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Katherine Janus Kahn, illustrator of ‘Sammy Spider’ Jewish children’s books, dies at 83
More than 30 years ago, a colorful little eight-legged spider named Sammy made his picture book debut and scurried into the homes of Jewish families across the country.
Sammy Spider and his mother live in a house with a young Jewish boy named Josh Shapiro and his family. Starting with “Sammy Spider’s First Hanukkah,” he romped through Jewish holidays, prayers and practices across more than two dozen books — all illustrated with bright watercolor collages that have made the books instantly recognizable to generations of Jewish children.
That was the work of Katherine Janus Kahn, who died Oct. 6 at age 83.
Janus Kahn, a fine artist also noted for her works on political justice and women’s issues, illustrated more than 50 books for Kar-Ben, a publishing house for Jewish children’s books that counts the “Sammy Spider” franchise as among its best-selling.
“We are heartbroken,” Kar-Ben said in a Facebook post, adding, “We are profoundly grateful for her legacy, and for the countless stories and memories she leaves behind.”
David Lerner is the CEO of Lerner Publishing Group, the parent company of Kar-Ben, the country’s largest publisher of Jewish children’s books.
“Katherine’s art and storytelling helped shape the landscape of Jewish children’s literature,” he said in an email. “Her books have been recognized with many national awards, honoring her creative vision and her lasting impact.”
Kar-Ben was a tiny company when it first connected with Janus Kahn in the early 1990s. She had drawn attention with her paper-cut illustrations for “The Family Haggadah,” which became a bestseller when it was published in 1987, and the publisher wanted to pair her with an author named Sylvia Rouss who had dreamed up a little spider with a big Jewish future.
“We liked her many styles and thought the collage work would be fun for Sammy’s Hanukkah,” Judye Groner, Kar-Ben’s founder, wrote in an email. “We had no idea that Sammy would become a children’s favorite character featured in over 20 books.”
In that first title, the curious little arachnid spies the young Josh celebrating Hanukkah, wishes he could warm his spider legs on the menorah and wants to spin the colorful dreidels that Josh gets every night.
“Silly Sammy. Spiders don’t light Hanukkah candles. Spiders spin webs,” his mother tells the disappointed Sammy. The catchy refrain repeats for Hanukkah’s eight nights when his mother gives Sammy eight spider socks spun with colorful dreidels, just like the ones Josh gets.
Over the next three decades, Sammy learned about empathy in “Sammy Spider’s First Mitzvah,” celebrated the entire Jewish holiday cycle from Rosh Hashanah to Shavuot and stowed away in Josh’s luggage in “Sammy Spider’s First Trip to Israel.” The most recent book, “Sammy Spider’s Big Book of Jewish Holidays,” came out this year and compiles many of the classic stories that are now widely distributed to Jewish families through PJ Library.
Janus Kahn’s art brought the characters sparkling to life, according to Heidi Rabinowitz, past president of the Association of Jewish Libraries and host of the Book of Life Podcast about Jewish children’s literature.
“Her rainbow-soaked collage artwork give the Sammy Spider books a huge advantage,” Rabinowitz wrote in an email. “They make Sammy and Mrs. Spider friendly and even beautiful, completely removing the ‘ick factor’ from their arachnid identity.”
For Janus Kahn, who studied art at Jerusalem’s Bezalel Academy after graduating from the University of Chicago, the work connected to her core identity. In a 2017 watercolor essay, she said her study at Bezalel came after she volunteered to support Israel during the Six-Day War in 1967 and headed to Israel, where she said “reconciliation felt possible,” even after the war’s end.
“My Judaism and my books are tied together so integrally that I don’t think I could ever untie them,” she said in a 2013 video with Rouss that showed her demonstrating her artistic techniques in her home studio.
Among her other titles was “The Hardest Word: A Yom Kippur Story,” published in 2001, the first in a series written by Jacqueline Jules about a Ziz, a large, magnificently colored Jewish mythological bird. Like Sammy Spider, the Ziz books struck a chord and are now part of the canon of Jewish children’s books.
“She was just so creative,” recalled Jules, who had multiple books illustrated by Janus Kahn. Their first book together, “Once Upon a Shabbos,” published by Kar-Ben in 1998, was about a bear who gets lost in Brooklyn just before the start of Shabbat. Jules was struck by how Janus Kahn’s illustrations added new texture to a story inspired by an Appalachian folktale.
