Cartoons by women are represented by 16-year-old Liesel Felsenthal, who drew images from the labour and death camps where she was imprisoned, and American artist Lily Renée Wilhelm, whose mother saw an ad for illustrators at Fiction House and encouraged her daughter to apply for the job. Lily escaped Vienna in 1938 via the Kindertransport, joined her parents in New York, and went on to illustrate Señorita Rio, about a spy who faked her death in order to exact revenge for Pearl Harbor.
The show also includes the work of Sephardi cartoonists, such as Joann Sfar (The Rabbi’s Cat), and contemporary cartoons that lampoon the Israeli government with characters who resemble actors from the satirical TV series, Eretz Nehederet. Perhaps the two most well-known genres that Jewish comic artists celebrate – satire and superheroes – are wonderfully documented at Jewce, an unmissable exhibition about looking to the lighter side of the Jewish expereince, even when times get so dark.
By Susan Daitch
Photos by John Halpern
The Museum and Laboratory of the Jewish Comic Experience runs until Sunday 31 December. Times vary. FREE. Center For Jewish History, New York, NY 10011. jewce.org
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