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I found only three articles written in English about the Israeli cartoonist Shay Charka. An
article in the Forward talks about representations in Charkas art. Charka explains how
he would represent a left-wing Israeli, a right-wing Israeli and a Diaspora Jew. The categories themselves are interesting, that he chooses, in this instance, to divide World Jewry
into these categories, and not others, such as Ashkenazi/Sephardi or Religious/Secular.
Representatives of the left and right in his depiction are separated by a key feature. On
the right, the figure has a line under its feet, representing the land.
Charka went on to explain that for him, this is the key difference between left
and right in Israel. He can no more delete the lines indicating the land on
which he stands than he can delete the lines of his nose. Land is part of his
identity. It is part of who he is. The left-wing Israeli has no such attachment.1
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Charkas initial Diaspora Jew is Spiegalmans Maus. He later changes his mind and
decides that a more appropriate image would be a fiddler on the roof. The main audience
for Charkas work is Israeli, with only one of his books translated into English so far. His
art appears both in the weekly right-wing, pro-settler newspaper Makor Rishon,2 and in
his hard-backed comic books. Charkas blog, http://shaycharka.blogspot.co.il lists him
as the author of 18 books. Charka is a religious settler who lives in Zufim.
Evolution of Baba
The book opens with a two page spread that begins on the inside front cover. It is in
blue and black and easy to skip over as one rushes to the colorful body of the book.
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This spread is Charkas version of the familiar monkey, Neanderthal, modern man learns
to walk upright piece from the 1965 piece March of Progress. It features seven kinds of
Jews. The first and last are large, muscled, heroic. The ones in the middle are smaller
and weaker. The first figure is a long-haired Samson carrying a sword. Next is Baba,
with his Second-Temple period clothing. Next comes a medieval European Jew with
the cone-shaped pilleus cornutus. He is followed by a turbaned Jew from the Islamic
world. Next is an Eastern European Chasid with a shtreimel. He is followed by a pile
of still smouldering ashes. The last figure is an Israeli soldier with the Israeli made Uzi
submachine gun on a sling over his left shoulder. This serves to position both Baba and
the reader within Jewish mythic history. Baba exists in the position of a down-trodden
anti-hero. His country is already dominated by foreign influence and on the way to a
long dispersion. The reader is a child who can grow up to be the Israeli soldier. He
is once again free and strong enough to defend his land and people. The figures have
varying positions of the head and pupils. I divide these into straight, up or down. The
head indicates where the mans focus is in this life, while his eyes show the inner focus
that motivates his actions. Samson for instance, with his eyes up to heaven, but his head
held straight, serves eternal interests by mundane actions like killing animals and beating
people with their bones. The Israeli soldier similarly has his head straight to reality, but
his eyes are closed to spiritual reality, the reader of the comic, by learning about the
Biblical past, is exhorted to not have his spiritual eyes closed. Babas head is in fact
up to the sky, in his everyday life Baba was careful to hear the trumpet which warned
him to cease work before the Sabbath, he tithed on his crops, he made pilgrimages and
brought offerings to the Temple in Jerusalem, along with myriad other Commandments
which he knew how to observe just by living in that society. Babas eye is directed up
on the two-dimensional page, but it is not directed left and up, in the same direction as
his head, the same direction in which he is walking. Instead it is directed both up to
heaven and out at the reader. Baba challenges the reader, are your thoughts and actions
directed toward and by heaven? Cartoonist and cartoon theorist Will Eisner covers the
position of the head and body in his chapter Expressive Anatomy.4
page contains one more sentence, contained in a speech balloon in the third and final
panel. !Really, we came again to a meeting
place, but its all wet!
Panel layout
Cast your bread on a page roughly divided into vertical thirds. Panel 1 occupies the
top third and overlaps, partially obscuring Panel 2 in the bottom two-thirds. Panel 3
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overlaps Panel 2 and is placed in the bottom left, occupying about one-twelth of the page.
It seems to me that there is a hidden Panel 2b. It is circular and occupies most of the
space of the rectangular Panel .2 Another cutout within 2b is 2c, a circle placed to the
right of the center of the page. It includes visible blue gears and a dark black empty
section which occupies the absolute vertical and horizontal center of the page. The way
that Panels 1 and 3 cover Panel 2 relate to their position as the visible, apparent layer
of reality. Panel 2 is not any less real, but it is the hidden part of reality. This verse
from Ecclesiastes, and Charkas comic illustrating it are trying to tell us something about
reality which is usually hidden.