She and Janus Kahn realized they lived near each other in the Washington, D.C., area. After meeting at an event for the book, they headed to a coffee shop for a two-hour conversation that launched a decades-long professional relationship and close friendship. They socialized together, along with Groner, who also lived nearby.
The two were paired up for the Ziz books, another series that has charmed generations of Jewish children. For those books, Janus Kahn created a fanciful creature using paints rather than collage.
“She borrowed different characteristics from a variety of birds. The legs were from a flamingo, the feet were from a rooster,” Jules said.
Now, the Ziz has taken on a life of its own, making appearances in synagogue plays and other programs based on the books. Just a few weeks ago, Jules saw a photo of someone who dressed up as the Ziz at a synagogue event for Yom Kippur, in keeping with the first book’s theme.
Janus-Kahn would often join Jules for a Ziz storytelling at Jewish venues, bringing a feltboard to embellish the Ziz props and a hand-made Ziz puppet that Jules used. At one memorable event, at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Janus Kahn arrived with two colorful feather boas, Jules recalled.
“She made the Ziz come alive,” she said.
With Janus Kahn’s death, Jules, Groner and Rouss not only lost the gifted master illustrator for their books. They have also lost a treasured friend of many decades.
“Kathy was a gift and our friendship was a gift,” Jules said.
Janus Kahn is survived by her husband, David Kahn, and a son, Robert.
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Deborah Lipstadt has second thoughts about tying Jackson synagogue arsonist to ‘Globalize the Intifada’
(JTA) — As news broke over the weekend of an arson attack that heavily damaged the only synagogue in Jackson, Mississippi, a few prominent individuals connected the culprit to pro-Palestinian activism.
“This is a major tragedy. But it’s more than that,” Deborah Lipstadt, formerly the State Department’s special envoy to combat antisemitism, wrote on the social network X. “It’s an arson attack and another step in the globalization of the intifada.”
Later, upon learning that the arsonist appeared to have been motivated by a strain of antisemitism associated with the far right, not the pro-Palestinian movement, she walked back her comments — to a degree. But Lipstadt’s initial comments about the arsonist’s motives reflect a larger sense of disorientation among diaspora Jews as they face increased levels of antisemitism from across the spectrum of left-wing, right-wing and Islamist extremism.
Jewish activists and communities have been engaged in fierce debate over which corner poses the greatest threat, and reports of new incidents are often met with immediate speculation over the attacker’s motivations. Lipstadt, an Emory University professor who had served in the State Department under President Biden, has herself criticized the politicization of antisemitism charges. “When you only see it on the other side of the political transom,” she told the Los Angeles Times in 2024, “I have to ask: Are you interested in fighting antisemitism, or was your main objective to beat up on your enemies?”
“Globalize the Intifada” is a term commonly used in left-wing, pro-Palestinian protests. Most of the perpetrators of the large-scale antisemitic attacks in the diaspora since the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attacks in Israel — including in Washington, D.C.; Boulder, Colorado; Bondi Beach, Australia; and the arson attack on Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s home — have made their pro-Palestinian and/or Islamist affiliations public.
But when the identity of the Jackson arsonist was revealed and the suspect appeared in court, his comments and social media presence betrayed no obvious link to the pro-Palestinian movement.
Instead the suspect, 19-year-old Catholic school graduate Stephen Spencer Pittman, used language —including “synagogue of Satan” and “Jesus Christ is Lord” — popular among leading figures of the online far right who peddle antisemitism, including Nick Fuentes and Candace Owens. (“Synagogue of Satan” also has deeper roots; it was popularized by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.)
An Instagram account appearing to be Pittman’s also contains references to a “Christian diet” and a clip from “Drawn Together,” an adult animated series, referencing an antisemitic “Jew crow.” (One of the show’s creators is Jewish.) Neither Pittman’s public statements in court, nor his Instagram account, referred to pro-Palestinian activism.
In hindsight, was Lipstadt right to preemptively link the fire to “globalize the intifada”?
“It may have been inopportune of me to say that,” she told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency about her invocation of the phrase.
Lipstadt insisted, “I was not saying this was a leftist attack. Clearly it’s not.” Nor did she “mean to suggest that this was an Islamist attack.”
She offered that the phrase, which uses the Arabic word associated with the violent Palestinian uprisings of the late 1980s and early 2000s, could be interpreted as hatred toward Jews coming from all sides.
