Report: Kosher Comics Prove Hit With Israel’s Chareidi Jews

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frum-comicsAFP reports: A far cry from the thrills of Spiderman, religious comics have become a hit among ultra-Orthodox Jews determined not to pollute their children’s minds. For the reclusive chareidi society that shuns television, Internet and video viewed as a source of moral corruption, the no-violence comics offer benign entertainment and a fun way of teaching tradition to their children.

Dozens of colourful comic books featuring Biblical stories and adventures of famous rabbis and sages fill the shelves of bookstores in chareidi neighbourhoods alongside the thick and austere religious textbooks.

Outside a bookstore in the ultra-Orthodox city of Bnei Brak on the outskirts of Tel Aviv, Yom Tov Cohen contently watched as his four-year-old son flicked through one.

“It is great, the kids love reading these books and at the same time they learn. It is not easy teaching your children the Bible,” said Cohen, in the traditional attire of a Haredi Jew — black coat, black hat, long curly sidelocks and a beard.

The number of “kosher” comic books has sharply risen in recent years with dozens of new publications and new artists, including women who once used aliases but today feel comfortable to publish their names.

“It may seem surprising, but today comics are getting more and more into the mainstream of the chareidi culture,” said Eli Eshed, an expert in Israeli comics.

The chareidi comics industry leapfrogged with the launch of the first weekly “Kosher” comic magazine in September, created and published by comic artist Dror Yisrael Cohen.

The ultra-Orthodox communities are deeply attached to their traditional way of living established in eastern Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries and are extremely suspicious of introducing new technology.

And even Cohen, who works on a computer at his home in the northern city of Tzefas, does not have an Internet connection.

Cohen swiftly sketched with a pencil on a white page, revealing within seconds the face of the hero of next week’s edition — a pious Jew who turns from rags to riches thanks to the blessing of a prominent Jewish sage.

He then went over the faint pencil lines with a black pen and after adding a few strokes of a fountain pen, he stood up to perform the evening Minha prayer facing the window of his modest apartment’s eastern wall.

Cohen later scanned the black-and-white image into the computer and coloured it using a cutting edge drawing board.

To get a new magazine out every week, he needs to work fast, which sometimes comes at the expense of the quality of the comics, he admitted.

Like many chareidi comic artists, Cohen got hooked to comics when he grew up in a secular family.

When he became religious at the age of 24, he completely gave up art to focus solely on religious studies. It was only after years that he felt comfortable to return to the comics.

Chareidi artists work with a rabbinical board. The board makes sure the content of their drawings will not offend the minds of young readers.

“There is censorship and I think there should be one,” Cohen said. “I make sure that the drawings have educational value and that they do not corrupt the children’s soul.”

The heroes of his stories, such as rabbi Yisrael Ben Eliezer who founded Hasidic Judaism, the main strain of ultra-Orthodox Judaism, in the 18th century, may even have God-bestowed supernatural powers such as telepathy or X-ray vision, but only within certain limits.

“My heroes will never have powers like the Incredible Hulk or Superman because it makes no sense. They will have power within certain boundaries of logic,” said Cohen, sitting in his studio, which also serves as a bedroom for one of his 12 children.

The ultra-Orthodox comics depict in picture and colour many traditional religious tales, all of which are aimed at glorifying the Lord and teaching good virtue.

{AFP/Matzav.com Newscenter}


12 COMMENTS

  1. They’re called graphic novels and they’ve been around for a while. Check the websites of any of the major Judaica publishing houses.

  2. what about bittul sman , divrei hol … ?
    maybe they should do some comics teaching some gemmarrah , mishnayes and humasch rashi

  3. We’re now as dumb as the street. Comics are an escape route. This and so-called charedi novels are terrible. What makes them charedi? The fact that the characters are called Rochel Leah and Moishe? There is very little true Torah value in these secular wannabes.

  4. This surely can’t replace comics like spiderman and superman etc…

    The whole idea of those comics is to provide children with a make believe, an escape from daily life for a few short minutes every day. They are designed to be unbelievable and untrue.

    While these graphic books are great and offer entertainment for our kids, I feel that there may be a negative as we blur the line between fiction and fact.

  5. Sounds dangerous to me. What’s to keep an older kid from picking up a nonkosher comic? He’s already accustomed to the format. How about giving the kids old-fashioned books and letting them use their own imaginations?

  6. 6. Reading comics requires special skills? Quite the contrary; we are almost holding at the stage where jewish writing is on a good enough standard so that our children need not look elsewhere.

  7. So traditional Judaism started in the 19th century? Well, I’m not sure if this will shock anybody but actually up untill that time there actually was no such thing as Fraya Yidden. Surely there were always individuals who strayed, but that’s what it was called. They were people who left Judaism. Judaism meant one thing. There are no early references to “traditional jews”.
    BTW, who is AFP?

  8. To Yehu: IMO, they should NOT try to use comics as a vehicle to teach, except under rare circumstances. Illustrations with captions are something different.

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