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Al Jaffee, iconic Mad Magazine cartoonist who also inked Chabad comic, dies at 102
(JTA) — Perhaps the greatest influence on Al Jaffee, known to readers of Mad Magazine as the creator of the “Fold-In,” was the time he spent living in a Lithuanian shtetl as a child.
Jaffee had been born in Savannah, Georgia, but returned to his mother’s native country with her after she became disillusioned by the irreligious character of life in America. Living in her small town, Zarasai, from ages 6 to 12, he became steeped in both the Yiddish and the “anti-adultism” that would infuse his work. He also gained fluency in comics through strips mailed by father, who remained in the United States.
Jaffee died Monday in New York City at 102, nine decades after returning from Lithuania and less than three years after the iconic cartoonist retired from Mad, where he had inked the end-page feature since 1964.
The “Fold-In” defined Mad Magazine ever since Jaffee invented it as a cartoon satire of the centerfold in publications like Playboy. The feature allowed readers to interact with the pages to form multiple images — the first one depicted Elizabeth Taylor’s divorce from Eddie Fisher and, after a fold, her subsequent marriage to Richard Burton.
A generation of comedians credited Jaffee and his fellow Mad contributors — the self-described “usual gang of idiots” — with shaping their comic sensibilities. “RIP Al Jaffee. He had a profound influence on my mind when I was a kid. One of the greats,” the Jewish comedian and podcaster Marc Maron tweeted Monday.
For a swath of cartoon consumers — those associated with the Chabad-Lubavitch Jewish movement — Jaffee’s most important contribution came not in Mad’s pages but in a different publication, The Moshiach Times. There, Jaffee for decades inked a strip for children called “The Shpy,” depicting a rabbinic secret agent who battles the forces of evil. It was, he told a Chabad publication in 2020, shortly after his retirement at 99, a deeply personal endeavor.
“‘The Shpy’ wasn’t just some superhero. I couldn’t do that,” Jaffee said. “I had to draw a character I could get into.”
Jaffee was born Abraham Jaffee on March 13, 1921 in Savannah, where his father, an immigrant from Lithuania, had been recruited from New York City to run a dry-goods shop. His mother, who had immigrated from the same town as his father, never took to life in the South, where Orthodox Judaism was unfamiliar and kosher food hard to come by. When Jaffee, the oldest of four brothers, was 6, she bundled the children up and took them back to Lithuania for a visit that stretched for six years.
Jaffee’s biography characterizes his time in Zarasai as one of both deprivation and invention, in which he was forced to come up with entertainment because there was little provided for the children. After Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in nearby Germany in 1933, his father retrieved him and two of his brothers, later sending for the third. Jaffee never saw his mother again after he returned to the United States; the Jews of Zarasai were executed by the Nazis and their Lithuanian collaborators on Aug. 26, 1941.
Back in New York, Jaffee’s artistic prowess earned him a spot in the first class of the High School of Music & Art, where he connected with classmates who would be his partners for many years to come. He would create comics for several shops before settling in as a freelancer at Mad, where his high school friend Harvey Kurtzman was the editor and where Yiddish peppered the pages even as the humor magazine reached a wide audience. While Mad was recognizably Jewish to many Jewish readers, it did not proclaim itself as such — an approach that Jaffee told an interviewer in 2016 was intentional.
“I lived through a period when Jewish people were very nervous about flaunting their Jewishness,” Jaffee said in the interview, published in the Forward, in which he explained that he still tended to think in Yiddish. “Even after the war, you were aware that there were people out there who wanted to kill you just because you were Jewish. And it’s still around.”
His side gig as the Chabad cartoonist began in 1984, after a young rabbi recruited him and other Mad contributors to add a contemporary aesthetic to a magazine with a circulation of about 10,000. Though Jaffee had a complicated relationship with Jewish observance, he signed on quickly, according to the Chabad feature about his tenure that was published in 2020.
