Matzah Man to the Rescue! (Family Comic Friday)

Note: Due to a death in my family, I got behind on things. This review was meant for last week's Family Comic Friday. However, life and emotions got in the way. Please enjoy this better late than never review!

The house cat stole your shank bone? Run out of unleavened bread for the Seder? Grandma didn't make the charoset because she thought Grandpa was doing it? If you answer yes to any of these Passover celebration calamities, then you must call upon Matzah Man!

This all ages graphic novel is a perfect introduction into the Jewish holiday of Passover! I'm married into a Jewish family and I've participated in the Passover Seder before. Yet I learned some new stuff about the holiday from reading this book!

Matzah Man to the Rescue! is divided into several easy to read chapters. The artwork is a mixed medium of cartoon art and real life photographs. So if the young readers in your life have never learned about Passover before and don't know what a matzo looks like, they'll be able to now thanks to Illustrator Charlie Fowkes. I just wish writer Eric Kimmel had devoted more space than just a paragraph about how to make charoset, since the use of it on Matzah wafers are history's first records of what we now refer to as the sandwich. 

This is a turbulent time in history. The conflicts in Israel are full of good intentions and terrible atrocities. Antisemitism is at a 75 year high and don't think for a minute that I am not aware nor compassionate towards those Palestinian families that are in the middle of a war because of their faith and heritage as well as extremists who acted independently of the majority. Iranians too! I have cousins who are Iranians and they often talk about how their family and friends long to be free of the regime that currently rules Iran with an iron fist.

My hope reading this graphic novel accomplishes 3 things. I've already achieved my goal of reading and collecting a new holiday themed graphic novel. Now I hope others looking to teach their little ones about the Jewish culture will go out and get this book. Then I hope that learning experience might help spread understanding, love and peace to a troubled section of our ailing world.

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 10 out of 10 stars.

Courage to Dream: Tales of Hope in the Holocaust (Family Comic Friday)

Disclaimer: I won a free preview copy of this book through a giveaway on Goodreads. Other than the complimentary volume, I have not received any monetary payment for this review.

There's a famous early Superman story called 'How Superman Would End the War.' It's a great fantasy of how things could have ended much quicker and less bloodier if super heroes really did exist during World War II. A Siegel and Shuster classic, the spirit of it is captured in this forthcoming graphic novel by the Scholastic imprint, Graphix.

Writer Neal Shusterman pens several tales about the Holocaust in which elements of the supernatural and Jewish folklore is used to protect the European relatives of God's chosen people. The more supernatural themed tales are about a window which provides a portal for freedom to a trio of Jewish girls being hidden in a secret room from the Gestapo and a crystal heirloom provides a young girl with a look at what might have been if the Holocaust never happened. These were both good stories, though I hated the ambiguous ending of the magic window tale. But it was the stories that integrated Jewish folklore that I loved the best!

In those adventures, a golem enacts revenge on the guards of a concentration camp and a pair of siblings are rescued by freedom fighters, only to be able to provide some unexpected allies to their defense from German forces. There was also a fifth story that integrated fantastical happenings with the story of Moses and the Exodus from Egypt. All of these stories got my blood pumping. But the story of the children rescued by freedom fighters got me wanting the adventure to never end. It was a team up of several mythical characters of Eastern European folklore with characters like the Baba Yaga and the Fools of Chelm, I don't think there's ever been a story told just like this one and I am a nut for team-ups and crossovers!

Every story had a touch of truth to them and each section ends with a 2-page spread explaining the historical contexts and the legends involved in each story. Unfortunately, the fanciful cannot erase the horrors of World War II and the Holocaust. There are atrocities galore in this book. Jews and Germans alike die in some very intense ways. Artist Andres Vera Martinez portrays the horrors with realism without being overly graphic. Amazon, which is currently doing pre-orders, rates this a book for readers aged 12 and up. I think that's a completely fair assessment.

A powerful book that was fun and intense at the same time. I loved how fantasy and tall tale were brought together to make a story that ponders 'What If...' while dealing with traumas and discrimination both past and present. Each story reminded me of the classic version of The Twilight Zone, entertaining and thought-provoking and very mystical.

If the subject matter is something that parents and guardians balk at, read this book along with the young reader in your life. Use the background features at the end of each story to discuss these complicated and uneasy subjects. 

A near perfect read. If only that first story had a more definitive ending or tied-in with another tale...

Courage to Dream goes on sale on October 31, 2023.

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 9 out of 10 stars.

The 100 Most Jewish Foods: A Highly Debatable List

A Hanukkah present from my Jewish bride, this book is part cookbook and part chronicle of the Jewish experience in relation to food. This book came about from an article of the same name that appeared on the Jewish culture website, Tablet. Edited by Tablet editor Alana Newhouse, several dozen notable Jewish chefs, restaurateurs and foodies wax poetic on Jewish foods all the way from matzoh to schmaltz to even yes, bacon. Just because it's a Jewish food, that doesn't mean you should eat it...

