If you haven’t heard of Len Wein, you still definitely know his work. The comics writer and editor died yesterday at the age of 69, after nearly fifty years in the industry. A member of the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame, Wein may not be a household name like Stan Lee, but he was hugely important just the same, and respected amongst his peers and comic fans alike.

Jews are predominantly associated with the Golden and Silver Age of comics (as in, the early days through 1970), but Wein is a reminder that they’re remained a relevant presence in the industry since.

Let’s go over just a few of his contributions to the world of comics.

• He created Swamp Thing, the horror comic with a brain, a heart, and multiple live-action adaptations.
• He resurrected the X-Men in 1975 after a hiatus of the iconic superhero mutant team. This included one of the first ever appearances of Wolverine, and the introduction of the hugely popular Storm, Colossus, and Nightcrawler.
• He edited Watchmen, arguably the most important graphic novel of all time.

But let’s take a moment to appreciate one of his more obscure moments— because it’s not every comics writer who decides to bring the Golem to the page.

Strange Tales was a Marvel Anthology series. In Issue #174, from 1974 (during Wein’s very brief gig as Marvel’s editor-in-chief), Wein wrote a story about a Jewish archeologist, Abraham Adamson, who brings young relatives on a desert archeological dig to find the Golem of Prague; Adamson makes it very explicit that the Golem’s purpose is to protect Jews from their enemies. Adamson succeeds in finding the legend, and when he is murdered (by uncomfortable Arab stereotypes, granted), the Golem returns to life and goes on a killing spree, saving Adamson’s family.

The story continued over several issues, and Wein also edited the issue in which Golem fights the Thing, which is amazing because the Thing is Jewish (though it wasn’t explicit at the time) and also looks quite like a Golem himself.

The Golem is not a hugely important comics character, nor does he only appear in this one franchise (a number of writers, Jewish and not, have put the clay creature on the page). But 1974 was a bit early for explicitly Jewish content in comics— this was before Magneto “came out” as Jewish, before Kitty Pryde, before Israeli superhero Sabra.

This story isn’t hugely important (nor is it the first time the Golem appeared in the pages of a comic), but it’s a sort of missing link in how Jewish comics creators expressed their heritage in their works. There had to have been a transitional phase, from needing your your Nazi-punching hero to look so All-American he could have been Aryan to having a girl ward off Dracula with a Magen David. Some of Wein’s famous creations, like Colossus and Swamp Thing, are arguably Golem-like, but here’s the Jewish version of the story in the flesh— er, clay. On the journey from subtext to text, we have this strange little story.

Len Wein was a nerdy Jewish kid who loves superhero comics in the 1950s, and eventually took on the mantle of creation himself. It’s the American Jewish chain of tradition.

Image of Wein via Wikimedia. Comic panels from Strange Tales #174.

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It’s no secret that “Over the Rainbow” is a Jewish-written song; its melody was by Harold Arlen, and its lyrics were by E.Y. “Yip” Harburg. But there’s another, lesser-known nugget of Jewish pop cultural history there.

Bea Wain died this month at the incredible age of 100. You may not have heard of her, but you should have. She was one of the last veterans of the Big Band Era of music, a recording artist and radio pioneer. She was also Jewish. And she was the original artist to record “Over the Rainbow.”

Jewcy is on a summer residency! To read this piece, and our others for July and August 2017, go to our big sister site, Tablet Magazine!

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You may have missed a fascinating obituary from last week: that of Sheila Michaels, the feminist and civil rights activist who is credited for propagating the use of the honorific “Ms.” Outside of this news-making accomplishment, her life was fascinating, from being expelled from college in part due to her outspoken anti-segregationist views, to working as a cabdriver, to becoming a restaurateur. The New York Times piece adds a lot of color and detail in a short amount of space to the life of an amazing woman. But there’s one glaring omission: Michaels was Jewish.

…

Jewcy is on a summer residency! To read this piece, and our others for July and August 2017, go to our big sister site, Tablet Magazine!

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Because 2016 continues in some ways to be a dumpster fire of a year, yesterday we lost singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen.