In the story, Jaffee recalled highlights of his life in Zarasai, which had largely been described in negative terms in his earlier biography. “My brother Harry and I would spend the whole year sketching and planning what we’d do to improve the design of lanterns,” Jaffee recalled about celebrating the fall holiday of Simchat Torah. “Then when the holiday came, we’d march around the bimah [prayer platform]. It was so much fun.” He also said that he aspired to be like the Shpy, whose wispy beard resembled his own.
Jaffee announced his retirement in June 2020, months after the death of his wife of 42 years, Joyce Revenson. A previous marriage, to Ruth Ahlquist, with whom he had two children, ended in divorce. He is survived by his children, stepchildren, grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
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Yad Vashem says it has identified 5 million Holocaust victims: ‘Behind each name is a life that mattered’
Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial, says it has reached a major milestone in its efforts to uncover the identities of all of the Jews murdered in the Holocaust, crossing the 5-million name threshold with the help of AI.
That leaves 1 million names still unknown from the tally of 6 million murdered Jews that is synonymous with the genocide perpetrated by the Nazis during World War II.
Two years ago, Yad Vashem inaugurated a 26.5 foot-long “Book of Names,” which included the names of 4,800,000 victims of the Shoah, at the United Nations headquarters in New York City.
Since then, researchers deployed AI technology and machine learning to analyze hundreds of millions of archival documents that were previously too extensive to research manually, according to Yad Vashem. In addition to covering large amounts of material quickly, the algorithms were taught to look out for variations of victims’ names, leading to the new identification of hundreds of thousands of victims.
Yad Vashem estimates an additional 250,000 names could still be recovered using the technology.
“Reaching 5 million names is both a milestone and a reminder of our unfinished obligation,” said Dani Dayan, the chairman of Yad Vashem, in a statement. “Behind each name is a life that mattered — a child who never grew up, a parent who never came home, a voice that was silenced forever. It is our moral duty to ensure that every victim is remembered so that no one will be left behind in the darkness of anonymity.”
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New York Mayoral Race: Jewish Rabbis Who Ignore History Are Still Doomed to Repeat it
Candidate Zohran Mamdani speaks during a Democratic New York City mayoral primary debate, June 4, 2025, in New York, US. Photo: Yuki Iwamura/Pool via REUTERS
When more than 1,000 rabbis across the political spectrum and from all denominations came together to write a letter opposing New York City Mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani for failing to condemn calls for violence against Jews, denying Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, accusing Israel of genocide, and more — it seemed only a matter of time until an opposing action letter penned by agenda-driven radicals would emerge.
Indeed, a group of far-left rabbis calling themselves “Jews for a Shared Future” has come forward with a letter of their own. In the letter, they defend Mamdani, mainly by claiming to know what is in his heart and mind rather than confronting the things that he has said and done.
The letter attempts to gaslight legitimately concerned and frightened New Yorkers of all religions, divining to somehow know that Mamdani’s positions and beliefs “stem not from hate but from his deep moral convictions.”
Abhorrently, and with no evidence provided, the letter goes on to accuse New York Jews expressing concern for their community’s safety as being “built on Muslim vulnerability.”
It is telling that the Jews for a Shared Future letter could muster only around 30 signatures from New York City area rabbis, while the self-described “The Jewish Majority” rabbis who authored the initial letter includes well over 100 NYC rabbis, all clearly concerned for the well-being of their Jewish constituencies.
And well they should be.
While Jews for a Shared Future focuses on unfounded, uncited, and libelous claims that accuse Jews of putting Muslims in harm’s way — and claiming to know what is in Mamdani’s heart — the Jewish Majority letter provides links to uncontested public statements and positions taken by Mamdani that raise well-founded and serious concerns for all New Yorkers, including Jews.
Mamdani’s resistance to condemn language including “Globalize the Intifada” and his continued use of false antisemitic tropes that refer to Israel as an “apartheid” and “genocidal” state are well documented and raise sufficient concern. These blood libels and calls for violence have repeatedly led to harm and attacks against Jews across the country.
Recently, though, video has re-emerged from a 2021 Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) Zoom meeting, in which Mamdani revealed much greater detail about his political intentions.