“If ‘globalize the intifada’ means ‘attack Jews everywhere,’ then it certainly fits,” she said. “So it depends on how you want to interpret the sentence.”
Lipstadt wasn’t the only prominent figure linking the arsonist to “globalize the intifada” and other pro-Palestinian phrases before his identity was revealed.
“It began with BDS. Some said, it’s just words,” Marc Edelman, a Jewish law professor at the City University of New York, wrote on X over the weekend.
He continued, “CUNY Law speech: ‘globalize the intifada.’ Still, just words? Recent pro-Hamas chants. Words again? And now the violence in Pittsburgh, Washington D.C., Sydney, Jackson, Mississippi and more. As the Left used to say, words matter!”
Even a pro-Palestinian politician condemned the arson while also addressing recent hard-line pro-Palestinian activism in her own city.
“Mississippi’s oldest and largest synagogue, and two of their Torah scrolls, were burned yesterday on Shabbat in a horrific antisemitic attack—days after protestors chanted ‘We support Hamas’, here in NYC,” Shahana Hanif, a New York City council member from Brooklyn who won re-election in a race that pivoted largely on Israel, wrote on X.
She was referencing recent pro-Hamas protesters outside synagogues in New York, who have been denounced by progressives who are critical of Israel including Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Hanif added, “These chants are antisemitic and deeply harmful. You can oppose land sales in the West Bank without supporting violence against Jews. Yesterday’s arson in Mississippi is a stark reminder of the consequences of hate.”
She attracted some criticism from the pro-Palestinian movement for her statement — including from the group that organized the pro-Hamas New York synagogue protests, which took offense at the comparison.
“Linking chants at a Palestine protest that support a resistance movement of occupied people to the klan bombing of a synagogue is absolutely irresponsible and disgusting,” PAL-Awda NY/NJ, a radical group, wrote to Hanif.
In the group’s Telegram channel viewed by JTA, PAL-Awda added, “We see you, politicians who claim to support Palestine but then follow the hasbara playbook to link people resisting colonial oppression with white supremacists bombing synagogues in Mississippi.” “Hasbara” is a Hebrew term used to describe Israeli public relations efforts.
Pro-Israel groups, meanwhile, claimed hypocrisy, with some sharing a screenshot of Hanif previously retweeting a pro-Palestinian activist’s post that included the phrase “Globalize the Intifada.” JTA was unable to verify the post.
Unlike Lipstadt, Edelman, the CUNY law professor, told JTA he stands by his initial assessment of the arson.
“Nothing changes the fact that the actions taken in Washington, D.C. and Sydney, Australia, coalesced with an extreme left anti-Israel position,” he said, referring to the mass shootings at the Capital Jewish Museum and Bondi Beach — the former by a declared pro-Palestinian activist, the latter by declared Islamists. (Edelman noted that he recently undertook a Fulbright scholarship in Australia.)
Edelman added, “It is also not surprising that far-right rhetoric, much as it has for generations in this country, has also led to increased violence against minority groups including Jewish Americans.”
But there’s a key difference between the two sides, in Edelman’s eyes.
“The big distinction here, and I say this as a member of the Democratic Party, is that the left has historically been better than this,” he said. “And now, perhaps, they are not.”
For Lipstadt, the incident has largely taught her that Jews shouldn’t spend time trying to determine which kinds of antisemitic attacks, whether from the left or right, are worse.
“It’s all horrible,” she said. “Much of it is lethal. It’s toxic and it’s dangerous.”
The post Deborah Lipstadt has second thoughts about tying Jackson synagogue arsonist to ‘Globalize the Intifada’ appeared first on The Forward.
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In Jordan’s pick for the Oscars, a contradictory message about ethnonationalism
There’s a disagreement in public discourse about how to understand the First Intifada, the nature of the violence, the scale of destruction, and who is responsible. Even the date it began is a source of controversy — foreign-policy analyst Mitchell Bard points to an Israeli being stabbed to death in Gaza in December 1987; the Institute for Middle East Understanding says it was the killing of four Palestinians by an Israeli truck driver days later — but All That’s Left of You, Jordan’s entry for the Best International Feature Film at the Academy Awards, makes the claim that the real beginning was far earlier.
