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Aline Kominsky-Crumb, who transformed comics first as a muse and then as a feminist artist, dies at 74
(JTA) — Robert Crumb put the “x” in comix by setting to paper his basest sexual longings, including strong-legged Jewish women who were cowgirls and who went by the name Honeybunch Kaminski.
So when an actual strong-legged Jewish cowgirl named Aline Kominsky walked into his life, it was love at first sight, and never wavered.
Aline Kominsky-Crumb, who died Wednesday at 74 in France of pancreatic cancer, was late to the revolution her husband launched in comics a few years before they met, with his Zap Comix. The “x” was a signifier of what was then known as “underground” comics and referred to the unfiltered treatment of humanity that censorious publishers, politicians and public figures had all but washed out of the art.
She soon fully embraced the art form and then helped transform it.
Working with her husband and then on her own, Kominsky-Crumb brought to comics raw self-lacerating accountability and subverted crude stereotypes about Jewish women — including those peddled by her husband — by taking possession of them.
She started out as a self-acknowledged sex object reviled by second-wave feminists and became a hero of younger feminists for modeling unfettered sexual expression. She was the brassy Jewish stereotype who became the muse who guided her husband to a deeper consideration of Judaism.
Kominsky-Crumb, born Aline Ricky Goldsmith in 1948 in the Five Towns, a Jewish enclave on Long Island, had a Jewish upbringing that was in many ways conventional, horrifying and both at the same time. She wrote about the warmth of her grandparents’ home and how she sought in it succor and about the pressures her materialistic parents placed on her. She said she was named for a Five Towns clothing store, Aline Ricky, that sold French fashion knockoffs. She resisted her mother’s pressure to get a nose job.
In one autobiographical comic, she recalls seeing one Jewish girl after another coming into school after plastic surgery. “Me ‘n’ my friends developed a ‘big nose pride,’” she writes, and one of the characters says, “I could not stand to look like a carbon copy!”
She told fellow Jewish cartoonist Sarah Lightman about the ordeal. “Like, I kept my nose, but it was really a close call, because my mother had me in Doctor Diamond’s office and he measured my nose. I remember that. They took an instrument and measured your nose. And then he took a piece of paper and he said,’ look, we can make it look like this.’ And I said, ‘Oh my God.’ My mother said, ‘Oh, it’s gorgeous, gorgeous.’”
In her teens, Kominsky-Crumb fled the suburbs for Manhattan. She studied at Cooper Union, an art school, and lived on the Lower East Side, earning plaudits from her instructors for her painting, but getting bored. She had a baby and gave it up for adoption to a Jewish agency, an experience that scarred her, and later led her to become outspoken in advocating for abortion rights.
After she married Carl Kominsky, they moved to Tucson, Arizona, which she called “hippie heaven.” There, she left her husband for a cowboy who lived with two brothers and his father in what she said was “the middle of nowhere” where she helped out on horseback, albeit under the influence of hallucinogens. (She said her beau was killed in a shootout with a romantic rival after she left.)
In Tucson, she met two pioneers of underground comics, Kim Deitch and Spain Rodriguez. They encouraged her to move to San Francisco, which was the scene of the burgeoning movement.
She did and met Crumb at a party in 1971, within three years of his having created “Honeybunch Kaminski, the drug-crazed runaway” (1968) and “Dale Steinberger, the Jewish Cowgirl.” Kominsky-Crumb, who had kept her first husband’s last name because it sounded more “ethnic” than Goldsmith, was so taken with the her husband’s lustful Jewish imaginings, and how closely she physically resembled them, that when she started creating her own, she named her avatar “Bunch,” a shortened version of the character whose name most closely matched her own.
It was kismet, except it wasn’t at first. Crumb and Kominsky-Crumb got together, but maintained open relationships. Crumb endured Kominsky-Crumb’s dalliances with other men for decades, but Kominsky-Crumb was not as able (or willing) to reciprocate. When one of Crumb’s exes arrived at their commune in Mendocino, she told The Comics Journal in 1990, she was furious. “I had a total s— fit,” she said, “I was wearing these giant platform shoes. I ran out the door and I fell and broke my foot in six places.”
