Do Israelis and Their Politicians Disagree on the 'Bi-National' Issue?
By Nathan Jeffay
So, it’s a year since the general election that resulted in the current Israeli government. Are Israelis happy with the outcome? How would they vote today?
If you cast your mind back a year, the now-ruling Likud didn’t actually “win” the election — a fact the whole world seems to have forgotten. The largest party was Kadima, which received 28 of the Knesset’s 120 mandates. Likud received 27, but given that, it was able to pull together a working coalition led the government. If new elections were held now, Likud could be confident of a clear win. According to a new Haaretz-Dialog poll, partly published here, Likud would now return to the Knesset with 35 mandates, while Kadima’s head-count would drop to 26.
Perhaps the most interesting result of the poll is one that isn’t featured in the article hyperlinked above. It concerns Israel’s future in the West Bank. The key word in discussions about the West Bank at the moment is “bi-national.” The belief across the center of Knesset is that Israel needs a peace deal that will take it out of the West Bank, otherwise the only option left will be a single bi-national state in which, as demography runs its course, Jews will be outnumbered (it was this consideration that drove the disengagement from Gaza). Defense Minister Ehud Barak forcefully made this point last week, as reported here. But apparently the Israeli public doesn’t share this fear. Only 28% of respondents answered yes to the following question: “May our continued presence in the territories lead to a bi-national state?” The fact that only just more than one in four Israelis even consider accepting the principle that is guiding the political discourse of the country is quite startling. Some 53% of respondents actually dismissed the possibility.
February 5, 2010, 4:05pm
Shemspeed Albums from Bands That Start with "D"
By Ezra Glinter
The Brooklyn-based music label Shemspeed attracted international attention recently with their “Israeli remix of the Keffiyeh” (more of a tempest in a teapot, really, than a full-blown controversy), but that shouldn’t distract anyone from what the Jewish music production company spends most of its time doing: producing music.
Shemspeed has put out no less than two new albums in the last week: “Lishmah”, an EP from Darshan, and “Dreams in Static” by Diwon and Dugans. Despite the proximity of their releases, the two albums are profoundly different. Both, however, are best savored in meditative moment.
Darshan - a collaborative effort between Shir Yaakov Feinstein-Feit and Eden “Eprhyme” Pearlstein - melds hip-hop with the minor melodies usually associated with Jewish music. For Pearlstein, “Lishmah” follows on the heels of his solo album, “WayWordWonderWill” which was released in September. As Forward columnist Jay Michaelson wrote in his review,
What Eprhyme offers, like Matisyahu and Y-Love and others before him, is a Jewishness that is part of a global polyglot of choose-your-own-adventure identities, musical and otherwise. This is a nontriumphalist, nondual Judaism that celebrates Jewish particularism precisely because of its place within a multicultural pluralism. “We’re all one but all different — that’s what makes us so strong,” as Eprhyme distills it.
Much the same could be said of “Lishmah”, although in this case Eprhymes hard-driving lyrics are tempered and sweetened by Shir Yaakov’s more melody-driven sensibilities.
Meanwhile, “Dreams in Static” occupies an otherworldly, post-rock, electro-instrumental universe. A project of Diwon (aka “founder, director and mastermind” of Shemspeed Erez Safar) and Texas guitarist Dugans, “Dreams in Static” will officially be launched at the Shemspeed Winterfest on February 10.
Listen to tracks from “Lishmah” here and “Dreams in Static” here.
February 4, 2010, 9:12pm
Hamas Takes Revenge on Jewby Doo, Chez Jon Stewart
By Dan Friedman
Showing, apparently, the audacity to hate, Hamas are still producing virulently antisemitic children’s cartoons. In the face of crass hypocritical vitriol that is geopolitically and socially destructive the Daily Show had no real option but to set Dr. Bagelman (erstwhile producer of Jewby Doo) on to introduce them.
The whole sequence is unbelievable but the cartoons are the least believable and the least funny. Watch the sequence here.
Hat tip Jack Miller.
February 4, 2010, 3:21pm
The Humiliations and Triumphs of Imre Kertész
By Benjamin Ivry
At 80, the Hungarian Jewish Nobel Prize winner Imre Kertész is battling Parkinson’s disease while laboring on two new autobiographical works.
