Uncategorized
The fuzzy, neurotic, unmistakably Jewish legacy of cartoonist Ed Koren
(JTA) — The other day I was in a kosher Chinese restaurant and I noticed an older white guy happily eating alone. He had white shaggy beard and white shaggy hair tucked under a ball cap reading “You had me at coffee.” He looked like a former City College professor who was thoroughly enjoying his retirement.
In other words, he looked like an Ed Koren cartoon.
Koren, who died last Friday at 87, published well over 1,000 cartoons in The New Yorker magazine, starting in 1962. His drawings were instantly recognizable, featuring fuzzy, lumpy, big-nosed people who looked vaguely like gentle animals, and fuzzy, lumpy, big-nosed animals that looked vaguely like amiable people.
His subject matter was also consistent: Middle-class, slightly neurotic characters whose challenges were as minor as they were familiar to the New Yorker’s target readers. In one, set in a restaurant, a well-dressed couple is interrupted at their meal by a waitress who explains, “We think it’s terribly important that you meet the people responsible for the food you are eating tonight.” Behind her is a crowd of farmers, along with a turkey and a cow.
In another, set in a playground, a little girl is eating an enormous ice cream cone. “My parents decriminalized sugar,” she tells her friends.
The New York Times, reviewing an exhibit of his work, once described him as the “poet laureate” of the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The same article also described the neighborhood as “the home of overeducated, comfortable but not super rich liberals and the psychotherapists who treat their garden-variety neuroses.”
I hesitate to lay too much Jewish significance on artists or writers who didn’t make much of their own Jewish identities, but many of Koren’s characters seemed Jewish even if he didn’t say so. And Koren, born to Jewish parents in Manhattan on Dec. 15, 1935, seemed never to have said so. The few references to his Jewish background that I found came via his friends, like Ben Cohen of Ben and Jerry’s, who once told a newspaper, “Like Ed, I’m a Jewish guy from the suburbs of New York City.” (Koren grew up in Mount Vernon, in Westchester County.)
Instead, his characters inhabited a world defined by familiar markers of a white, secular, upper middle class New York: Zabar’s tote bags, fussy restaurants, overstuffed apartments, hovering parents, pampered pets. Not explicitly Jewish, but unmistakably so, like the Upper West Side itself.
Koren attended Horace Mann School in the Bronx, and edited the Jester, the student humor magazine at Columbia College. After graduation he worked odd jobs, then got a Master of Fine Arts degree at Pratt and taught printmaking, drawing and design courses at Brown University for 13 years. When he wasn’t drawing cartoons (“I couldn’t survive as a cartoonist, frankly,” he once explained) he did illustrations for other magazines, books and advertisers, and made prints that were shown in gallery shows.
He became a full-time resident of Vermont in 1982, but even his cartoons set in the countryside often featured city dwellers adjusting — clumsily — to rural life. (A pair of hikers are stuck in a tree as a pair of furry beasts shake the trunk. The man says to the woman, “Tell them how hard we’ve worked to protect their habitat.”)
Despite the city’s changes, Koren cartoons still come alive on Amsterdam Avenue and in Riverside Park. Bearded, older dads pushing toddlers in strollers. Vaguely bohemian women walking dogs who look just like them. Precocious tots already thinking about their college essays.
“I’m a social historian in a funny way, I guess. Or, looking at it another way, an armchair anthropologist,” Koren told an interviewer in 2012. “What I find funny is the formulaic way in which people go about their lives and the absurd, silly things they do — unreflectively, unthinkingly, intensely, humorlessly. All those things intrigue me. It’s an endless well of delight and absurdity.”
All of which is to say that some people contribute to the Jews’ self-understanding without, like Koren, wearing their Jewishness on their sleeves or anywhere else. I recently covered an exhibit of Yiddish holdings from the library at the Jewish Theological Seminary. There are cartoons on display that show Jewish immigrants as they were at the turn of the 20th century – peddlers, rabbis, cobblers, garment workers. Perhaps 100 years from now certain kinds of New York Jews of the late 20th and early 21st century will be represented by an Ed Koren cartoon.