Names I recognized from this book were Molly Yeh, Michael Twitty (a personal favorite of mine) and Zac Posen. There was one writer whose name I cannot remember and to be honest, I'm glad I forgot it. It was the pseudonym of an African American rabbi. Thankfully, he only wrote 2 pieces in this book. But it was enough to make you lose your appetite. The only times that the F-word appears in this book, it's this gentleman's diatribes full of piss and vinegar that were just unasked for. 

The foods listed in this book are not ranked. There is 1 exception that most of the contributors agreed was essential to Jewish cooking, cuisine and culture. I won't reveal what it was. But I can say that I agree with the consensus. But I did disagree with 1 food that I felt was wrongly absent. Where are the knishes?

If you had me name the top 5 most Jewish foods, the knish, a meat, cheese or potato filled hand pie, would probably be the 3rd thing I come up with. There are some dishes that seem similar in this read. But in a book that arranges by alphabet instead of rank, the Ks were devoid of the knish!

If the Knish is in here under another name, then I really wish that this book had a glossary in the back. There were a lot of Yiddish words that I didn't know and unless I went to Google them, I also didn't understand. A small 1-2 page listing of some of the most common Yiddish and other Jewish terms from other languages was needed.

Jewish cooking gets ignored quite a bit in the culinary world. Most students I teach know that pork isn't Kosher. But they have zero idea what being Kosher means. This book is going to be a great help in that. I'm also hoping to utilize some of the recipes in this book with my students. There's a lot of dishes that are amazingly complex for a cuisine often thought of comprised of mostly peasant food and dishes that grandma made. That assessment could not be further from the truth. I made an amazing red lentil stew from this book. Other than my accidentally forgetting to add the lemon juice at the end, it turned out so freaking well. And there was at least 30 more recipes on my list now to try in the future.

Also, there were at least 1 or 2 books from some of the contributors of this book that I am interested in one day getting my hands on. So, there's a ton of potential more learning and exploration on the horizon for me and my pupils ahead. 

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.

Maus II: A Survivor's Tale: And Here My Troubles Began (2022 Comic Book and Graphic Novel Reading Challenge)

Though Art Spiegelman's Maus and Maus II are several decades old, both graphic novel accounts of the artist's parents Holocaust ordeal have reentered public consciousness recently. In the past several months, several state and local school districts have waged war on allowing the award winning books on library shelves.

I had read Maus many years ago. I got all the way through Vladek and Anja Spiegelman's attempts to flee the encroaching Nazi forces into Poland and Eastern Europe. Their story ended with the pair taking some bad advice about where to escape from the Germans and ended up as their captives. 

For one reason or another, I didn't read Volume 2 for another 7 years. At first I was misinformed. A so-called comic and graphic novel expert told me that the edition I read was a combination of both books. I thought it odd that we never learned about the final fate of the Spiegelmans, but I went with the advice. By the time I figured out that whomever told me what they did about the complete Maus didn't know what they were talking about, the pandemic hit and more comfort food type reads took my priority. Thankfully this reading challenge and recent current events sparked renewed interest in completing the story.  

I both love and loath this book. I hate the accounts of Nazi atrocities, rampant carnage and needless death. But I love this record of endurance, redemption and forgiveness. This book hits very hard for me. My wife is a Polish Jew. Her family too is from Lodz. Her immediate family immigrated around the turn of the century. But knowing that her family lost contact with numerous branches of her family treat after World War II and just visualizing her or her relatives having to face this- it just killed me.

In 2017, I went with my wife's family to the National Holocaust Museum in Washington. It was a soberly powerful experience. They say that smell is the biggest trigger of memory and I am a super recognizer. I'm great with faces and I can recall smells from memory with incredible detail. So when I read the account of Videk spending countless days on end in a train car with other Auschwitz prisoners left to die, my brain went back to the train car at the museum. There was the odd smell of meat that could have been appealing if not for my knowledge of what happened in that vehicle. And last night, recalling all that, I just lost it for a little bit. 

In book one, Art Spiegelman's exploration of his parent's time during the Holocaust helped him to process his mother's suicide. In this volume, Spiegelman comes face-to-face with his surviving father. Vladek's abusive nature toward his second wife, his constant need have his son under his thumb and obsessive hoarding of materials and food are all brought about from the trauma of life in a concentration camp. Being as I use my exploration of pop culture and history to journal through my personal foibles, I can understand why Spiegelman completed these accounts, no matter how terrible those family histories were. Writing is therapeutic. 