In the video, Mamdani proudly refers to bringing “radical legislation” to the fore and of working to bring the antisemitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement to New York. He speaks in detail of his goal to “overturn” New York’s anti-BDS executive order and about his “fight to stop the study abroad at universities in Israel.”
He even boasted of his involvement with the antisemitic Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) group while in college, and of his desire to “dismantle” the US relationship with Israel.
Mamdani has been clear that “it was Palestine that brought me into this movement.” This statement leaves little doubt as to how his expressly stated agendas will be implemented as mayor, and that it is likely to cause harm and discrimination against the overwhelming majority of NYC Jews who support the existence of Israel.
Mamdani’s pledged support for BDS and his promise to overturn anti-BDS laws could very well lead to the boycott of Jewish-owned businesses and to all sorts of discrimination against Zionist Jews, horrifyingly reminiscent of what happened in 1930s Germany. The Jewish Majority letter is right to warn the public of Mamdani’s language and agenda. Never again must mean never again.
Mamdani’s grotesque threat to block Jewish students from studying in Israel also raise serious concerns. Furthermore, in a public school system already rife with antisemitism, Mamdani has only compounded these concerns by hinting that former Congressman and anti-Israel activist, Jamaal Bowman, could be his choice for NYC’s next schools chancellor. Along with his lengthy resume of anti-Israel activity, Bowman has referred to Israel as being founded on “White Supremacy,” leading many Jews to shudder at how curriculum based on such tropes could forge not only misinformation and pedagogical dereliction, but poison a generation of children against Jews and Israel. This, too, has already been a serious problem in the city’s public schools.
Jews for a Shared Future apparently shares none of these concerns about Mamdani, his expressly stated agenda, his antisemitic tropes, or the already fragile state of Jewish people in New York City. “Don’t believe what he says or does,” they tell you. Instead, believe what they purport to know about what is true in his heart.
The sad irony of this is that so many Jews simply refuse to learn from our shared history. The discriminators, harassers, and attackers of Jews who become radicalized under Mamdani will not care one bit about whether you are one of the Jews who supported Mamdani’s antisemitic vision or not. To them, even a Mamdani-supporting rabbi is, after all, just another Jew.
Jeffrey Lax is a professor of law and chair of the business department at CUNY, and a co-founder of S.A.F.E. Campus.
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Trump calls on Orthodox Jewish voters in NJ to vote for Republican gubernatorial candidate
President Donald Trump on Sunday urged Orthodox Jewish voters in Lakewood, New Jersey, to vote for the Republican candidate in the state’s gubernatorial race.
“I need ALL of my supporters in the Orthodox community in Lakewood and its surrounding towns to vote in HUGE numbers for Jack Ciattarelli,” wrote Trump in a post on Truth Social. “Jack needs every single Vote in the community, including all the Yeshiva students who turned out to vote for me last year.”
Ciattarelli received a joint endorsement last week from Orthodox Jewish leaders in Lakewood as well as the neighboring towns of Jackson, Toms River, Howell and Manchester, according to the Lakewood Scoop.
But Ciattarelli also faced backlash from his opponent, Democratic Rep. Mikie Sherrill, last month after his Muslim relations advisor said he wasn’t “taking money from Jews” at a campaign event.
In his post, Trump also touted his fierce backing in Lakewood, a center of haredi Orthodox life in the United States, during the 2024 presidential race. He boasted that Lakewood was “one of our biggest Wins anywhere in the Country with more than 90% of the Vote.” In fact, 87.8% of voters in the town cast their ballots for him.
Democrat Kamala Harris won New Jersey in 2024 with 52% of the votes, Ciattarelli is currently hoping to flip the governor’s mansion red. Sherrill is leading in polls, but some show a very tight race, according to an aggregation published by the New York Times.
Several top Democrats, including former President Barack Obama, visited campaign events in New Jersey over the weekend to rally behind Sherrill, in a sign that the party is concerned about the possible outcome of the election.
“Your Votes in this Election will save New Jersey, a State that is near and dear to my heart,” wrote Trump, before exhorting everyone to the polls in all caps.
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