Best known for his fiction-like “Detective Story”, “The Pathseeker”, and especially “Fatelessness”, Kertész pensively, with verbal virtuosity (he has translated many German-language authors, including Freud and Joseph Roth, into Hungarian), expresses his experiences as a teenage prisoner of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. A new fictional work, “Union Jack”, set amid the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary, is due from Vintage on January 19, and Actes Sud in France has just published a collection of his speeches and essays (Kertész calls them “approaches”), “Holocaust as Culture” (“L’Holocauste comme culture”) which adds essential insight into this complex, nuanced creative spirit.
Recounting trips to Austria and Israel, Kertész arrives at the axiom: “He who has been humiliated once will be humiliated always; he who is humiliated in his own land will also be humiliated abroad.” While finding solace in literature, which he terms “the sole meaning of life,” Kertész incarnates an alienated, existential stance, doubtless due in part to the ongoing stew of antisemitic discourse in Hungary. “Holocaust as Culture” asserts that the “Holocaust is a universal experience, and through the Holocaust, Judaism is today a renewedly universal experience.” Kertész greatly admires the documentary filmmaker Claude Lanzmann and the Austrian-born author Jean Améry, whose correspondence with Primo Levi (so far unavailable in English) he terms a key text. By contrast, Kertész finds the film “Schindler’s List” to be “kitsch as fat as a dinosaur,” insofar as Spielberg portrays mere survival as a form of triumph. Kertész insists that “no one survives” the concentration camps “since they are always with us.” He prefers the widely excoriated Roberto Benigni film “Life is Beautiful” for its irony and humor.
Finding himself moved and stirred by a 2002 trip to Israel to attend a Yad Vashem international conference “The Legacy of Holocaust Survivors: The Moral and Ethical Implications for Humanity”, Kertész showed himself to be a living, breathing, thinking contradiction of fascinating depth and range.
Watch the 2005 film adaptation of Kertész’s “Fatelessness” here, and see Kertész sitting on stage at the 92nd Street Y in 2004, listening intently while his friend, the Hungarian Jewish pianist András Schiff, plays Schubert, below:
February 4, 2010, 11:37am
Vampire Weekend Called Out for Being WASPy
By Mordechai Shinefield
When is a Jewish kid from the Upper West Side actually an Ivy League White Anglo-Saxon Protestant? Apparently when the Chicago Reader decides that they don’t like the band Vampire Weekend. Music critic Jessica Hopper called out the band, fronted by the very Jewish Ezra Koenig, last week in an article that accused the band of being a bunch of privileged white kids.
He bandies about the ethnic heritage of Vampire Weekend’s members (he’s Jewish, Rostam Batmanglij is Iranian), but ‘One of my bandmates is Iranian-American’ has got to be the Pitchfork-nation equivalent of ‘Some of my best friends are black.’
Music critic and sometime writer for Pitchfork, Nitsuh Abebe wrote a series of posts (here, here, and here) on his tumblr blog that found a wide audience in the blogosphere and were linked to by Koenig himself on his twitter page. In his first post, titled, “Jessica Hopper Should Be Sort of Ashamed of Herself, In My Opinion,” he writes that Hopper was being disingenuous and that, “what we are looking at here is a (so far as I know) white woman selectively misquoting/mischaracterizing a statement of two people’s identity so that she can cast it as some kind of bragging, or some kind of defensiveness which the clever white critic is here to debunk.”
The Chicago Reader, in response, changed some of Hopper’s article, including a new section that reads:
A mostly white American band dipping An American band without any black members that dips into traditionally black sounds from the Congo, South Africa, Jamaica, and the Caribbean isn’t something most people bother being offended about. [Editor’s note: This sentence has been changed to better reflect the author’s original intent, which was simply to point out that no one in Vampire Weekend shares a culture with the African and Caribbean musicians who have inspired the group.]
This week I wrote about Jewish artists and afropop and I argue that the relationship between Jewish artists and African music is a fertile trend going back to Paul Simon’s trip to South Africa in the 1980s and beyond.
From Russia, With No Love
By Gal Beckerman
Well, there go my plans of drinking vodka in St. Petersburg this month with Natan Sharansky and the rest of the Jewish Agency’s Board of Governors…The quasi-governmental body in charge of Jewish immigration to Israel announced yesterday that its plans to hold one of its board meetings in the canal-lined city (Peter the Great’s window to the West) has been canceled only three-weeks before it was to take place. The problem, according to Jewish Agency officials anonymously quoted in various news sources, is that the Russians suddenly balked at the idea of an international Jewish meeting. They said the Agency only has legal status as a local NGO.
