The Comic Image Of The Jew

The author's analysis confirms the existence of a Jewish Comic Image that does not appear to mirror directly a lingering Jewish estrangement from, or exclusion by, the larger society. Examines the Jewish Comedian and the Jewish past in association with humor.

This scholarly book examines historical depictions of Jewish people in comics.

In her first collection of graphic essays, Miriam Libicki investigates what it means globally and culturally to be Jewish, dating from her time in the Israeli military to her tenure as an art professor. Toward a Hot Jew is a new high watermark in autobiographical comics and shows Miriam Libicki as a powerful witness to history in the tradition of Martjane Satrapi and Joe Sacco.

"Harry Brod situates superheroes within the course of Jewish-American history: they are aliens in a foreign land, like Superman; figures plagued by guilt for abandoning their families, like Spider-Man; and outsiders persecuted for being different, like the X-Men. Brod blends humor and sharp observation as he considers the overt and discreet Jewish characteristics of these well-known figures and explores how their creators integrated their Jewish identities and their creativity."--From publisher description.

A collection of Jewish cartoons covering topics ranging from food and family to holidays and guilt.

Bibliography: p. 366-370. Includes index.

From the 1870s to the 1930s, American cartoonists devoted much of their ink to outlandish caricatures of immigrants and minority groups, making explicit the derogatory stereotypes that circulated at the time. Members of ethnic groups were depicted as fools, connivers, thieves, and individuals hardly fit for American citizenship, but Jews were especially singled out with visual and verbal abuse. In The Implacable Urge to Defame, Baigell examines more than sixty published cartoons from humor magazines such as Judge, Puck, and Life and considers the climate of opinion that allowed such cartoons to be published. In doing so, he traces their impact on the emergence of anti-Semitism in the American Scene movement in the 1920s and 1930s.

Born over a fifty-year period, the artists in this volume represent several generations of twentieth-century artists. Examining the work of such influential artists as Mark Rothko, Max Weber, and Ruth Weisberg, Baigell directly confronts their Jewish identity—as a religious, cultural, and psychological component of their lives—and explores the way in which this influence is reflected in their art. Drawing upon their common heritage, Baigell reveals the different ways these artists responded to the Great Immigration, the Depression, the Holocaust, the founding of the state of Israel, and the rise of feminism. Each artist’s varied Jewish experiences have contributed to the creation of a visual language and subject matter that reflect both Jewish assimilation and Jewish continuity in ways that inform modern Jewish history and changes in present-day America. Offering a fresh examination of well-known artists as well as long overdue attention to lesser-known artists, Baigell’s incisive observations are indispensable to our understanding of the Jewish themes in these artists' work. Written in a lively and spirited prose, this book is compulsory reading for those interested in modern American art and Jewish studies.