The film, directed by Cherien Dabis, opens in 1988 with a confrontation between Israeli soldiers and Palestinians in a refugee camp in the West Bank. Stones are thrown, shots are fired, and a teenager, Noor Hammad, is shot in the head. Suddenly, the film cuts to an old woman’s face looking straight into the camera.
“I’m here to tell you who is my son,” the woman, Hanan (played by Dabis), says. “But for you to understand, I must tell you what happened to his grandfather.”
We flash back to 1948, where the film marks the origins of the discontent that led to the First Intifada, just as a Zionist paramilitary unit descends on Jaffa. Noor’s grandfather, Sharif — then a young father — sends his family someplace safer as he faces the Israeli soldiers and is eventually imprisoned for refusing to cede his land. The second part of the film takes place after a 30-year time jump, and shows Sharif instilling a sense of Palestinian nationalism in his grandson Noor.
Noor’s father Salim instructs him to obey the laws of Israeli occupation, believing this will keep Noor out of harm’s way. But then we return to 1988 and the day Noor is shot.
All That’s Left of You is strongest in its moving portrayal of the intergenerational differences that can exist in a single family when it comes to dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Even though the 1948 and 1978 sections occasionally meander, the timeline helps viewers understand the pressures in the region and within the Hammad family that led to a boiling point in 1988.
But the culmination of the film’s trauma-filled journey lands as a poor lesson in nationalism.
Towards the end of the film, we see an older Hanan in 2022 in a cafe in Tel Aviv — Jaffa. Hanan debates an Israeli about whether or not an organ can have a nationality, particularly in the context of an organ transfer. Ari, the Israeli, says no. Hanan asserts that yes — a Palestinian heart is always Palestinian no matter what body it occupies.
It’s a not so subtle metaphor for the belief that the land of Israel remains Palestinian in its soul, no matter who occupies it. But that feels like a case for embracing ethnonationalism to try and combat…ethnonationalism. Historically, no matter what name you call it, that patch of earth has always been home to many different people and an important marker of different cultural identities.
All That’s Left of You depicts Palestinian resilience in the face of great oppression but the message seems to be that this abuse is inherent to certain identities. Throughout the film, the characters make blanket statements about Zionists and Israelis as a monolithic force of evil. When these characters are dealing with being imprisoned, barred from their own homes, and humiliated at gunpoint, these angry generalizations are not surprising, especially if that is all they have known for three generations. But the ending argument, that an organ cannot exist without a nationalistic sentiment, does not offer a hopeful message. Up until this point, the film has demonstrated the destructive and dehumanizing effects of ethnocentric possessiveness, but it struggles to disentangle itself from the ideology it seeks to condemn. Instead, it ends up replicating it.
The post In Jordan’s pick for the Oscars, a contradictory message about ethnonationalism appeared first on The Forward.
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VIDEO: Chatting in Yiddish during an Iraqi Jewish meal
אין 2022 האָט דער פֿאָרווערטס אַרויסגעלאָזט אַ ווידעאָ, וווּ דער ייִדישער אַקטיאָר מײַק בורשטיין און זײַן פֿרײַנדינע פּערלאַ קאַרני שמועסן אויף ייִדיש בעת זיי עסן אין „פֿאַקטאָרס פֿיימאָס דעלי“ אין לאָס־אַנדזשעלעס.
עטלעכע לייענער האָבן דעמאָלט געזאָגט אַז זיי האָבן הנאה געהאַט פֿונעם ווידעאָ ווײַל, ווי איינער האָט געשריבן: „ס׳האָט מיך דערמאָנט אין די קינדעריאָרן ווען איך פֿלעג זיך אונטערהערן ווי מײַנע קרובֿים רעדן ייִדיש צווישן זיך.“
זינט דעמאָלט זענען אַרויס עטלעכע אַנדערע ווידעאָס, וווּ זיי עסן אין פֿאַרשידענע לאָקאַלן און שמועסן בשעת־מעשׂה אויף מאַמע־לשון.
איצט האָט מען זיי פֿילמירט בעת אַ סעודה פֿון איראַקישע פּאָטראַוועס צוגעגרייט פֿון אַ יונגערמאַן, ניקאָלאַס ניסים, וואָס רעדט אַליין ייִדיש.
דער ווידעאָ, וואָס ווערט באַגלייט מיט ענגלישע אונטערקעפּלעך, איז פּראָדוצירט געוואָרן פֿונעם ייִדישן טעלעוויזיע־קאַנאַל JBS
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