Bill Kerwin's Reviews > The Rabbi's Cat

A comic book narrative brings a special delight when the story’s teller’s mood and the graphic artist’s method perfectly combine—a condition perhaps most easily achieved when the teller and the artist are one. So it is with The Rabbi’s Cat, the creation of writer and illustrator Joann Sfar.

Sfar is a Frenchman, born in Nice, the son of an Sephardic Jewish father from Algeria and an Ashkenazi Jewish mother with a family from Ukraine. The setting of The Rabbi’s Cat is an Algerian city in the 1930’s, when Jews and Arabs (sort of) got along. The customs and dress here are Sephardic, but I think I detect more than a touch of Ashkenazi humor in the dialogue (“Western thought,” say the eponymous Rabbi, “works by thesis, antithesis, synthesis, while Judaism goes thesis, antithesis, antithesis, antithesis . . . ) But then again, who I am to judge? I know nothing of Sephardic humor.

I do, however, know a good-looking comic when I see one, and the lush interiors and bright dresses of the women are beautiful, and the Rabbi’s daughter Zlabya, and the Rabbi, and the Rabbi’s cat are—each in their own way—very cute.

The plot is set into motion by a Garden-of-Eden sort of crime: the Rabbi’s cat eats the Rabbi’s parrot, and by doing so he gains the gift of speech (and first uses his gift to lie: he denies that he ate the parrot). The Rabbi realizes that he has a Talmudic dilemma on his hands. Is a cat who speaks the same as a human? Can a speaking cat be considered a Jew? And, if so, should a Jewish cat be bar mitzvahed? Neither the cat nor the rabbi are sure about all this. Much theological speculation ensues.

The Rabbi’s Cat consists of three originally separate comic adventures: 1) The Bar Mitvah (plot outlined above), 2) Malka of the Lions (the Rabbi’s fierce cousin Malka—and his lion--come to visit, the rabbi takes a French exam to gain government status, and a cute young rabbi comes to town) 3) Exodus (Zlabya and the young rabbi are wed, and they go on a honeymoon--with the Rabbi and the cat--to visit the young man’s family in Paris).

Altogether, this is a sweet and charming book. The cat—like all cats—can often be a pain, but he does love his mistress Zlabya!