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May. 21st, 2014 09:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsSo after an initial delighted start, I have now read The Rabbi's Cat 1 and 2 and I love them about as much as I love anything. THE CAT IS THE BEST WORST JERK CAT EVER.
I don't know what I love best, like, there is so much greatness! The time an elderly Jewish lion hunter gets up in the middle of the rally and punches an anti-Semitic politician in the face! The time a Polish painter accidentally ships himself to Algeria! The time THEY ACTUALLY RUN INTO TINTIN AND JOANN SFAR IS THE MEANEST, I LOVE IT
No, but okay, I think what I actually love best about The Rabbi's Cat, aside of course from the cat (I LOVE THE CAT SO MUCH) is that it so extraordinarily rejects the idea of the single story. This is a book about a Jewish community, a very specific Algerian Sephardic Jewish community, and when they meet secular French Jews there is culture clash beyond measure, and when they open a packing crate and find a Polish Communist Jew the gap is worlds wide, and there's no way to communicate (except via talking cat), because why would they know Yiddish? Why would he know Ladino? "Try talking with him in Hebrew!" "YOU CAN'T SAY ANYTHING USEFUL IN HEBREW." Because you couldn't, then.
It is time to embark once more on my regularly scheduled mourning for the fact that only the first volume of Sfar's Klezmer has been published in English.
And while I am on the topic of specific Jewish stories -- surprise! I need to rec a fic. Surprise two: it's a Captain America fic? about Bucky?? "But Becca," you may say, "you have never shown any evidence of caring about Bucky AT ALL." That's right, I basically don't. AND YET.newredshoes wrote In the World to Come, a story about Bucky Barnes the Jewish kid from Brooklyn, and in fact it turns out that I do in fact care about that quite a bit. Surprise? SURPRISE.
I don't know what I love best, like, there is so much greatness! The time an elderly Jewish lion hunter gets up in the middle of the rally and punches an anti-Semitic politician in the face! The time a Polish painter accidentally ships himself to Algeria! The time THEY ACTUALLY RUN INTO TINTIN AND JOANN SFAR IS THE MEANEST, I LOVE IT
No, but okay, I think what I actually love best about The Rabbi's Cat, aside of course from the cat (I LOVE THE CAT SO MUCH) is that it so extraordinarily rejects the idea of the single story. This is a book about a Jewish community, a very specific Algerian Sephardic Jewish community, and when they meet secular French Jews there is culture clash beyond measure, and when they open a packing crate and find a Polish Communist Jew the gap is worlds wide, and there's no way to communicate (except via talking cat), because why would they know Yiddish? Why would he know Ladino? "Try talking with him in Hebrew!" "YOU CAN'T SAY ANYTHING USEFUL IN HEBREW." Because you couldn't, then.
It is time to embark once more on my regularly scheduled mourning for the fact that only the first volume of Sfar's Klezmer has been published in English.
And while I am on the topic of specific Jewish stories -- surprise! I need to rec a fic. Surprise two: it's a Captain America fic? about Bucky?? "But Becca," you may say, "you have never shown any evidence of caring about Bucky AT ALL." That's right, I basically don't. AND YET.
newredshoes wrote In the World to Come, a story about Bucky Barnes the Jewish kid from Brooklyn, and in fact it turns out that I do in fact care about that quite a bit. Surprise? SURPRISE.