For this part of my reading challenge, I chose this book because I needed to read something that was on the New York Times Graphic Novels bestsellers list. As of April 13th, Maus is currently at #2. This book is #13. I wonder if Art Speigelman had any idea when this edition was published in 1991 that 31 years later, we would not only still be reading these books, but fighting for the right to carry them in both public school and community libraries. I don't think he expected there to be such a ruckus over these graphic novels. According to a scene in this book, people called for the original Maus to be banned as early as 1979-80. But unfortunately, the controversy behind the right for this work to be published, let alone read, continues to this day as well.

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 10 out of 10 stars.

Completing this review completes Task #6 (Currently on NY Times Best Sellers List) of the 2022 Comic Book and Graphic Novel Reading Challenge.

Tis The Ugly Sweater Season! Advent 2021: Day 5

If you are regular follower on my Advents, you'll know that Hanukkah is a big deal to me. I've had a fascination with the Jewish culture since I was a teen. I believe that the Reuben is the greatest sandwich ever to utilize pink hued dressing. And my wife is Jewish, too! 

In my household, instead of 8 nights of fun- we get 9!

I wasn't able to post on the first day of Hanukkah 2021 as it took place on November 28th. Too early for this year's Advent. So, I'll post tribute to the Chosen People on tonight, the last night of the Festival of Lights with 8 amazing Hanukkah themed ugly sweaters.

Matzoh are flat unleavened crackers. Grind them up, add a little chicken stock and egg and dip them in boiling broth and you've got matzoh ball soup. Yum!

Why wear an ugly Hanukkah sweater when you can decorate your own? (And then eat it, too!)

The first Hanukkah occurred in Jerusalem in 168 BC How dinosaurs found about it is beyond me.

Jewish comedian Howie Mandel shows his love for Challah, a braided yeast dough bread made with eggs. Makes a killer French toast.

I need one of these. It celebrates my Christian beliefs and my family's Jewish heritage. Plus, it's a cardigan and not a tight collar around my neck, which I loath.

Just about everyone who had to do a holiday show in elementary show knows the Dreidel Song. Essentially a top, playing dreidel is legalized gambling for Jewish kids. Only you wager chocolate coins, not cash.

As my Advent gift for tonight, enjoy this video from the gang at South Park as Kyle teaches Cartman how to play dreidel. Enjoy and Happy Hanukkah, everybody!

Merry Christmas-ukkah from your Jewish/Christian Madman friend!

Maus (Book I: My Father Bleeds History)

This is it! The book that literally put graphic novels on the map- at least in terms of finding a place on your local library's shelves. Originally published by Art Spiegelman in the pages of his groundbreaking Avante Garde comic, RAW. This first volume collects the first six chapters that Spiegelman, researched, wrote, and illustrated from 1980-86.

  
  Maus is a factual account of the author's father and his time spent in Nazi-occupied Europe. Though the Jews are portrayed as mice, the Nazis as cats and non-Jewish Poles are drawn as pigs, this in NOT a funny animal comic. Even though Spiegelman crafted the characters to reflect Hitler's view that the Jews were vermin to be exterminated, deep down there's a more powerful purpose behind the use of animals in this account of the early days of the Holocaust.

   Think about movies such as Bambi or the Lion King. What's the saddest moments of those classic films? It's when the parents die. For some reason, humans are torn to shreds when anthropomorphic animals die in cartoons. I for one cried like a little girl when Fry’s dog died alone on Futurama.

  I have seen the terrible pictures of Jews rescued from Allied forces at the end of the Holocaust. But nothing in the entire Museum of the Holocaust got to me as a full page splash of several Jewish mice being hung to death for trying to survive in the ghettos of Poland. (One thing did literally destroy me at the museum in Washington DC. It was an actual train car used to transport Jews to the concentration camps. The thought of my wife (who is half Jewish) and our children being put in those death wagons because of something beyond their control (their heritage), was a feeling beyond words.)

   Until finally reading this volume did I learn that this was only the first of two books about Spiegelman's family during World War II. I knew of Maus II, but I thought it was about Art and his father coming to grips with the suicide of his mother. But, all of that actually builds into Art convincing his dad to agree to an account of his time in war-torn Europe in framing sequences set in New York around 1978. Maus II will examine what happened after Art's dad was captured by the Nazis and placed in Auschwitz. I will be reading that volume as well!

This is a classic that must not only be read- but it's memory must not be forgotten! The book's lengthy censorship struggle is the reason why I finally got around to reading it. During last month's Banned Book Week, I was encouraged to pick out a banned graphic novel in a post by the CBLDF. I'm very glad that I finally did read this riveting account of the horrors of the ghettos during World War II. It's hard to read at times and not for kids who are not old enough to read the 'Diary of Anne Frank'- no matter how friendly those mice look on the cover.