—
The post The fuzzy, neurotic, unmistakably Jewish legacy of cartoonist Ed Koren appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
Netanyahu drags Mamdani into his reelection campaign as face of antisemitism
For nearly two years, Zohran Mamdani has made Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a central political target. Now Netanyahu is making Mamdani part of his own reelection campaign.
The 50-second video released Wednesday on Netanyahu’s political social media channels builds on comments the Israeli leader made on Fox News this week, portraying Mamdani as the face of a worldwide surge of antisemitism directed at Israel. It intersperses footage of pro-Palestinian demonstrations and antisemitic incidents with recent clips of Mamdani condemning Israel’s conduct in the Gaza war after the mayor backed off a vow to have the Israeli prime minister arrested during an upcoming visit to New York. It also features Mamdani’s wife, artist Rama Duwaji, who liked social media posts that supported Palestinians immediately after the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks. (Mamdani said his wife is a private citizen and does not work in his administration.)
The clip ends: “No one will stop me from fighting for the truth of Israel.”
The video comes as Netanyahu faces one of the toughest reelection campaigns of his political career, trailing his rivals ahead of Israel’s Oct. 27 election, which could determine not only his political future, but also his legacy and potentially his freedom as he faces a corruption trial.
The fight with Mamdani has become politically useful for Netanyahu. His main rivals — former Israel Defense Forces chief Gadi Eisenkot and former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett — are seen as more moderate leaders who could rebuild strained ties with Democrats and win back support for Israel among Americans.
Joel Rubin, a Democratic commentator and foreign policy expert, said in an interview that turning Mamdani into a symbol of today’s Democratic Party gives Netanyahu a way to challenge one of his rivals’ central arguments that they are better positioned to course-correct the U.S. political shift against Israel. “For Netanyahu, it’s very important to try to portray the Democrats as Mamdani and make the argument that only he can stand up to that,” Rubin said.
Mamdani has positioned himself as a prominent progressive critic of Israel amid the war in Gaza, a position that helped propel his rise and which has become increasingly part of national Democratic Party politics.
Mamdani’s high-profile confrontation with Netanyahu escalated when he announced a review of whether he had the legal power to arrest the Israeli prime minister when he visits the city for the United Nations General Assembly in September. Experts on Israeli politics warned of an unintended consequence: would allowing Netanyahu to cast himself once again as Israel’s defender against international efforts to isolate the Jewish state.
“Many Israelis are sick of him and hope to vote him out,” Former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro wrote on X on Saturday. “The only possible outcome of a fruitless attempt to arrest him in NYC would be to give him a political boost at home. That would be an own goal.”
Some political strategists argue that Mamdani and his allies have little reason to mind if Netanyahu remains in power. “I bet they’re rooting for Bibi, in a perverse way,” said Matt Bennett, co-founder and executive vice president of the centrist Democratic think tank Third Way, in an interview with the Forward discussing how Israel is reshaping Democratic politics.
While still serving as a New York state Assembly member, Mamdani zeroed in on the Israeli prime minister as an enemy, leading chants of “Netanyahu, you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide,” during a protest in Oct. 2023.
Throughout his mayoral campaign last year, Mamdani repeatedly injected Netanyahu into New York politics., Mamdani first pledged to arrest Netanyahu shortly after he launched his campaign. According to a report, members of Mamdani’s inner circle were pushing for him to make this arrest declaration. After his election, already knowing the city lacked the authority to arrest Netanyahu, Mamdani proceeded with the review. When it concluded he did not have the power to arrest Netanyahu, Mamdani used a mayoral address to declare him a war criminal and then encouraged New Yorkers to protest him on his UN visit. Critics say the episode was a calculated political move aimed at energizing the pro-Palestinian and progressive base that helped elect him.
“There is a core principle amongst the left in American politics that having someone to organize against is crucial to growing numbers and persuasion, and for Mamdani, having the foil of Netanyahu is an incredibly valuable tool for motivating support,” said Rubin, who led Jewish outreach for Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign.
Whether that principle translates into votes for Netanyahu’s coalition in Israel’s Oct. 27 election remains to be seen. At the moment, Mamdani and Netanyahu have become unlikely political assets for each other, each giving the other a powerful opponent to campaign against.