Crumb sent the ex on her way and entertained the recovering Kominsky with a pastime he and his brother worked out as children: They would co-create a comic.
That process drew the couple closer, and also became a decades-long unflinching chronicle of a relationship. A culmination, “Drawn Together,” was critically acclaimed when it came out in 2012.
In one passage in the 2012 book, she gently chides her husband for resorting to antisemitic tropes — although it was tropes about loud, slightly unhinged, sexually voracious Jewish women that drew them together.
One page depicts the couple in bed. Crumb is stung by an accusation of antisemitism from Art Spiegelman. (Spiegelman joined with Crumb to launch the underground comics scene in the 1960s, but they grew apart as Spiegelman, who would author the Holocaust chronicle “Maus,” sought to attach an overarching philosophy to the genre, while Crumb continued to crave crude authenticity.)
Crumb says that Spiegelman “seems to be taking my ruminations about the Jews as antisemitism … I certainly didn’t mean it as such.” Kominsky-Crumb draws herself into the panel, listening to her husband, as a little girl wearing tefillin, a T-shirt with “kosher” in Hebrew and a Star of David pendant. In the next panel, once again appearing as a grown woman in a negligee, she makes clear to Crumb why she feels vulnerable as a Jew in the marriage.
“Dahling, you do call the Jewish religion ‘Brand X’,” she says.. “Now I might even think that’s true in some ways … and I’m one o’ them … I’m allowed to say that!”
Crumb draws himself as wounded but also awakened. “Oh, I see … ulp.” Crumb dedicated his masterwork, “The Book of Genesis,” a searing illustrated narrative of the Bible’s first book, to Aline.
The Crumbs’ collaborative work was celebrated among aficionados, but it wasn’t until 1994’s “Crumb,” a documentary directed by Crumb’s close Jewish friend, Terry Zwigoff, that she emerged into the broader culture. A vibrant, peripatetic Kominsky-Crumb cares for their daughter, Sophie, and revels in their life in a small French village, where they had moved a few years earlier, while Crumb continues to hold back, playing the wounded, misunderstood artist.
It was an arrival of sorts for Kominsky-Crumb. She had for a time been marginalized even on the underground scene, her deceptively simple art derided as sloppy. She helped found the Wimmen’s Comix collective in 1972, and wrote about her Jewish upbringing in the first issue, a piece entitled “Goldie: A Neurotic Woman.” But she was soon frozen out because some of her colleagues thought her musings about longing to be dominated (and her tendency to dress that way to please Crumb) were denigrating to women. “The Yoko Ono of Comics,” is how the New York Times described her early years.
She left the collective and joined another Jewish woman artist, Diane Noomin, in launching “Twisted Sisters” in 1976. Its cover depicts hers seated on a toilet wondering “How many calories in a cheese enchilada.” The message to her erstwhile colleagues, who depicted women heroically, was clear: Kominsky-Crumb would indulge her full unvarnished self.
It would take decades, but a later generation of feminists would come to understand her autobiographical “Bunch” not as a self-loathing caricature but as a means of understanding ones whole self. In 2020, Lightman launched an interview with Kominsky-Crumb by reviewing a 1975 cartoon, “Bunch plays with herself” that shocked even the underground scene at the time with its graphic depictions of a woman exploring every corner of her body.
“I didn’t do it to be disgusting but it’s, like, about every horrible and fun thing you can do with your body,” Kominsky-Crumb told Lightman. “I think it’s an amazing piece of feminist art,” Lightman said in the interview, “because women are drawn to be gazed at, and [here we see] their bodily juices, and everything. … The last panel is the best. ‘My body is an endless source of entertainment’.”
In 2007, she and Crumb created a cover for the Jewish counterculture magazine Heeb, where she is cradling him in her arms. “”I feel so safe in the arms of this powerful Jewish woman!” Crumb says.
