikes Hezbollah Sites in South Lebanon as Terror Group Pushes to Rebuild Amid US Disarmament Talks first appeared on Algemeiner.com.