Famously, Cohen wrote constantly about Jewish themes in his work, from “Who By Fire” inspired by Unetaneh Tokef, and “Hallelujah” containing Biblical imagery pertaining to King David (such naches from the most over-covered song of all time).

Cohen, who was 82, had been speaking frankly lately about his own mortality, and he left us with a life and career fully culminated. In his final album, You Want it Darker, he even quotes the Kaddish. But this isn’t the first time we’ve heard traditional prayer from Cohen.

Cohen’s final performance in Israel was in 2009, a concert in Ramat Gan. Proceeds went to bereaved families on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and as the concert closed, Cohen addressed them, offering them comfort, and then a prayer.

The last name was no coincidence, of course, Cohen himself was a Kohen, and he stretched his hands out towards the audience in the traditional gesture and made the priestly blessing. It translates as:

The Lord bless you and protect you. The Lord deal kindly and graciously with you. The Lord bestow His favor upon you and grant you peace.

Like a benevolent folk rock zeyde, Cohen leaves us at a tough time for many of us, but with a reservoir of comfort that we really need. We have his astounding career and body of work, and you can receive your blessing of peace from him below:

Image by Takahiro Kyono via Flickr.

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2016 once proves itself to be a banner year, when we learned today of the passing of Gene Wilder. He was 83, but DANG is it sad.

Gene Wilder-One of the truly great talents of our time. He blessed every film we did with his magic & he blessed me with his friendship.

— Mel Brooks (@MelBrooks) August 29, 2016

God. It’s just. The saddest thing.

Well, what we have to remember him for is a lot of laughter. We could literally just sit here all day and throw Gene Wilder moments back and forth. But this is Jewcy, so let’s pick just one that is particularly Jewish.

Remember The Frisco Kid? It’s a wholly underwatched, underrated 1979 comedy-adventure flick where Wilder plays an immigrant rabbi trying to schlep across the wild west with a bank-robbing, drop-dead-gorgeous Harrison Ford as his companion.

Once again, picking one moment from this film to share is impossible. The movie is so unapologetically Jewish, from the rabbi’s insistence to not ride a horse on Shabbos (even with a posse on his tail), to his absolute devotion to the Torah scroll he’s meant to bring to San Francisco. So here, for good measure are links to a scene where he tries to explain Jewish divinity to Native Americans, and one where Harrison Ford teaches him, well, colorful American language.

But for our featured clip, we’d like to remind you that Wilder belongs on the list of Jewish actors you may have forgotten spoke Yiddish onscreen (remember Doris Roberts in Hester Street?). Wilder’s rabbi has become lost and destitute, when spotting a group of men with beards wearing black hats, he attempts to talk to them in what he assumes is their native language. They turn out to be Amish.

The clip is only online subtitled in Hebrew and Arabic, so we’ve included an English translation (admittedly mostly from the Hebrew), below:

Wilder [in Yiddish]: “Landsmen [Yiddish word for compatriots, brothers, of my people, etc.]! Landsmen! HELLO! Landsmen! Landsmen! Hello! Landsmen— God! God! Thank God that I found you! Something terrible and awful happened to me! I was on my way to San Francisco and horrible bastards robbed me! They almost killed me!”

Amish men [In Pennsylvania Dutch]: “What did he say?” “I can’t understand any of it.”

Wilder [Yiddish]: “What’s the matter? You don’t understand Yiddish?”

Amish Men [Penn. Dutch]: “Is he speaking German?” “No, it’s not German… Do you speak English?”

Amish Man [In English]: “Dost thou speak English?”

Wilder [In English, noticing Christian Bible]: “Dost… thou… speak… OY GEVALT!”

Still from The Frisco Kid via Google+.

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Brazilian director Héctor Eduardo Babenco died on Wednesday of a heart attack. Babenco, 70, was the first Latin American nominated for Best Director at the Oscars, for his film Kiss of the Spider Woman. (His other most famous films were probably Pixote and Ironweed.)

While Babenco was an international director based in Brazil, he was born and raised in Argentina. His mother, Janka Haberberg, was a Jewish immigrant from Poland. His father, Jaime, was a gaucho (cowboy) of Ukrainian origin (it seems unclear whether or not he was Jewish as well).