By 2018, she was scrolling through her phone to show a New York Times reporter pictures of Crumb cavorting with the grandkids. (Daughter Sophie in adulthood also is a comics artist.) The photos then transition to photos of women’s behinds, taken in Miami.
“I’m enabling his big butt fixation,” she said. “Well I don’t have a big butt anymore so I have to offer him something.”
“It was her energy that transformed the American Crumb family into a Southern French one, with her daughter Sophie living, marrying and having three French children there,” the official Crumb website said in announcing her death. “She will be dearly missed within that family, by the international cartooning community, but especially by Robert, who shared the last 50 years of his life with her.”
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The post Aline Kominsky-Crumb, who transformed comics first as a muse and then as a feminist artist, dies at 74 appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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EU-Funded NGO Backed Online Platform Targeting Jewish Businesses in Catalonia
Supporters of Hamas demonstrate outside the Israeli Embassy in Madrid, Oct. 18. Photo: Reuters/Guillermo Yllanes Gonzalez
The controversial online platform mapping Jewish-owned businesses, schools, and Israeli-linked companies in Catalonia, a region in northeastern Spain, was promoted by an EU-funded non-governmental organization.
On Tuesday, NGO Monitor — an independent Jerusalem-based research institute that tracks anti-Israel bias among nongovernmental organizations — released new information showing that Engineers Without Borders – Catalonia (ESF-C) and Universities with Palestine (UAP) jointly promoted the BarcelonaZ project on social media, identifying themselves as its primary backers.
First reported by the local Jewish outlet Enfoque Judío, the interactive map was launched by an unidentified group claiming to be “journalists, professors, and students” on the French-hosted mapping platform GoGoCarto.
As a publicly accessible and collaboratively created online platform, the map marked over 150 schools, Jewish-owned businesses — including kosher food shops — and Israeli-linked as well as Spanish and international companies operating in Israel, labeling them as “Zionist.”
“Our goal is to understand how Zionism operates and the forms it takes, with the intention of making visible and denouncing the impact of its investments in our territory,” the project’s website stated.
According to NGO Monitor’s newly released report, ESF-C is a European Union–funded NGO running a Youth Internship Program subsidized by the Public Employment Service of Catalonia, with 40 percent co-financing from the European Social Fund Plus — the EU’s primary program for funding employment, education, and social initiatives.
The EU Financial Transparency System shows that ESF‑C partnered on two EU grants worth about $2.8 million from 2019 to 2023 and received at least $164,000 in funding.
Jewish leaders in Spain have strongly denounced the BarcelonaZ initiative, warning that it fosters further discrimination and hatred against the community amid an increasingly hostile environment in which Jews and Israelis continue to be targeted.
“The mapping and boycotting of Jewish businesses in Catalonia is an echo of some of the darkest chapters in history, including the prelude to the Holocaust in Nazi Germany,” the Combat Antisemitism Movement’s Director of European Affairs, Shannon Seban, said in a statement.
“The organizers of this initiative put a target on the backs of Spanish Jews, at a time when Jews are being hunted across the globe, as seen so horrifically in Australia just three weeks ago,” she said, referring to the deadly attack on a Hanukkah celebration at Sydney’s Bondi Beach, which killed 15 people and wounded at least 40 others.
“Clear incitement to violence of this nature must not be platformed or tolerated by internet companies or government authorities,” Seban continued.
On its website, ESF-C describes its mission as promoting “a fair international society, which does not exclude anyone,” and highlights its commitment to “non-denominationalism and non-partisanship.” Yet, the NGO’s 2024 annual report also asserts that it “cannot ignore the Palestinian resistance, a clear expression of the struggle for freedom of all oppressed peoples.”
In a social media post, the NGO also accused Israel of “genocide” during its defensive campaign against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, describing its platform as “a resource designed to inform, raise awareness, and mobilize the educational and student community in Catalonia.”
