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Katherine Janus Kahn, illustrator of ‘Sammy Spider’ Jewish children’s books, dies at 83
(JTA) — 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.
The post Katherine Janus Kahn, illustrator of ‘Sammy Spider’ Jewish children’s books, dies at 83 appeared first on The Forward.
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The cheesy way to do teshuvah
To Europeans, cheese culture in the United States is not quite ripe.
The Kraft company, for good and for ill, has defined American cheese in high-gloss orange. But if you’ve been to a grocery store or farmer’s market in recent decades, guided by tatted-up slicers ready to educate you on musky bouquets and runny rinds, you know this is only part of the picture.
Sara Joe Wolansky’s The Big Cheese follows Adam Moskowitz, a third-generation cheese importer as he coaches Team U.S.A. to compete at the Mondial du Fromage in France — the Olympics of cheesemongers. He’s the one in the cow suit, leading a group chant of barnyard noises he calls a “mooditation.” You might mistake his bootcamp in Queens as a joke, but he’s not kidding.
“For me this is redemption,” he says.
Moskowitz, equal parts Tevye the dairyman, George S. Patton and the Beastie Boys, credits cheese with saving his life. At first he was resistant to enter the family trade, begun by his immigrant grandfather, Ben, who started in the business as a kid with a pushcart in Washington Market in Tribeca and became one of the first Americans to import now familiar cheeses from abroad. Adam’s father, Joseph, expanded the market, debuting Jarlsberg and Boursin in our supermarkets.
An ambitious workaholic, Adam forged his own path, earning his first million dollars as a salesman at Yahoo! in the 1990s, and losing it almost immediately when the dot-com bubble burst. When his flirtation with a rap career fell flat (you’ll see why), he joined the world of cheese at the family firm, Larkin Cold Storage, and brought the party there, founding the Cheesemonger Invitational, a booze-soaked celebration he emceed, between bumps of coke in the bathroom.
The invitational Moskowitz founded in 2011 helped inspire the Mondial, a competition that pits the world’s best cheesemongers against one another in blind taste tests, oral presentations pitching a specific cheese and statue displays. By 2023, no American had ever placed in the competition. A newly sober Moskowitz was determined to crumble that Roquefort ceiling.
In Moskowitz’s journey is a tale of Tillamook teshuvah. He is indebted to the cheese community for letting him make amends. Throughout, he reflects on his behavior as an addict, leading to some heavy moments in an otherwise frothy endeavor.
The documentary is also focused on two competing cheesemongers, Sam Rollins and Courtney Johnson, who Moskowitz and a panel of experts picked to challenge the snooty Europeans. It’s a compelling look at a slice of an industry whose experts get shorter shrift than their oenological counterparts. (A monger is a cheese sommelier, make no mistake.)
I won’t spoil the ending, except to say events cooperated with the film’s feel-good vibe, though you may end up wishing Wolansky stayed on a bit longer for the following year’s competition, which saw a major win for the underdogs.
The film may just bring out the patriot in you, as you root for American soft (cheese) power to prevail. It could just be the perfect thing to watch this coming Shavuot.
Sara Joe Wolansky’s The Big Cheese makes its world premiere at DOC NYC. In person and online dates can be found here.
The post The cheesy way to do teshuvah appeared first on The Forward.
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Netanyahu, Touting Push Toward Greater Self-Reliance, Denies Report Israel Seeking 20-Year US Military Aid Deal
US President Donald Trump greets Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House in Washington, DC, US, Sept. 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has denied reports that his country is seeking a new 20-year military aid deal with the US, insisting that the Jewish state is working to wean itself off American assistance.
“I don’t know what they’re talking about. My direction is the exact opposite,” Netanyahu said on “The Erin Molan Show” on Thursday when asked by the Australian journalist about a new Axios report saying Israel was pursuing the security agreement.
According to Axios, the deal under discussion would include “America First” provisions to win the Trump administration’s support. The current 10-year memorandum of understanding between the two countries — the third such agreement signed — expires in 2028. It includes around $3.8 billion of annual military aid to Israel, which spends nearly all the assistance in the US to purchase American-made weapons and equipment.
