YHVH (Ya) wants you...to contribute to the Comic Torah Project

Fair warning: we’re going to get Biblical on you here…

The Comic Torah

The earliest sources for the Torah, the so-called “Book of J” narratives  are said to be over 3,000 years old. According to the “Documentary Hypothesis” theory, the final form of Torah was codified around 450 BCE.

Aaron Freeman and Sharon Rosenzweig (status: married to each other) only began to create The Comic Torah in 2006 and now they plan to publish their codified version as a graphic novel.

And you, Oh Ageless North Shore reader, can help keep “three thousand years of beautiful tradition, from Moses to Sandy Koufax” alive by pre-ordering The Comic Torah, the book.

Besides being the first in your shtetl to receive a signed copy of The Comic Torah, you can take part in an exciting new approach to funding the arts: Kickstarter.com, profiled recently in the New York Times. Ageless North Shore contributed – you can look it up. To learn more and to participate in this creative venture, click on the graphic below:

So nu…how did it begin?

Comic Life is an application that came loaded onto Aaron’s Mac back in 2006. With it, Aaron imported photographs into different templates and created comics. Aaron called his project 52 Parashot. Aaron created funny yet respectful Midrash on the Torah portion each week.  The comics included an ad for Aaron’s stand-up act in the last frame. Aaron’s stand-up is awesome. (Click here for more info)

Respectful? Too respectful for Sharon?

You could say that. Remember that Danish cartoon flap a few years back? And then the Iranians held a Holocaust cartoon contest which was countered by the Israeli Anti-Semitic cartoon contest. Sharon did what any nice Jewish girl from the North Shore would do: she entered the Israeli contest. (click here….for the mature and impossible-to-offend only please).

A partnership was forged….

Sharon Rosenzweig and Art Spiegelman, who put her cartoon in Harpers

But Sharon wasn’t crazy about the Comic Life graphics.”Maybe I could help,” she said.  ”I could draw some panels for you.” A few months of hybrid comics followed: part Comic Life and part Sharon’s cartoons. But the production of a weekly comic took on a rhythm of its own..

And on Shabbos…they study Torah.

They would gather up  translations of the Torah.  Among them…(Sharon’s fave) Everett Fox (known for capturing the sound of the Hebrew text including puns, alliterations, and other word play.)  Aaron likes Gunther Plaut, the standard translation for the Reform Movement that includes well-balanced commentary/history from other traditions, movements and cultures.

Reading a week in advance, they would try to choose what part of the weekly Parasha (Torah reading) would make a good comic. No easy task…thousands of pages of weekly text into a 2-page comic.

And yet….

After reviewing and discussing, they’d take their books to bed and “gei schluffen.” (It’s Yiddish. Just google it.)

Come Monday…it will be alright…

Eventually, Sharon said, “on Monday morning Aaron would write a script, usually with notes on what the images would be.  Then we would fight and draw and write some more and re-draw, and emerge bloody but happy on Tuesday with a pencil draft of the comic.  These were scanned into Photoshop, inked and colored on Wednesday and Thursday and sent out to our global mailing list in time for Shabbat.” (Shabbat, sundown Friday to sundown Saturday, is the Jewish Sabbath.)

The big question #1…how did they turn the Torah into a Romance between YHVH (the deity) and Moses (the man)?

When Ya met Mo

After the narrative of the binding of Isaac, YHVH appears to Moses in the burning bush. And Moses is smitten…Is it a coincidence that Moses is modeled after Aaron Freeman…a sweet, trusting, positive soul? Or that YHVH who resembles Sharon Rosenzweig, is female, jealous, hot tempered and GREEN?

We’re not giving away the ending.

For information about The Comic Torah, Ben Yehuda Press, and the Kickstarter program…Click here.