Graphic Novel Review: The Rabbi's Cat

The Rabbi’s Cat. Joann Sfar. Pantheon Books. New York, 2005.

A miracle! The rabbi’s cat has eaten the parrot and acquired the power of speech! It’s a blessing, but also a curse. The cat is a liar and a gossip, and the rabbi fears he’ll corrupt Zlabya, his beautiful young daughter. The solution, as the cat sees it anyway, is for the rabbi to instruct him in the Law so he may make his Bar Mitzvah. So they go to consult the rabbi’s rabbi, and…well…Talmudic debate and hilarity ensue.

Set in pre-WWII Algeria, where Arab, Jewish and French cultures coexist, Joann Sfar’s graphic novel, The Rabbi’s Cat, is a collection of three books originally published in French. The protagonist is a lean feline with a strong narrative voice and surprising emotional complexity. Speech is a mixed blessing for the cat, too. His dreams used to be simple, full of chasing small animals. But speech has brought with it an awareness of death and the fear of losing those he loves: he now dreams that Zlabya dies, and the rabbi rejects religion. The cat, an atheist, must pretend to believe just to keep the rabbi going.

In Part 2, "Malka of the Lions," the rabbi’s cat loses the power of speech, but he doesn’t lose his narrative voice. And he retains his ability to speak to other animals, like the lion companion of the rabbi’s dashing cousin Malka. Malka is a lion tamer from the desert, with flowing hair and piercing blue eyes. He’s a marvelous character, but his story is only a subplot. Malka’s visit just happens to coincide with the appearance of a young upstart rabbi from Paris who, the rabbi fears, has come to replace him. To complicate matters, Zlabya falls in love with the new rabbi. Neither her father nor the cat approve.

"Exodus" takes the family on a trip to Paris to visit Zlabya’s new in-laws and places the rabbi in a completely different world: the synagogue they visit keeps the prayer books locked up, and Jews there pray differently. And Zlabya’s father-in-law doesn’t attend synagogue at all. He’s a secular Jew. It’s all too much for the rabbi, who has a falling out with his daughter and wanders off in the rain with his cat. In the pages that follow, the rabbi questions God, the cat befriends a little Parisian dog, and they all end up spending the night with Rebibo, the rabbi’s nephew who has fallen in love with a Catholic girl and become a street singer in Paris, performing comic Arab songs.

Sfar’s characters are full of contradictions. In other words, they’re real people. And this is especially true of the cat. While never losing his essential "catness" he develops an empathy for emotional vulnerability that says a lot about what it takes to be fully human.

The drawings in these volumes, despite being somewhat restricted by the unrelenting serial block format, compliment the stories beautifully. The backgrounds are full of colorful patterns, and figures in movement are often fluid and whimsical. A little Matisse, a little Chagall. But the real treat is the writing, which is always witty and imaginative.

Early on I was disturbed by the ambiguity of the setting in time, but as I read on it led me to a deeper reading. Soon it won’t matter how assimilated these Jews are, whether they keep kosher or marry their Catholic girlfriends. They’ll all be in it together. The shadow of history that we bring to the text flutters at the corner of these happy panels and makes them bitter-sweet.

(Thanks to Joann Sfar for permission to use images from The Rabbi's Cat.)