The New York Times completely failed to mention Babenco’s Jewishness in their obituary. What a surprise.

This isn’t to say that Babenco had a strong affinity with his identity. If he did, he didn’t speak publicly about it or include it in his work. His 1991 drama At Play in the Fields of the Lord was critical of Christianity, though being critical of systems of power was a theme in much of his work, from prisons to economic oppression. In his spot in the 2014 religious anthology film Words with Gods (Israeli director Amos Gitai did another segment), Babenco opted to explore Umbanda, a syncretic Brazilian tradition.

Babenco’s legacy continued in at least one other Jewish art form: Kiss of the Spider Woman was eventually adapted into a musical by powerhouse (Jewish) writing team John Kander and Fred Ebb.

Whether or not Babenco was influenced by his Jewish heritage isn’t an answerable question, but what we did have was a brilliant director, who was Jewish in origin, who through his work was always questioning, taking risks, facing injustice. Maybe it’s a coincidence, but it’s a resonant one at the least.

The entirety of Kiss of the Spider Woman (the 1985 film) is actually on YouTube, and you can watch it below:

Thanks to film archivist Harry Eskin for his valuable input for this piece.

Image Credit:Wikimedia

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Doris Roberts passed away yesterday, and most obituaries seem to be focussing on her most famous role in Everybody Loves Raymond, where she played, albeit brilliantly, a stereotype of an overbearing “ethnic” mother as an Italian-American.

Time, at least, published a piece about when she played an rad Jewish grandmother on Lizzie McGuire.

But no one seems remember her in another very Jewish role: as Mrs. Kavarsky in Hester Street.

Hester Street is an unusual, wonderful film, made in 1975, in black and white, and largely in Yiddish. It stars Carol Kane (you know, from The Princess Pride and The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt), as a Jewish greenhorn in the Lower East Side in 1896 trying to adjust to her secularized husband, and her new home. Roberts plays a no-nonsense neighbor who supports Kane by giving her an American makeover, which she does bilingually.

So farewell to Ms. Roberts, but we’ll always have her brilliant screen appearances, including Hester Street. You can watch the whole movie on YouTube, or skip to one of the scenes with Roberts below:

https://youtu.be/TF5Tg-PGsLc?t=48m

Image credit: YouTube

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The British actor and director Richard Attenborough died yesterday at the age of 90. To American audiences, he’s best known for having directed the acclaimed 1982 bio-pic Gandhi, and his star-turn as scientist and CEO John Hammond in Jurassic Park (i.e. the dude who reanimates the dino-DNA and gets them all into the mess to begin with). He got his showbiz start in the film unit of the British Royal Air Force during WWII, and was one of the most popular actors in Britain in the immediate post-war period.

Though Attenborough wasn’t Jewish, his family (which includes the legendary naturalist and journalist David Attenborough) has a touching and intimate Jewish connection: for seven years, they were the foster family to two Jewish sisters who fled Germany in the Kindertransport in 1939. In 2009, Attenborough told The Daily Mail about the arrival of Helga and Irene Bejach, and the profound impact they had on his family:

I will never forget when Helga and Irene first arrived at our home. They were two pale waifs with their pathetic little cases, aged ten and 12. They looked sad and ill. They were also nervous wrecks.

Their house in Germany had been smashed by Nazis with guns and their father taken away. After the girls had been with us for three weeks, my brothers David, John and I were called into the study by our parents.

… We realised, even though we boys were all quite young ourselves, how shocked and frightened the girls were. My parents always stood up and were counted wherever they saw an injustice being done. And the Kinderstransport was a great example of caring for human dignity, for racial tolerance and for compassion.

The three of us boys had no hesitation in taking Helga and Irene into our family. We really did see them as sisters, virtually from the time we were told they were going to live with us.

Initially, they were very reclusive, but they grew into attractive and confident young women. They helped shape our lives… We loved them and cherished them – and were so proud of them.

Read the full interview here.

(Photo: Lord Richard Attenborough attends the Galaxy British Book Awards held at the Grosvenor House Hotel on April 9, 2008 in London, England. By Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

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Al Feldstein, longtime editor of Mad Magazine, has died in Montana at the age of 88.