But I suspected, and Anshel Pfeffer of Haaretz is the first to really confirm, that the real problem goes by the name of Leonid Nevzlin.
I profiled Nevzlin three months ago. He’s the former partner of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the head of Yukos Oil who is now sitting in jail for various financial crimes. The consensus seems to be, however, that his biggest transgression is having posed a political challenge to Vladimir Putin. While Khodorkovsky became a target of Putin’s attempt to reclaim governmental power after the tumultuous ‘90s, Nevzlin got out just in time. After he escaped the country in 2003 and emigrated to Israel he was charged for ordering contract killings of Yukos’ enemies (for which he was tried and found guilty in absentia in 2008). In Israel, Nevzlin has rebranded himself, becoming a prominent Israeli philanthropist through his foundation, NADAV, and its many charitable projects to promote with Nevzlin calls “Jewish peoplehood.”
February 4, 2010, 12:25am
And Dylan Saw That It Was Good
By Ezra Glinter
Children’s books written by celebrities are pretty conventional these days. So it’s strange that Bob Dylan – who’s gotten nothing if not weirder over the past few years – is publishing one. But in reality, Dylan’s latest children’s book was already written, back in 1979.
According a recent press release, “Man Gave Names to All the Animals”, a song from the album “Slow Train Coming”, is being illustrated by Jim Arnosky and published by Sterling Children’s Books (the same folks who brought you the book version of “Puff the Magic Dragon”).
“From the first time I heard it, the lyrics created pictures in my mind of a land of primeval beauty,” said Jim. “I thought this vision would make a dream of a book, and I asked for Bob Dylan’s permission to make this dream come true. Happily, he said yes.”
“Man Gave Names to All the Animals” is not the first Dylan song to inspire an illustrator. In 2008 Paul Rogers put drawings to the 1973 song “Forever Young”, evoking Dylan’s younger years in Greenwich Village.
In contrast, the biblically themed “Man Gave Names” comes out of Dylan’s late-seventies reinvention as a born again Christian, although it contains no explicit Christian references. It does, however, lend itself rather well to a children’s book: “He saw an animal that liked to growl / Big furry paws and he liked to howl / Great big furry back and furry hair / Ah, think I’ll call it a bear.”
February 2, 2010, 7:44pm
Robert Pinsky, Live!
By Jake Marmer
Rock-stars go on wild tours around the world and poets sit holed up in their dusty bookish apartments. Right? The former United States Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky is on the road to prove you wrong. On the road around the country that is — alongside Ben Allison’s jazz collective. You can see them perform together last summer here.
As he goes, Pinsky — who wrote an “electronic novel” called “Mindwheel” in 1984 — is working with Portable Heroes, to record the shows and compile a next generation e-book enhanced with video and sonic layers to supplement and link to the text.
Before long, Pinsky will perform for you on your iPad! But, in the meantime, if you missed him at Emory on Jan 31, you can catch him reading live, in the good old pre-virtual metaphysical reality of the New School on Feb 19 or with Stanley Sagov’s band at Regatta Bar in Boston on March 5.
The first piece on the video, “Ginza Samba” (full text here), addresses African-American and Jewish heritage, the history of the saxophone and Alexander Pushkin in one fell swoop.
February 2, 2010, 3:53pm
Harry Houdini Escapes from the Library of Congress
By Ezra Glinter
The great escape artist Harry Houdini may have been finally done in by a well-aimed punch to the gut, but his spirit endures. And not just because of the yearly séance, either.
Besides being the “Handcuff King and Jail Breaker”, Houdini was also a prolific author. Now, the entirety of The Harry Houdini Collection from the Library of Congress – some 31 texts or so – is available on Google Books.
Though remembered for his death-defying escapes rather than his literary output or his religious piety, Houdini (also known as Ehrich Weiss) was a Jewish immigrant from Budapest whose father, Mayer Samuel Weiss, served as the Rabbi of the Zion Reform Jewish Congregation in Appleton, Wisconsin.
Perhaps the spirit of Talmudic skepticism was transmitted to him, however, because Houdini was also a notorious debunker of paranormal phenomena. This fact is reflected by the Library of Congress Collection, which includes such tantalizing titles as “Confessions of a Medium” and “The Right Way To Do Wrong: An Exposé of Successful Criminals.”