“The attacks that began on Oct. 7 have involved water and electricity cuts, the boycott of essential water infrastructure, and the contamination of Palestinian water sources,” ESF-C wrote in an Instagram post, without mentioning the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which triggered the war in Gaza.
“The violation of these basic rights is a key weapon used by the State of Israel to perpetuate genocide,” the statement read.
NGO Monitor also revealed that UAP is a network of Catalan faculty- and student-led anti-Israel organizations that co-sponsored the BarcelonaZ project.
Last year, UAP organized a “People’s Court” at Complutense University of Madrid on what it called the “Palestinian genocide,” with attendance from several terror-linked NGOs and individuals, including Samidoun, Masar Badil, Al-Haq, and Raji Sourani, NGO Monitor reported.
Several community organizations have filed complaints with GoGoCarto, demanding the site’s removal and arguing that it violates French laws against hate speech and discrimination.
Earlier this week, GoGoCarto announced it had removed the BarcelonaZ project from its website after local groups denounced the initiative as blatantly antisemitic and dangerous.
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Knesset member from Netanyahu’s party decries ‘new enemy’: Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens
(JTA) — In an address to the Knesset on Monday, Likud lawmaker Dan Illouz decried what he said was a “new enemy” rising within American politics: Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens.
“We are used to enemies from outside. We fight terror tunnels of Hamas. We fight the ballistic missiles of Iran. But today I look at the West, our greatest ally, and I see a new enemy rising from within,” said Illouz, who is originally from Canada originally, in an English address. “I am speaking of a poison being sold to the American people as patriotism. I’m speaking of the intellectual vandalism of Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens.”
Illouz’s comments come as the Republican party has been roiled in recent months by debates over the mainstreaming of antisemitic influencers within the GOP.
טאקר קרלסון וקנדיס אוונס הם לא פטריוטים – הם ונדלים אינטלקטואלים. הם טוענים שהם נלחמים בשמאל הקיצוני, אבל הם בדיוק אותו דבר: אותה שנאה למערב, אותו רלטיביזם מוסרי ואותו ניסיון להחריב את המורשת שלנו ואת המערב. pic.twitter.com/ygN70WtGEw
— דן אילוז – Dan Illouz (@dillouz) January 7, 2026
In October, conservative commentator Tucker Carlson hosted far-right antisemitic influencer Nick Fuentes on his platform, igniting outrage from Jewish conservatives who warned of the growing reach of antisemitic voices.
Owens has long made antisemitic rhetoric a hallmark of her YouTube channel, which has 5.7 million subscribers. A recent analysis of her content by the Jewish People Policy Institute found that three-quarters of her videos that mentioned Jews were antisemitic.
“They claim to fight the woke left. They are no different than the woke left,” said Illouz. “The radical left tears down the statues of Thomas Jefferson, Tucker Carlson tears down the legacy of Winston Churchill. The radical left says Western civilization is evil, Candace Owens says the roots of our faith are demonic. It is the same sickness.”
Carlson and Owens are among the right-wing influencers who have made opposition to Israel a centerpiece of their output, at a time when support for Israel is declining among conservatives, particularly younger conservatives.
In November, Amichai Chikli, the Israeli Diaspora minister, echoed Illouz’s concerns in an interview with the New York Post, telling the outlet that he was “far more concerned about antisemitism on the right than on the left.” The comments were notable because Chikli is himself a right-wing, anti-“woke” warrior who, in a first for Israel, has stoked relationships with far-right European parties that in some cases have ties to the Nazis.
“One of the worst moments was when a popular conservative broadcaster called one of the most vile Holocaust deniers in America ‘one of the most honest historians.’ That legitimizes hate — it normalizes it,” Chikli told the New York Post, appearing to refer to Carlson’s past praise of the Holocaust revisionist Darryl Cooper.
Chikli also warned against the rising influence of Fuentes and Cooper among young Americans.
“Antisemitism has become fashionable for Gen Z,” Chikli continued. “They listen to podcasts, not professors. When people like Nick Fuentes or Darryl Cooper are treated as thought leaders, that’s dangerous. These are neo-Nazis.”