Feldstein took the reigns from Harvey Kurtzman in 1956, when Kurtzman demanded—and was refused—a controlling share in the irreverent and admired (but not yet stratospherically popular) magazine. Under Feldstein’s editorship, circulation grew to two million, and Mad became one of the most influential satirical publications in the Unites States. (Many of today’s best platforms for satire—from The Onion to Saturday Night Live—owe their existence and success, in part, to the influence of Mad.)

Feldstein had a close working relationship with publisher William Gaines, and together they nurtured the talents of America’s finest young cartoonists and humorists, who created beloved features such as “Spy vs. Spy,” “The Lighter Side of…” and “Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions.” He also cultivated the character of Alfred. E Neuman as the personification of Mad‘s spirit and chutzpah. Explains Bruce Weber in The New York Times:

In his second issue, Mr. Feldstein seized on a character who had appeared only marginally in the magazine — a freckled, gaptoothed, big-eared, glazed-looking young man — and put his image on the cover, identifying him as a write-in candidate for president campaigning under the slogan “What — me worry?”

At first he went by Mel Haney, Melvin Cowznofski and other names. But when the December 1956 issue, No. 30, identified him as Alfred E. Neuman, the name stuck. He became the magazine’s perennial cover boy, appearing in dozens of guises, including as a joker on a playing card, an ice-skating barrel jumper, a totem on a totem pole, a football player, a yogi, a construction worker, King Kong atop the Empire State Building, Rosemary’s baby, Uncle Sam, General Patton and Barbra Streisand.

Neuman became the symbol of Mad, his goofy countenance often intruding, Zelig-like, into scenes from the political landscape and from popular television shows and movies. He signaled the magazine’s editorial attitude, which fell somewhere between juvenile nose-thumbing at contemporary culture and sophisticated spoofing.

Feldstein was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1925. He demonstrated an aptitude for drawing from a young age, and attended the High School of Music and Art in Manhattan. After graduating, he took classes at the Art Students League, and during WWII he served stateside, painting murals and drawing comic strips for army newspapers. Eventually he found his way to EC Comics, the publisher of Mad. When Kurtzman left in 1956, Gaines hired Feldstein to replace him. He remained its editor until 1985, as competing publications and television satire grew in popularity, diminishing Mad‘s readership and influence.

After his retirement, Feldstein moved to Montana and pursued a career as a painter. In a 2000 commencement speech at Rocky Mountain College, he told students that the “party of real life” was about to begin. “If you’re not having fun at the party you’re at,” he counseled, “go find another party.” Right on.

He is survived by his third wife, Michelle Key, and numerous children and grandchildren.

Image: FELDSTEIN: The Mad Life and Fantastic Art of Al Feldstein! (IDW Publishing)

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Maria von Trapp, the last surviving sibling of the seven von Trapp children portrayed in Oscar-winning musical, The Sound of Music, has died at the age of 99. Maria—whose name was changed to Louisa in the film—was the third oldest child of Baron Georg von Trapp and his first wife, Agathe. Her stepmother, also named Maria, was a postulate nun hired as her personal tutor when she was ailing from scarlet fever (the same disease that killed Agathe).

The Trapp Family Choir, as they were originally known, became popular in Europe in the mid-1930s. They fled Austria following the anchluss in 1938 and performed their first concert in New York later that year, re-branded as the Trapp Family Singers. (Booking agent Frederick Christian Schang deemed their original name too stiff and conservative.) The family ultimately settled in Vermont, where they ran a music camp.

In 2008, Maria explained that her father was not the stern disciplinarian depicted in The Sound of Music:

“Von Trapp smiles as she recalls the memory of her and her six siblings clambering and playing in the villa in the leafy suburbs of Salzburg in Austria and spending nights in hammocks in the park surrounding the family home… ‘We were all pretty shocked at how they portrayed our father, he was so completely different. He always looked after us a lot, especially after our mother died.'”

Maria adopted a son, Kikuli Mwanukuzi, who she met whilst doing missionary work in Papua New Guinea. She is survived by Kikuli and three half-siblings.

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