Consider our curiosity piqued.
February 1, 2010, 9:10am
Animating Brodsky In a Room and a Half of His Own
By Ezra Glinter
When the Russian-born American poet Joseph Brodsky won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1987, he was asked whether he thought of himself as an American or a Russian writer. “I am Jewish — a Russian poet and an English essayist,” he replied. Born into a Jewish family in Leningrad in 1940, he was exiled in 1972 on charges of “parasitism” and moved to the United States, where he became a citizen in 1977.
Whether to his regret or relief, Brodsky never returned to the Soviet Union. In “A Room and a Half,” Russian animator and director Andrey Khrzhanovsky imagines what Brodsky’s return might have been like. As critic and novelist Sonya Chung describes it for The Millions:
It is no surprise that a central theme of Khrzhanovsky’s Brodsky story is return: an elder Brodsky — let’s say a fictional 57 — travels by ship to his native St. Petersburg. En route, he remembers, narrates, imagines. Animated cats, crows, and other winged figures (Khrzhanovsky is primarily known as a master animator) populate the screen, i.e. Brodsky’s memory and imagination. In one of the film’s most memorable visual moments, young Joseph, who has just witnessed the selling off of the family piano (likely more of a confiscation than a sale, the first ominous signs of Jewish removal from Leningrad), imagines all the musical instruments of the city staging a kind of inspired/conspired escape, floating high above the monumental structures of history and politics, and reuniting to form a heavenly orchestra in the sky.
The first full-length feature from the 69-year-old Khrzhanovsky, “A Room and a Half” is currently playing at Film Forum in New York.
Watch the (unfortunately unsubtitled) trailer below, as well as Khrzhanovsky’s first film, “There Lived a Man Called Koyzavin”:
January 29, 2010, 11:17am
Greg Wall's Kosher Brass
By Jake Marmer
Saxophone/clarinet player Greg Wall, described by Time Out NY as the “fiery, eclectic Jewish-jazz luminary,” has, more recently, been ordained as an Orthodox rabbi. Aside from playing in a number of well-known klezmer projects (Hasidic New Wave, Later Prophets, etc.) he has been appointed to lead the Sixth Street Community Synagogue. On most Monday nights, you can find him there, teaching a class on “kosher living”, which is followed by a performance of one of his bands. On Feb 1st and 8th, after the class, his New American Jazz Quartet will take the stage.
Watch Greg Wall, Frank London & The Pioneers Ensemble.
Watch Greg Wall and Rashanim at Stanton Street synagogue.
January 28, 2010, 5:22pm
When Lieberman Taught Palin About Rav Soloveitchik
By Gal Beckerman
Much of the juiciest material contained in “Game Change”, the new dishy chronicle of the 2008 election by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, has already made it’s way into the media. Elizabeth Edwards was prone to angry outbursts, Sarah Palin was an ignoramus, and Bill Clinton was … well, Bill Clinton, the lovable loudmouthed and inappropriate Bubba. For all the revelations though — perhaps with the exception of the surprisingly dysfunctional Edwards family — there was very little in the portraits that didn’t just confirm what most people already suspected about these characters.
As I was reading — I couldn’t help it! — I came across one more of these moments where the public persona is exactly what you would imagine behind the scenes. This scene did not get much publicity, but is worth transcribing in full. It involves Palin’s breakdown of sorts, in the days leading up to the vice presidential debate, and Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman, an Orthodox Jew. John McCain’s campaign manager, Steve Schmidt, had asked Lieberman to visit Palin and buck her up at a moment when her debate prep was going disastrously (For one thing, she kept calling her opponent, “Senator O’Biden” for some inexplicable reason):
The situation was wildly unconventional already: a Democratic senator being imported into a top-secret lockdown to assist a Republican vice-presidential candidate whose mental stability was in question, now Schmidt asked Lieberman to perform another unorthodox intervention.
“You’re both very religious,” Schmidt said. “Go in there and pray with her.”
January 28, 2010, 4:47pm
New Haimish Brooklyn Deli Imports Canadian Bagels
By Michael Kaminer
The news that Boerum Hill’s nouveau deli Mile End finally opened Monday warmed the hearts of Montreal expats — like me — across the tri-state area. Founded by a pair of 20-something Montreal transplants, Mile End will serve haimish old country food like smoked meat (house-cured here), karnatzel (thin Romanian sausage sticks) and Montreal-style sour pickles.