Worth Consuming

Rating: 10 out of 10 stars.

Tradition!: The Highly Improbable, Ultimately Triumphant Broadway-to-Hollywood Story of Fiddler on the Roof, the World's Most Beloved Musical by Barbara Isenberg

The title is longer than the book itself.

   

There's nothing more Jewish than Fiddler on the Roof! I first saw the movie based on the film in middle school and was in love: not so much with the film but the Jewish culture, itself. As a result, I started frequenting Jewish restaurants, learning about Jewish customs, and I set a personal goal: I was going to marry a Christian Jew! Despite many of my friends and teachers in high school saying it was an impossible dream, on July 24th, 1999, I married my Jewish Princess! Since then, my wife and I have celebrated Christmakkuh, attended a Seder, and explored more of her Jewish heritage, which we've shared with dear friends and family. 

    Thus why I read this book. I found it being given away on Goodreads and I know how much my wife loved to play to the soundtrack with her sister when she was a little girl. So, I entered the giveaway and I was one of the lucky few to win a copy.

    The book covers just about every aspect of Fiddler on the Roof. From the Tevye tales written by Sholem Aleichem at the turn of the 20th Century through its first run on Broadway beginning in the 1960s over to London's West End where an up-and-coming Israeli actor named Topol would become so synonymous with the role of Tevye the Milkman that he would wind up in Yugoslavia filming the movie adaptation. The story of Fiddler then covers numerous revivals in New York and London then examines versions of the play being performed in schools and worldwide (it's particularly popular in Japan), finishing up with modern versions of the musical and it's songs finding a home on the internet.

    Tradition is a very good brief record of the history of the beloved musical. But it's not without its flaws. The biggest problem is that I think author Barbara Isenberg needs a thesaurus or something. When she refers to Fiddler's composer Jerry Bock, she almost always calls him 'librettist, Jerry Bock' or 'Librettist Bock.' This happens over and over to the point of being annoying. She also likes to point out that film director Norman Jewison isn't kosher quite a bit as well.

    Another issue I have with this book isn't Isenberg's fault- it's the use of pictures and text boxes to the point of redundancy. I mentioned that this is a short read. Officially about 272-pages, Tradition's story ends at page 200 with about 65-pages of notes and an index. That's all well and good but this tome would be about 30-pages smaller if it wasn't for the use of the aforementioned photos and text boxes which merely reprint information used immediately before or after the insertion of the dark gray boxes.

   This kind of issue is a problem on the behalf of the editors. I think they and the book's designer realized that they were overusing this publishing device as the text boxes disappear in the last third of the book.

    Despite these flaws, I really did enjoy the book quite well and I highly recommend it. But because of those mistakes I can't give this a perfect rating. What I can give you is a suggestion that you really should heed: just before you complete this book, maybe once you get to page 150, get your hands on a copy of Fiddler on the Roof. Because once you finish Isenberg's story of perhaps the greatest American musical of all-time, the songs will start to get stuck in your head and you are going to want to watch Fiddler again.

   Worth Consuming

   Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.
   

The Property by Rotu Modan

This graphic novel is about a Polish grandma who returns to Warsaw with her granddaughter after the recent death of her son (and granddaughter’s father). Having to move away Palestine (now Israel) during the Nazi invasion of Poland, the granddaughter is under the assumption that they are returning to claim a property that was lost during the occupation. But with the help of a local guide and a lawyer who dabbles in property law, the grandchild learns that there may be more to not only this trip but to her family history.

Regardless of my family history, I think I would have loved this graphic novel. It was educational, sweet, and very funny. There’s lots of great storytelling in this book and I hope it will become a classic one day.

The irony to this review is if I wasn’t married I probably would’ve overlooked this graphic novel. See, I feel like I live this book every day. My wife is half-Jewish and half-Polish. Many of the quips the young woman says in the Property sounds just like her. Then there’s grandma- if that woman isn’t my grandmother-in-law, I will eat my hat. Okay, she’s not Jewish, but she’s Polish and the portrayal of the matriarch is a dead ringer for her.

The art is minimalist but I’m not sure if that is intentional. I know very little of Israeli cartooning/ comics. This is my first foray and I don’t really want to critique the style if that’s indicative of that medium. I liked it, but some folks may think it’s too ‘Sunday Comics’ looking.

Also, this is not a graphic novel for all-ages. There’s nudity, the horrors of Nazi Germany, and just a little bit of strong language innuendo. So, this is probably more for ages 16 and up. However, I liked this comic very much and I will be surprised if it doesn’t achieve a level of acclaim up there with other Middle Eastern and Jewish graphic novels such as Persepolis or MAUS.

Worth Consuming.

Rating: 9 out of 10 stars.