The report comes amid growing criticism in the US among progressives and, increasingly, some conservatives over American military support for Israel, especially among younger Americans.
“Now, I want to make our arms industry independent, totally as independent as possible,” Netanyahu said on Thursday. “I think that it is time to ensure that Israel is independent.”
Netanyahu added that US defense aid to Israel is a “tiny fraction” of what Washington spends in the Middle East.
“We have a very strong economy, a very strong arms industry, and even though we get what we get, which we appreciate, 80 percent of that is spent in the US and produces jobs in the US,” he continued, saying he wants to see “an even more independent Israeli defense industry.”
The Israeli premier went on to stress that his country has never asked a single American solider to fight for Israel.
“Israel does not ask others to fight for us,” he said. “Israel is the one American ally in the world that says, ‘We don’t need boots on the ground, we don’t need American servicemen fighting on the ground for Israel or around Israel. We’re fine.’ We fight our own battles, but in doing so, we serve important American interests, like preventing countries that chant ‘Death to America’ from having nuclear bombs to throw at America.”
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South African President Says ‘Boycotts Never Really Work’ Despite BDS Support
South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa attends the 20th East Asia Summit (EAS), as part of the 47th ASEAN Summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Oct. 27, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Hasnoor Hussain
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa insisted that “boycott politics doesn’t work” following the Trump administration’s announced absence from a summit in his country later this month — despite his ruling party’s ongoing support for the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.
On Wednesday, Ramaphosa urged US President Donald Trump to reconsider his decision to boycott the G20 Leaders’ Summit, scheduled for Nov. 22-23 in Johannesburg, northeastern South Africa.
Ramaphosa criticized Washington for “giving up the very important role that they should be playing as the biggest economy in the world” in its decision to skip the summit — the first to be held in Africa.
“It is unfortunate that the United States has decided not to attend the G20. All I can say in my experience in politics is that boycotts never really work. They have a very contradictory effect,” the South African leader told reporters outside parliament in Cape Town.
Trump, who has previously accused the South African government of human rights abuses against white minorities — including land seizures and killings — called the decision to host the G20 summit in the country a “total disgrace.”
“No US government official will attend [the summit] as long as these human rights abuses continue,” he wrote in a post on Truth Social.
However, the South African government has strongly rejected any claims of genocide, saying such accusations are “widely discredited and unsupported by reliable evidence.”
Ramaphosa reaffirmed that the summit will proceed as scheduled, regardless of Washington’s absence.
“The G20 will go on. All other heads of state will be here, and in the end, we will take fundamental decisions. And their absence is their loss,” he said.
“The US needs to think again whether boycott politics actually works, because in my experience, it doesn’t work. It’s better to be inside the tent rather than being outside the tent,” he continued.
Despite such claims, Ramaphosa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) party has officially endorsed the BDS campaign against Israel for years.
The BDS movement seeks to isolate the Jewish state internationally as a step toward its eventual elimination. Leaders of the campaign have repeatedly stated their goal is to destroy the world’s only Jewish state.
In 2012, the ANC announced its full backing of the BDS movement, urging “all South Africans to support the programs and campaigns of the Palestinian civil society which seek to put pressure on Israel to engage with the Palestinian people to reach a just solution.”
Following Ramaphosa’s comments this week, it remains unclear why he continues to back anti-Israel boycotts if he believes they don’t work.
Since the start of the war in Gaza, the South African government has been one of Israel’s fiercest critics, actively confronting the Jewish state on the international stage.
Beyond its open hostility toward Israel, South Africa has actively supported Hamas, hosting officials from the Palestinian terrorist group and expressing solidarity with their “cause.”
In one instance, Ramaphosa led a crowd at an election rally in a chant of “From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free” — a popular slogan among anti-Israel activists that has been widely interpreted as a genocidal call for the destruction of the Jewish state, which is located between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
Since December 2023, South Africa has also been pursuing its case before the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of committing “state-led genocide” in its defensive war against Hamas in Gaza.
Israeli leaders have condemned the case as an “obscene exploitation” of the Genocide Convention, noting that the Jewish state is targeting terrorists who use civilians as human shields in its military campaign.