Arts & Entertainment

A panel from "The Rabbi's Cat"

Meow r
Mix

LESLIE CAMHI

Nextbook. org

French cartoonist best
known in America for his
"Little Vampire" children's
books, pens' original
graphic novel for adults.

, or anyone who's ever gazed at their housecat
and wondered what depths of wisdom and
perversity lay hidden behind those half-
closed, almond-shaped eyes, along comes The Rabbi's
Cat (Pantheon; $2195).
French author Joann Sfar's erudite, charming and
hilarious graphic novel, set in 1930s Algeria, stars an
earthy old rabbi and a hyper-intelligent, scrawny
feline. This learned but skeptical animal, having
miraculously developed the power of speech, argues
with his master against the existence of God and the
inanities of French colonial bureaucracy, but his pri-
mary concern is his ability to snuggle uninterruptedly
in the arms of the rabbi's beautiful young daughter.
The cat narrates a tale that meanders from the
medina of Algiers to desert oases where traveling Jews
and Arabs make music together to the bohemian
quarters of Paris, where Jewish assimilation is all the
rage. Along the way, it richly illuminates a lost world,
pulled between the lures of tradition and modernity.
Published in three volumes in France, The Rabbi's
Cat was published in North America last month,
compiled into a single book and pungently translated
by Alexis Siegel and Anjali Singh.
Sfar, 34, says he began drawing comics at the age of
3, after his mother's death; since then, he has written
or illustrated more than 100 albums for adults and
children, often drawing upon his dual Ashkenazi and
Sephardic heritage. Born in Nice, he lives today in
Paris, with his wife, children and two cats, including
the model for his book's hero.

Q: I read that you were raised by your maternal
grandfather. Is this so?
A: Not really, though he had a huge influence on me.
He had studied to be a rabbi in Poland, but when

A cat's-eye view of human nature and faith

Leslie Camhi is a writer and cultural critic whose work
appears regularly in the New York Times, the Village
Voice and other publications.

World War II came, he was already in medical school
in Paris. He renounced his religion and became a mili-
tary doctor, fighting with the French partisans. In the
Resistance, he was an aide-de-camp to Andre Malraux.
Anyway, he was the one who taught me about
Judaism — with a lot of irony, because he didn't
believe in God at all. He considered the Torah a sacred
text because of its literary nature.

Q: And your father?
A: My father's family comes from the region around
Oran, in Algeria. He was a student in Algiers in
1957, when he was physically attacked by extreme
right-wing French forces for siding with his Arab
friends during a university strike — the right-
wingers beat him up and put him in the hospital for
three months.
So he made the French authorities offer him
police protection until he finished his law exams,
and then he left the country.
Q: So heroic masculinity runs on both sides of
your family.
A: Yes, but it's difficult to be raised by two domi-
nant males. Both my father and my grandfather,
each in his own way, were traumatized by the idea,
then quite common, of a certain Jewish passivity.
They were capable of going to extremes of activity,
resistance, even anger. So me, I tell stories. I find
that more restful.

Q: Have you also tried your hand at more tradi-
tional fiction?
Q: Yes, I wrote and illustrated a novel called
L'homme-arbre ("The Tree Man"), which appeared
last year in France. The sequel is coming out this
month. It's a Chasidic fantasy tale — a sort of
Jewish Tolkien.

Q: The Rabbi's Cat begins with the cat explaining
that "Jewish people aren't crazy about dogs."

MEOW MIX on page 58

9/22
2005

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