Customer Reviews

The Rabbi's Cat

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

The Rabbi's Cat is a wonderful book. I heard the author speak on NPR and got the book. The book is in the form of a comic strip, each box lovingly illustrated by the author. The pictures are wonderful, particularly of the cat. They are a joy to behold.

Even better are the stories, anecdotes taken from the lives of the Jews in North Africa in the thirties. The stories are both very sad and hysterically funny. The cat has a sardonic turn of phrase that had me in stitches. Through the difficult medium of comics, the author has managed to capture the atmosphere of the time and place. Much of the book is given to musings about life, philosophy, love, God and so on. If you like a good discussion, you'll enjoy this book.

Although the books can be enjoyed by non-Jews, I think if you don't know the basics of Judaism, you'll be missing the most vital part of the book. Of course, the book is so appropriate for the cat lover. The author clearly understands cats perfectly.

This book is great fun to read. The cat is a wonderful character, particularly when he is arguing theology and Talmud. I suspect if cats really could talk and argue theology, they'd act much like the one drawn in this book. In fact the book was inspired by the author's real cat (who doesn't speak, at least that I know of :-)) but apparently does understand how to keep his humans.

This book can be enjoyed on several levels - as a fable about a cat and his humans, as a series of theological and philosophical debates, or just as a fun story about a talking cat and his adventures with his master.

An important story element about midway through that the cat never figures out, but my wife did - it is an exchange, not a loss. This will make more sense after you've finished the book.

One does not have to be Jewish or a scholar to appreciate the story and humor, but we gave a copy to our Rabbi as a gift and he loved it too. A couple more gift copies are planned too. Is that a positive endorsement or what?

Parents of small children be warned - you might want to edit out the use of one bad word and some discussions of sexual topics.

What can I say? The cat is one of the most charming, insightful, and funny characters to appear since Philip Roth's more audacious characters. This book is both laugh-out-loud funny, sad, sardonic, and ultimately life-affirming. It is an extremely offbeat book - trying to describe it is almost impossible. You really have to see it to "get" it. Unfortunately, no preview pages appear on the site, because that would greatly help to convey the character of the book.

To give you an idea: in the first section, the cat eats a parrot and gains the power of speech. He explores all of the things one can do with that: taunt, lie, blaspheme, and bait. The rabbi wants to teach him Torah, but he wants to learn Kabalah. The issue is brought to "the rabbi's rabbi," where the cat informs him that:

"I want to convert to Judaism. He asks me why.

I tell him that if I am a good Jew, the rabbi will let me spend time with his daughter.

I explain to him that the rabbi's daughter is my mistress.

That I can't live without her, because she is my joy, and love is a beautiful thing.

He tells me that my motives for converting to Judaism are unsatisfactory, that my love of God isn't sincere.

I never said anything about love of God....

He says that thinking of God fills even the grayest days with sunlight. He says that the love of God should be almost carnal. He tells me that it is an intellectual love but you should always feel as though you were cradled in the arms of a master who is invincible, benevolent, and just.

I tell him that this is exactly what I feel for my mistress. ...I answer that he blasphemes, that my mistress is true.

He says that only God is true.

I say that God is a reassuring myth. I say that he doesn't have anyone to take care of him because he is old and his parents are dead.

I say that I have my mistress and I will never be alone because I will die before she does. He throws my master and me out."

Couple dialog like this with the wonderful drawings, the cat's flashing green naughty eyes, the gentle rabbi and his beloved daughter, and you have an amazingly odd, touching, and engaging book.

Be advised: this is not a children's book (although if you are liberal with your older children and don't mind them dealing with some adult themes, I'm sure a lot would love it). The themes are theology, faith, death, existential fear, love, religion versus secularity, jealousy, and even class differences in France. Don't be put off though; it's an easy, fun, and quick read. Sfar is immensely talented, and the sparse prose has been carefully thought out and apparently translates well. Don't miss this one!

This book works on many different levels. I feel that the main theme of this work is summed up in one panel, when the rabbi says, "Blessed are thou, who allows us to transgress."
There is an underlying theme of bitterness in this book; the rabbi is widowed; the cat wants to become a bar-mitzvah, Paris has changed the rabbi's family, and the wonderful singer can only find work as a clown.
The main story is that of a cat narrating the events in the lives of his owners, a rabbi and his daughter. When the cat eats a parrot, he gains the power of speech, only to lose it when he wants to break one of the ten commandments.
There is a lot of religious details the author has provided, but for some reason he left out one rabbinic tradition, that of a wife cutting her hair when she marries.
Another theme is the role ignorance of Kabbalah and Talmud play in religious circles.
In summary, this book is a wonderful tale, but not meant for kids, due to some of the translated language.

I stumbled upon this book while browsing in the world of graphic novels, where I rarely venture. They usually give me headaches, but this one revealed a quirky style and a refreshing lack of onomatopoeia in starbursts. It's so much easier to tell a good story when you're not constantly being interrupted by POW!! and ZOK!!! and the like.

As a cat owner, I confess that it was the title that grabbed my attention, but I'm guessing that the plurality of cat lovers will not like the way the cat is drawn: Sfar's style sometimes reminds me a bit of Ralph Steadman's, and the cat's proportions change according to his mood and the context of the scene. Sfar focuses on intriguing details--a character might be drawn very sketchily in one scene, but some small object in the background will be meticulously rendered. In the next scene, the same character will fill the frame and be drawn with equal attention. This style works out perfectly for as mutable a creature as a cat.

Format and style aside, the story is what really made me buy this book. The prose works just as it should with the illustrations, an aspect that I think some graphic novelists overwork, or ignore. As a fan of Issac Bashevis Singer, I was sucked in when the rabbi's initial response to his talking cat was "Will he be a Jew?" And, more importantly, "Will he be a good Jew?" (Not being Jewish, by the way, has not been an obstacle to enjoying the work of either author.)

