The Jewish comic-book revolutionary behind Mad magazine

A new biography of Harvey Kurtzman pays tribute to the Jewish artist’s genius but struggles to escape the long shadow of his days at Mad magazine in the 1950s, much like Kurtzman himself.

By Akin Ajayi for Haaretz

“Harvey Kurtzman: The Man Who Created MAD and Revolutionized Humor in America,” by Bill Schelly, Fantagraphics Books, 644 pages, $34.99

Sometime in 1988, Harvey Kurtzman invited Art Spiegelman to guest-lecture at his cartooning class at New York’s School of Visual Arts. Spiegelman was already a leading light of the alternative comics movement (he’d win a Pulitzer Prize, in 1992, for “Maus”), and it was expected that he would talk about his career. But instead, Spiegelman turned the spotlight around, talking about the inspiration for his comic-book career – Kurtzman himself.

Spiegelman ran through Kurtzman’s early successes, but talked most about Kurtzman’s greatest contribution to comic books, as the creator of Mad magazine (he would later document the afternoon, comic strip-style, in a New Yorker tribute shortly after Kurtzman’s death in 1993). “Mad was an urban junk collage that said ‘Pay attention! The mass media are lying to you … including this comic book!’” Spiegelman told the class. “I think Harvey’s Mad was more important than pot and LSD in shaping the generation that protested the Vietnam War.”

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Shakespeare's Kitchen by Lore Segal

Review by Judith Felsenfeld for jewishbookcouncil.org

For those of us who have waited patiently for Lore Segal’s next offering, Shakespeare’s Kitchen is a wonderful reward; for readers new to her work, it will be a revelation. These thirteen closely inter-related stories, seven of which appeared previously in The New Yorker, are wise, subtle, trenchant, and full of surprises.

Although the narrative style is straightforward, even plain, the stories carry real heft, eg., “The Reverse Bug,” which begins with charming multi-ethnic humor, and builds to the horrors of the Holocaust. Reluctantly leaving her New York life to accept a faculty position at a Connecticut think tank, Ilka, protagonist of Segal’s early novel, Her First American, must reach out to form new friendships. Her warm acceptance by Leslie Shakespeare, Dean of the Institute, and his mercurial wife, Eliza, facilitates Ilka’s advancement into the stratified society of faculty, junior and senior, support staff, even an elusive Nobel Laureate.

By “Yom Kippur Card,” the culminating story, its author has weighed in on power, ambition, love, sex, motherhood, aging and death, among other grand themes. This stunning collection finds Lore Segal at the height of her impressive powers.

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People of the Book: Five Hundred Years of the Hebrew Book From the Beginning of Printing Until the Twentieth Century

By Akiva Aaronson, Feldheim Publishers; reviewed by Gil Student on OU.org

The Internet is only the latest, and probably not the last, of many information upheavals due to technology. An important change began over 500 years ago with the invention of the printing press. This new method for mass-producing books quickly altered the political and religious face of Europe. Jews, traditionally devoted to literacy and study, were early adopters of printing technology and suffered less upheaval than their Christian counterparts.

In a fascinating and richly illustrated new book, People of the Book: Five Hundreds Years of the Hebrew Book From the Beginning of Printing Until the Twentieth Century, Akiva Aaronson traces important Jewish developments along the path, from Rashi’s Torah commentary, the first dated Hebrew book (Italy, 1475), through the Survivors’ Talmud published in 1948.

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The Auschwitz Survivor Behind Haute Couture

By Ilana Sichel for Jewniverse

At the age of 14, Martin Greenfield was uprooted from an idyllic Czechoslovakian childhood and deported to Auschwitz, where the notorious Doctor Mengele separated him from his family. One of his first memories from the death camp was Mengele’s shiny black boots.

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