The place is named for a north downtown Montreal neighborhood where Eastern European Jewish immigrants settled in the first half of the 20th century. Now home to a diverse ethnic mix, Mile End has become the city’s trendiest quartier; The New York Times travel section chronicled its ascent last weekend.
At its Brooklyn namesake, almost everything will be made in-house, says proprietress Rae Cohen; her business partner and husband, former law-school student Noah Bernamoff, oversees the kitchen. Cohen says the fare at revered Montreal joints like Schwartz’s and Abie’s inspired the couple, who both attended McGill University as undergrads before moving to New York.
January 28, 2010, 4:10pm
Haaretz Defends the Netanyahus
By Nathan Jeffay
Want to turn your foes in to friends? Do it the Bibi way and try a P.R. disaster.
Since before the general election last February which resulted in him becoming Prime Minister, he’s been regarded as “Teflon Netanyahu”. That is to say, political and P.R. disasters don’t seem to scathe him. Now we’re seeing that they have the strange effect of winning him the sympathy and support of his foes.
A former maid is suing his wife, Sara, for treating her unacceptably and paying her below the national minimum wage. Since the suit was filed earlier this month the media has been strongly critical of Mrs. Netanyahu, claiming that she meddles in state affairs.
But with the country’s media mauling Mrs. Netanyahu, and by implication her husband, Haaretz’s Gidon Levy usually one of the Prime Minister’s strongest critics, leapt to the couple’s defense. In this article in which he argues that the public’s treatment of Netanyahu is “tainted by more than a hint of despicable male chauvinism.” He contrasts the treatment of Mrs. Netanyahu with the treatment of the husband of opposition leader Tzipi Livni. Despite being heavily involved in his wife’s political activities, Livni’s husband is accepted and respected. “What a man married to a female public figure can do a woman married to a male public figure can,” claims Levy.
January 28, 2010, 3:00pm
J.D. Salinger, Reclusive Author, Rabbi's Grandson, Is Dead at 91
By Gal Beckerman
J.D. Salinger, a grandson of a rabbi and an author whose fiction has held the deep affection of generations of readers, died January 27 at age 91. So extreme was the reclusion of the author, who wrote such books as “Catcher in the Rye” and “Franny and Zooey,” that there will be no funeral service, at the writer’s request. Salinger had not published a word since 1965.
The New York Times has an engaging obituary, which includes details about his Jewish roots and their parallel with his most famous fictional creation, the Glass family:
January 28, 2010, 8:08am
Stanford Hogs the Rohr Prize
By Dan Friedman
Two Stanford PhDs — Kenneth Moss and Sarah Abrevaya Stein — have shared the latest Sami Rohr Prize.
In a move the committee has characterized as “unprecedented” (i.e. they didn’t do it the one other time they awarded the non-fiction prize) the top prize has been shared and the second prize scrapped.
What goes unmentioned is that this is the first time even a share of the first prize has gone to a man in the four years of the Rohr Prize. Although Jenna Weissman Joselit wrote about Stein’s book in her “Wonders of America” column, Moss’s book (reviewed in next week’s Forward) is a more significant and impressive book.
It’s not really about geography or gender though. Unlike the finalists for the National Jewish Book Awards there’s not a clunker on the Rohr shortlist, and the real winner is the Jewish world of ideas.
January 26, 2010, 4:35pm
Koch vs. Cohen
By Ezra Glinter
Septuagenarian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen recently wrapped up a triumphant world tour (though he’ll be back on the road in March), including a much-praised show in Tel Aviv in September. But apparently not everyone is a fan.
In a recent review of “Leonard Cohen: Live at the Isle of Wight” for The Atlantic, former New York mayor and Forward advice columnist Ed Koch recalls going to see Cohen, whom he had never heard of before, play a sold-out show at Madison Square Garden:
“I did not particularly enjoy that concert and wondered if I would feel differently about Cohen and his talents if I didn’t have to pay such a hefty price to see him perform,” Koch writes.