The book is divided into three separate stories, and while the first was my favorite, I also enjoyed following the cat and his rabbi as their family circle expanded to include an exotic friend with a lion (who gets along amiably with the cat) and a down-on-his-luck singer who has been reduced to belting out bawdy numbers on Sabbat.

Like the very popular "Persepolis", this book has shown that graphic novels can be both funny and deep, and that they deserve to share shelves with the best non-graphic novels of our time.

I passed over The Rabbi's Cat repeatedly in the graphic novel section of my bookstore... the cover was a bit of a turn-off and the size is a bit cumbersome. I finally flipped through it at my library and checked it out. I'm beating myself up now for not reading this sooner! What makes this graphic novel really great is the way that Sfar is able to weave very subtle everyday elements of life into his stories. The characters' emotions, particularly the rabbi and the cat have such great range and believeablity... many Western comics artists should take note.

Indeed, its a welcome break from the white-boy 'slice of life' comics that are so trendy in comics now. The Rabbi even has a debate with his cat over Western-vs.Eastern thought (albiet regarding religion and philosophy). Its a much needed return to rich storytelling in comics.

Safr's beautifully illustrated tale of a traditional rabbi who loses his faith in the face of colonial assimilation and a secular cat who tells the tale is on the level of Will Eisner's Contract With God and Art Speigelman's Maus. American readers will certainly connect to the tale as an Algerian parallel to the intellectual journey of Mordecai Kaplan, the American Jewish thinker whose Judaism as a Civilization was penned at the same time of the setting of this fictional fable. Safr raises the ultimate post-Enlightenment question: What is the role of religion in the absence of a supernatual God who acts in history? He is the first writer, I believe, to have a street-smart house cat answer this question. Rabbi Daniel S. Brenner, Director, Center for Multifaith Education, Auburn Theological Seminary, NYC.

The review with all the details about the depth and levels of the story hits the mark so I won't repeat it. However, I will emphasize what was not commented on. The Author is a very talented artist. He takes risks on many pages and it works, resulting in a feast of creative colorful dynamic drawings to accompany the text. The story wanes a bit in the final pages but the trip is artistically very satisfying. I hope there is a book to follow. I really enjoyed the characters and how they delt with their world and their beliefs.

"The Rabbi's Cat" is a sometimes humorous, sometimes profound graphic novel about an unworldly rabbi, his daughter Zlabya and her cat in early 20th century Algeria, as told by the cat. The cat gains the ability to speak by swallowing the family parrot, an act that he, of course, immediately denies. The conversations between the cat, the rabbi, and the "rabbi's rabbi" are some of the funniest parts of the book, but along with such questions as whether the cat should be considered Jewish or whether his age (for bar mitzvah purposes) should be calculated in human or "cat" years, is some serious and wide-ranging philosophical and theological discussion. What is a Jew? What does it mean to be created "in God's image"? What is the difference between the cat's feeling for his mistress and the love of God? As a Reconstructionist I like the idea put forward by another reviewer of this being "the first Reconstructionist cat." And what other branch of Judaism would a cat choose?

Eventually the cat pronounces the sacred name of God and loses his ability to speak, and from this point the book concentrates more on the relationships between human beings, although still from the cat's perspective. He experiences the pangs of jealousy when a young rabbi from an assimilated French family comes to their town and falls in love with his young mistress . He and his master then travel with the young couple to Paris to meet the groom's family, and must adjust to a very different kind of Jewish life before they return home to Algeria. On their journey they encounter several delightful minor characters, from the rabbi's cousin Malkah of the Lions (and his pet lion) to a cabaret singer in Paris.

The Rabbi's Cat can be read on several different levels - as an entertaining "talking animal" story, an affectionate portrait of Sephardic Jewish culture, or a complicated story of human (and animal-human) relationships. Caution to parents: This book contains brief nudity and some mature language and themes.

Bad pun, I know, but perfectly apt for this wonderful book. "The Rabbi's Cat" is a graphic novel set in Algeria in the mid 1930s. A poor rabbi lives with his lovely daughter Zlabya and their precocious gray cat. In over 850 marvelously-varied panels, author Joann Sfar tells the story of the trio as they deal with the cosmic questions of life, love, God's existence and fickle human nature. The story shuttles between sun-baked traditional North Africa and rain-drenched, cosmopolitan Paris. Sfar's palette ranges from the reds, oranges and yellows of the rabbi's home country to the muted blues, greens and whites of the Moroccan night and of the Parisian day.

The book's characters are wonderful and complex. The old rabbi is kind, God-fearing and gentle, but fears being replaced by a more urban man who speaks French. His beautiful, young daughter, content to remain in her father's house, playing the piano and reading, also longs for love. The cat -- a cunning and shameless atheistic and opportunist -- gains speech, insists on being Bar Mitzvah and demands to learn the Kabala. He contends pointedly, if ignorantly, with the learned over theological questions -- all the while angling for a night on the prowl. There's also old and sinewy Malka of the Lions, striding manfully from the desert, toting an ancient rifle and accompanied by his faithful leonine companion. The book follows the characters through normal life events -- shopping, praying for the dead, washing dishes -- but touches on themes of death, hypocrisy, apostasy and man's relationship with a rather enigmatic and silent God. Using this humble cast, and in a medium not fully taken seriously by all, Sfar plumbs depths not normally plumbed by many serious works. Sfar's art is deceptively spare, but is always evocative and never dull. His message is one of optimism, delivered with humor and humanity.

If this book were a film, I would rate it PG-13 for a small amount of nudity and vulgarity, and for the adult themes it explores.