The post Netanyahu drags Mamdani into his reelection campaign as face of antisemitism appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
As Conservative rabbis, we’re rethinking our communities’ policies toward interfaith families
(JTA) — As Conservative/Masorti rabbis, we see firsthand the joy of couples building a life together in the Jewish community, and the pain of those who feel shut out because one of them is not Jewish.
We think of the community member, though not Jewish, who developed a profound love for davening (prayer) and Torah study, and has supported his children’s and grandchildren’s Jewish education and observance of mitzvot. We think of another community member who faithfully drove her four children to Hebrew school for years and, after her youngest child’s bat mitzvah, chose to convert to Judaism herself.
It is time for our halacha, or Jewish law, to address issues facing intermarried couples and families robustly.
The two of us had the honor of joining colleagues in co-authoring a teshuvah — a rabbinic response to questions of Jewish law — that does just that. The Rabbinical Assembly’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards has approved a teshuvah that seeks to honor these couples and families and their commitment to Jewish life in our congregations and communities.
Since we are part of a movement that balances a commitment to halacha with the realities of modern life, our work is grounded in traditional Jewish texts, laws and principles while also reflecting the core belief that welcoming others and extending hospitality are essential Jewish values.
Based on halacha and Jewish tradition, the teshuvah affirms the longstanding standard of Conservative/Masorti rabbis that clergy may officiate only at weddings where both partners are Jewish. It emphasizes that while a wedding is a significant moment that often singularly drives these conversations, there are many other important life-cycle moments that rabbis can offer as occasions for Jewish celebration and reaffirmations of commitment to mitzvot.
Through this teshuvah, we formalize a public mishebeirakh (blessing) before or after the wedding day for a couple committed to building an exclusively Jewish home, as well as a hanukkat habayit ceremony to dedicate their home.
We welcome non-Jewish parents on the bimah during their children’s b’nei mitzvah and offer “mazal tov” and other basic gestures of inclusion to intermarried couples, both of which were once considered unacceptable. Our goal in doing so is to inspire the couple and family to grow in Jewish living.
We affirm that synagogues may not hire intermarried individuals as clergy but may hire intermarried individuals for other roles, and that rabbis may officiate at funerals for non-Jewish family members and support a Jewish mourning process when a non-Jewish loved one dies.
It’s been about 40 years since the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, which sets halachic policy for our movement internationally, broadly addressed questions around intermarried couples and families. We have learned over time that those intermarried couples who choose to embrace Jewish life are integral to the fabric of Conservative/Masorti communities.
We invite these couples to engage meaningfully in Jewish practice at home and in community, and, if they are having children, to raise them as Jews. Sometimes they may even choose to convert to Judaism at some point.
We do so because, as rabbis, we enjoy the privilege of being invited into people’s lives, and our role is both pastoral and educational. As people figure out their own identities and relationships, our role is to help them integrate Jewish tradition. As couples turn toward each other and seek to integrate Judaism into their lives, we are here to help them chart a course and to bring Torah into the conversation and observance of mitzvot into their lives.
We aim to inspire the couple to grow in Jewish living, observing mitzvot, studying Torah and searching for God in daily life. To do so, we must create gateways so everyone can find a place to learn and find joy and inspiration in our traditions, within the boundaries of halachic standards and principles.
Many of the practices in the teshuvah are already in place in some communities. Some offer solutions that speak most directly to realities in North America, and we call on local rabbis to interpret them in light of the circumstances in their local communities.
In the days of the Mishnah and the Talmud, when faced with new and challenging circumstances, our rabbis found creative and often beautiful solutions to embody the Torah as they understood it. As we follow in their footsteps, we use the wisdom we have inherited to both uphold and transform those values and honor the halachic principles that are central to our rabbinates and communities.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of JTA or its parent company, 70 Faces Media.
The post As Conservative rabbis, we’re rethinking our communities’ policies toward interfaith families appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
I was a reluctant Yiddishist. Here’s what converted me.
I couldn’t understand my peers’ embrace of Yiddish culture. Now I’m fascinated –– by the world evoked in Yiddish music and literature, and the leaders of its revival. My conversion began at Yidstock: a Festival of new Yiddish Music.
The post I was a reluctant Yiddishist. Here’s what converted me. appeared first on The Forward.