The Times of Israel asked Illouz whether he was worried about appearing to interfere with American politics. “Defending the alliance between America and Israel is not interfering,” he said. “I am in touch with many pro-Israel conservatives who know that Candace and Tucker are a threat to America as much as to Israel.”
Top GOP officials, including Vice President JD Vance, have largely dismissed calls from Jewish conservatives, including Ben Shapiro, and others to draw a line against antisemitic influencers.
“Do you think you are the first to try to delegitimize the Jewish people? We are the people of eternity,” said Illouz toward the conclusion of his address, adding that “we will be here long after your YouTube channels are forgotten dust.”
The post Knesset member from Netanyahu’s party decries ‘new enemy’: Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens appeared first on The Forward.
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Texas Joins Legal Action Against American Muslims for Palestine as Move to ‘Counter Hamas Terrorism’
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton speaks during AmericaFest, the first Turning Point USA summit since the death of Charlie Kirk, in Phoenix, Arizona, US, Dec. 20, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Cheney Orr
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Tuesday announced the state would join Virginia and Iowa in the filing of a legal brief against the nonprofit activist group American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) and other organizations which he characterized as “radical” in order “to combat Hamas terrorism.”
“Radical Islamic terrorist groups like Hamas must be decimated and dismantled, and that includes their domestic supporting branches,” Paxton posted on the social media platform X.
“Terrorism relies on complex networks and intermediaries, and the law must be enforced against those who knowingly provide material support,” Texas’s top legal officer added in a statement. “My office will continue to defend Americans who have been brutally affected by terrorism and ensure accountability under the law.”
In November, Texas began more aggressive legal efforts against organizations long alleged by researchers and law enforcement to be part of a domestic Hamas support network in the United States. Gov. Greg Abbott announced on Nov. 18, the designation of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as terrorist organizations.
A month later, Paxton filed a motion defending the designation in court, countering a suit by the Dallas-Fort Worth and Austin chapters of CAIR. “My office will continue to defend the governor’s lawful, accurate declaration that CAIR is an FTO [foreign terrorist organization], as well as Texas’s right to protect itself from organizations with documented ties to foreign extremist movements,” Paxton said at the time.
In its latest statement, Paxton’s office described how on Oct. 8, 2023, one day after Hamas’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel, the groups AMP and National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) “declared that they were ‘part of’ a ‘Unity Intifada’ under Hamas’s ‘unified command.’”
“Those who have been victimized by Hamas’s terrorism brought claims against the radical groups under the federal Anti-Terrorism Act,” the statement continued. “Attorney General Paxton’s brief is in support of the victims and was filed to ensure terrorist supporters are brought to justice.”
The legal brief references the “unity intifada” and “unified command” sentiments before stating, “They should be taken at their word. And just like their predecessor organizations — convicted or admitted material supporters of Hamas — they should be held accountable.”
The brief charges, “Defendants here are alleged to have provided material support for Hamas, the brutal terrorist regime that not only oppresses millions in Gaza but that also murdered more than a thousand innocents and kidnapped hundreds more. States have an interest in ensuring that valid claims brought under material support statutes are allowed to be litigated in court and that any violators are held accountable.”
Last year, Virginia’s Attorney General Jason Miyares — whose name appears at the lead of the brief — sought to press AMP to reveal its funding sources, which a judge ruled it needed to do May 9, 2025.
The latest brief provides a history lesson about how AMP and NSJP “did not begin their material support for Hamas on Oct. 8, 2023; rather, their material support has been going on for decades — both as the current organizations and through predecessor entities. Indeed, AMP was founded after a predecessor organization and five of its board members were convicted of providing material support for Hamas.” The brief describes the network beginning when “first, the Muslim Brotherhood founded the ‘Palestine Committee’ in 1988 to fund the terrorist organization Hamas.”
This network included “several organizations providing Hamas financial, informational, and political support,” the legal document explained. “Among those organizations were the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development and the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), organizations founded and controlled by senior members of Hamas leadership.”