Review: The Rabbi's Cat 2

Weird how of the two things I've reviewed so far, both of them involve Judaism. But while the Yiddish Policeman's Union dealt with Ashkenazi Jews, the second volume of The Rabbi's Cat deals with the world of Sephardic Jews in 1920s Algeria. This is a place where Judaism, Christianity, and Islam meet and have to deal with each other as best they can.

The first volume of this comic by the French comic creator Joann Sfar deals with the cat of the rabbi Sfar of Algiers. The cat learned to talk by eating a parrot, but stopped talking when people stopped listening to him. The cat, who is nameless, is a wise but somewhat amoral creature who has little patience for the niceties of human society but an abiding love for his master the rabbi and mistress the rabbi's daughter, as well as the Jewish people as a whole: speaking about the rabbi's students, the cat waxes poetic: "Who would want to wage war against those creatures who only think about books?...I love you because you're vulnerable. I love you because there has to be someone who loves you."

The book is divided into two long, rambling stories of a sort (each is made up of several smaller stories that flow into one another as the narrative goes on). The first, "Heaven on Earth," has the cat follow around the rabbi's cousin, the mysterious mystic Malka of the lions, who travels the desert with a tame lion who he drives away from each town for money (a ploy that it becomes obvious that the villagers have become wise to, even though they still pay Malka for his "services"). In turn, they are followed by a snake, who the cat is initially afraid of and tries to scare away. But is soon becomes clear that the snake is an invited guest of Malka and his lion: he follows them because they know the various oases in the desert, and in return he keeps away intruders at night. He also has promised the lion to bite the beast once he becomes too old to follow Malka around anymore, allowing him to die before he has to watch Malka decline. The story is about that decline, of the end of the age of wonders that Malka (and to a lesser extent, the rabbi Sfar) belonged to, where Islam and Judaism thrived side by side. Now the world is a more ominous place, which the reader is given glimpses of when Malka attends a speech by the anti-semeti French mayor of a town they pass through, and when the rabbi throws out an interloper to his rabbinical class who urges the students to put down their books and take up arms to defend Judaism.

If the first part of the book was about decline, then the second part, titled "Africa's Jerusalem," is about the possibilities of the new world. It starts when the rabbi's son-in-law recieves a case full of books and documents from Russian Jews. But in addition to the books, the case contains an unconscious Russian whom everyone but the cat thinks is dead. But indeed, the Russian is not dead: he is a Jew, a painter, and a Communist who has become disillusioned with the Soviet government. So he stowed away in a case he thought was going to Addis Ababa (and is quite surprised when he ends up in Algiers), where he was hoping to look for the mythical Ethiopian city of Jerusalem, where the Falashas (Ethiopian Jews) live. Although they don't quite believe him, the rabbi, as well as the cat (who can understand the Russian, and be understood by the Russian), a rich former Russian noble who acts as translator, and the rabbi's cousin (a wandering Muslim sheikh) go off in search of it, because it's an adventure. On their way they encounter hostile Muslim nomads, racist Europeans, Africans completely different from anything they'd experienced before, the return of the ability to understand the cat, love for the painter in the form of an African barmaid, and a cameo by the famous comic book character Tintin. I especially loved the one page cameo by Tintin, who behaves exactly as he does in the infamous "Tintin in the Congo," except unlike that comic, the viewpoint of the story exposes the Belgian reporter as a racist moron who doesn't believe the rabbi or the sheikh can read or understand the concept of baths. It was immensely satisfying.

The love story between the painter and the waitress is very touching. Although no one (except maybe the cat) understands their relationship, still they find love and completion in one another. From the tender French lessons that the waitress gives the painter to their attempts to persuade the rabbi to marry them to the bittersweet moment they share when they finally make it to the African Jerusalem at the end of the story is just pitch perfect, demonstrating a heartwarming understanding of each other. I loved it, as I loved all of this story, and I wish/hope that Sfar will continue this, as well as his other series "Klezmer," which deals with Ashkenazi Jews.

In other news, I have recently installed skype on my computer, so if anyone else with skype wishes to contact me, my handle is davidlev13

Hope to have more to report soon