So Koch went to see “Live at the Isle of Wight,” which documents Cohen’s performance at the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970, and which is currently playing in New York at Cinema Village. Unfortunately, Koch discovered that he liked the younger Cohen even less:
”The difference in concert and movie ticket price did not cause me to change my mind. I found Cohen to be far better in both voice and presentation in his Garden performance than he was in 1970, but I have concluded that he has a cult following, and I am not caught up in the spell.” As an admitted member of that cult I have to disagree with Koch’s grouchy review. But I do confess that Cohen’s stock wasn’t raised any this past weekend by Justin Timberlake’s “Hallelujah” cover for the “Hope for Haiti” telethon. While it’s hard to find fault with anything that raises money for Haiti, did Timberlake really have to pick that song? It’s already been covered a few too many times, and Timberlake’s version didn’t do it any favors. If you must watch for yourself, you can see it here.
For a more inspiring performance, however, check out Leonard Cohen, below, playing “Sing Another Song Boys” at the Isle of Wight.
January 26, 2010, 12:59pm
Tradition and Economics of a Dried Fruit Tu B’Shvat
By Nathan Jeffay
This Saturday is Tu B’Shvat, the so-called New Year for the Trees and everywhere you look in Israel people are trying to sell you dried fruit for the festival. There’s one obvious question. Why?
The shelves in every supermarket are brimming with scrumptious fresh fruit. Israel is famous for its oranges and the season is at its height. There are the numerous citrus varieties with which Jaffa has made its mark — the pomelo, the pomelit etc. And there are fruits that most of the Western world describes as “summer fruits” that, due to feats of farming, are in season here. The most popular is the strawberry, currently being shipped by the crate full across the world from Ben Gurion airport. So why on earth are Israelis going crazy buying dried fruit? It’s like going to the Caribbean and binging on tinned pineapple.
Ask Israelis why they eat it and you will invariably get the same answer — “tradition.” If you unpack this a little you find something fascinating. Dried fruit on Tu B’Shvat is a primarily Ashkenazi tradition, and one which is rather simple to explain. The festival may be the start of the Israeli spring, but it is deep winter in Europe, and historically there was little fresh fruit on the market, hence the dried fruit.
So here we have a most peculiar instance of modern Israelis celebrating a festival that marks the start of the spring and the rhythm of the agricultural cycle in this part of the world by ignoring spring produce and eating preserved fruit instead — because that’s what their ancestors did when they lived thousands of miles from Israel.
January 24, 2010, 10:48pm
Forward Favorites for the National Book Critics Awards
By Ezra Glinter
The National Book Critics Circle announced the finalists for its annual book awards on Saturday, which include Benjamin Moser’s “Why This World,” a biography of the Brazilian Jewish novelist Clarice Lispector.
Born Chaya Lispector in Chechelnik, Ukraine in 1920, Lispector was brought to Brazil as an infant. There she went on to write books such as “The Passion According to G.H.”, in which a woman achieves spiritual climax by eating the insides of a cockroach. In “Why This World,” Moser argues that Lispector’s life and work should be understood in the spirit and history of Jewish mysticism. Back in August, Forward contributor Yelena Akhtiorskaya reviewed Moser’s book, writing that:
“’Why This World’ by Benjamin Moser is the first English-language biography of Lispector, and as such it is worthy. Comprehensive, inspired, respectful of necessary silences — it does what Lispector set as a goal for her own writing: to leave unexplained what cannot be explained.”
Read the whole thing here.
Also up for an award, under the criticism category, is one-time Forward contributor Morris Dickstein’s “Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression.”
We’ll be rooting.
Too Gross for the 21st Century? Jewish American Cartoonist Milt Gross
By Benjamin Ivry
On February 7, at New York’s Museum of Jewish Heritage a new publication from New York University Press, “Is Diss A System? A Milt Gross Comic Reader” edited by Ari Y. Kelman, will be presented. Gross (born in 1895) of Russian Jewish ancestry, drew comic strips of wild slapstick energy, following in the violence-for-laughs tradition of “The Katzenjammer Kids.” A self-consciously low comedian, Gross drew racist images of black people and was not all that flattering about Jews either.
Gross’s defiantly insensitive gift for visual anarchy got him jobs in Hollywood writing and directing short films like “Izzy Able the Detective” (1921) and “Jitterbug Follies” (1939; see below). Gross was even reportedly hired by Charlie Chaplin to invent sight gags for the silent film “The Circus.”
Gross’s best book, “He Done Her Wrong” (1930), recently reprinted by Fantagraphics Books, consists entirely of images, sometimes startlingly vulgar ones.
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