“A Siddur With Word Balloons”
April 23rd, 2008 by Menachem Wecker
My review of Howard Salmon’s illustrated prayer book is in The Jewish Press. Here’s the interview:
MW: What if anything do you think Orthodox folks can take away from your project?
HS: Well, the general structure of the Saturday morning service is the same, whether Orthodox or Reform (or any other variety of Judaism). When looking through the Artscroll catalog of books, there are many publications for children that utilize cartoons. The comic book siddur is my way of
sweetening the text with cartoons. If Matisyahu can reach out to Orthodox Jews with reggae music, then the Comic Book Siddur, hopefully, have a similar appeal to Jews, since both use the appeal of pop culture to introduce the torah to Jewish youth.
MW: How did you first conceive of the project? Do you actually use the Siddur at services? Why did you choose to do the Saturday morning prayers as opposed to others? (Are there other prayer books planned for later?)
HS: I never had a bar mitzvah as a child. Instead, at 44 years old, I had an “adult bar mitzvah” as part of a class at Temple Emanu-el in Tucson, Arizona. I was one of a class of seven. We divided our torah portion into seven pieces, and parceled out the various duties of the prayer service. As I was studying the prayers, I made myself a study guide in the form of a comic book. Basically, I drew superheroes in action poses in the margins of the prayers. I stapled it together as a chapbook, and showed it to the associate rabbi of Temple Emanu-el (Benjamin Sharff) who is actually a huge comic book fan. He loved it, and offered to write the intro and to edit it once I completed a serious copy. My fantasy for this book is for a kid to actually use this book in his bar mitzvah, but I realize that that is problematic. However, Rabbi Sharff has expressed concern about this (for obvious reasons), since since comics have not reached a level of holiness appropriate for the sanctuary. The best I can hope for now is that kids (or other interested people) can use the comic book siddur as a study aid.
Again, I chose the Saturday morning service because that was the service where I had my bar-mitzvah. I initially intended the book to me my own personal study aid, but then realized that there may be others out there who’d appreciate the work I’d created. To make a graphic novel version of the entire siddur is too huge a project for me. I just wanted to translate the material that I was studying for my bar mitzvah into comic book form; no more, no less.
As far as other prayer books goes, I’m not ready to consider that at the moment, but of course, it always remains a possibility!
MW: To what extent are you influenced by other Jewish comic book artists? Why do you think there have been so many?
HS: Other Jewish comic book artists have had a huge influence on me. I grew up wanting to draw comics for Marvel. As a kid, I studied the history of comics and realized that it’s largely a Jewish invention. Jack Kirby, Will Eisner, Harvey Kurtzman, and of course Art Spiegelman. Jerry Robinson (a longtime comic book artist/writer) wrote about the question of why there are so many Jews in comics, and his conclusion was that because there were a lot of Jews in New York, and those were the only art jobs that they could get, because comics didn’t have respect in the early days. They were view as trash, not as an art form. It took some visionaries, such as Will Eisner, William M. Gaines, and Stan Lee, (and so many more!) to change all of that.
MW: How do you reply to folks who say comic depictions of biblical characters in a Siddur is sacrilegious?
HS: To that I say … they’re not! I’ve done Jewish Art Historical research about this subject, and actually taught a class about this subject with a fellow Jewish artist. Just look at the mural art at the Synagogue at Dura Europos.
Many stories of the Bible were illustrated at this synagogue, when Judaism was still in its infancy. If that’s not proof that illustration of biblical subjects is indeed holy, then I don’t know what is. Besides, philosophically, art illustrating biblical scenes is a teaching tool, and it shouldn’t be confused with the “golden calf”, which was an idol. Also, I’ve discussed this issue with my rabbi (it was on my mind) and he did confirm that what I was doing with illustrations and the siddur was not sacreligious.
MW: You chose not to use translations of the Hebrew. Does that mean your audience is people who read the language?
HS: Actually, I DID use translations of the Hebrew: it’s in the comic book word balloons. My strategy was to look at the English translations of a variety of siddurs, from orthodox to reform, and to create my own translation (or rather, “interpretation”) that captured the spirit of the Hebrew, albeit, in snappy comicbook-speak. Translating the holy style of speech into the more wise-cracking “superhero and his sidekick” style actually involved a reconfiguring of the reader’s relationship with God. As Rabbi Sharff pointed out to me, a siddur is a theological statement, and having God and Man talk to each other as if they were Batman and Robin (also the creation of a Jew, Bob Kane, I should add) creates an relationship with God where God is “imminent”. When a kid reads the Hebrew prayers, he can get a quick summation of the meaning of the text by reading what’s in the word balloons.
MW: What is your background in illustration and in Judaism?
HS: My background in illustration: I’m a lifelong cartoonist and comic book artist, producing mainly my own comic books, with limited circulation. I’ve also contributed cartoons to several magazines and newspaper. I went to graduate school at the University of Arizona, where I got a Master’s degree in Fine Art (studio emphasis in painting and drawing) My background in Judaism is I grew up in a culturally but not religiously observant Jewish household. I sought spiritual meaning in pop culture (comic books, rock music) but found that to be spiritually hollow. When a friend from our local Temple asked me to join his Jewish rock band (”Avanim”) as a drummer, I became a t’shuvah, and became much more involved in Judaism and contributing to contemporary Jewish culture. My weekly routine involves regular torah study with a friend, and drumming for “Rock Shabbat” services at our Temple. The Comic Book Siddur is the culmination of two yearnings that I’ve long held: to create a spiritual graphic novel, and to contribute to Jewish culture.