Time
The verse illustrated deals with time, after many days. What does the theory of comic
art tell us about the depiction of time? In a normal sequence of evenly spaced panels of
even length one can expect the same amount of time to have passed between panels. This
is the equivalence between time and space that McCloud discusses.6 If Panel 3 establishes
the normal size of a panel for the page, there might have been ten intermediate actions
between the bread being cast and its return. These however are unknown to Baba, they
take place behind his back.
Iconography
McCloud introduces the idea of icons in comics, visual ways to encapsulate an idea.7 The
clockwork mechanism here functions as an icon. It encodes the idea that the universe is
mechanistic. It also includes the idea that there was some watchmaker who designed it
and that the world is not the result of random processes. In Panel 1 Baba stands on the
yellow sand of the beach. The beach extends into the sea in convex curves, the blue of
the water meets it in convex curves. In Panel 2 our view zooms out to see that the land
and water are each clockwork gears and the interface of the waves and shore is the place
where the gears intermesh as they turn. In this way Baba can throw the bread into the
water, be moved away from it as the land he stands on and the water the bread floats in
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continue to tick around until, after an indeterminate amount of time, they circle back to
each other.
Cosmology
The clock work gears of land and sea occupy the foreground of 2b. 2b also includes the
sun and moon. A movable shutter can cut in front of the circular moon, changing it
through its phases of crescents and full circle. The sun is attached to the entire circle
that makes the midground of 2b, as it rotates it will be seen to rise and set over the
land and water. Through the cutout of 2c we see the background of 2b, it is a system of
gears and a spring. 2c I believe corresponds to the visible stars and planets, the moving
constellations of the Zodiac which are said to influence and predict the affairs of men.
Outside the large cirle of 2b is the rest of the rectangle of Panel .2 It includes more
clockworks, gears and pinons. These correspond to even more hidden layers of reality,
the realm of angels and forces and powers that are cannot be seen by the human eye.
Conclusion
I thought it was interesting to examine in detail this page from What if Baba were in the
Bible?. This page used the comic conventions of panel layout and iconography to deliver
its meditation on time and the mechanistic prognosis of the verse that the bread would
return. While articles on Islamic comics can make international headlines,8 articles in
English on Israeli comics, be they scholarly, popular or journalistic are rare and less well
known. This article adds to the scholarly discussion of Israeli comics and hopes to invite
others to do the same.
Notes
.1 Robbie Gringas, The Bottom Line, Forward, January 2010, 3, http://forward.com/
culture/124445/the-bottom-line/.
.2 Wikipedia, Makor Rishon Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, [Online; accessed 3August-2016], 2016, https : / / en . wikipedia . org / w / index . php ? title = Makor _ Rishon &
oldid=732076347.
.3 Shay Charka, What if Baba were in the Bible? (Meshek 33, Moshav Ben-Shemen, Israel:
Modan, 2005).
.4 Will Eisner, Comics and sequential art (Poorhouse Press, 2000), 100-121.
.5 Biblehub Commentaries, http://biblehub.com/commentaries/ecclesiastes/111.htm.
.6 Scott Mccloud, Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art (Harper Paperbacks, 1994), 94114.
.7 Ibid., 26.
.8 Arifa Akbar, The all-Islamic super-heroes: Muslim children love The 99 comics, but
hardliners loathe their creator - whose trial for heresy is looming, The Independent, March
2015, http : / / www . independent . co . uk / arts - entertainment / books / features / the all- islamic- super- heroes- muslim- children- love- the- 99- comics- but- hardlinersloathe-their-creator-10101891.html.
References
Akbar, Arifa. The all-Islamic super-heroes: Muslim children love The 99 comics, but
hardliners loathe their creator - whose trial for heresy is looming. The Independent,
March 2015. http : / / www . independent . co . uk / arts - entertainment / books /
features/the- all- islamic- super- heroes- muslim- children- love- the- 99comics-but-hardliners-loathe-their-creator-10101891.html.
Biblehub Commentaries. http://biblehub.com/commentaries/ecclesiastes/111.htm.
Cartooning for Peace. Cartoonists Catalog. Accessed August 3, 2016. doi:http://www.
cartooningforpeace.org/en/dessinateurs/shay-charka/.
Charka, Shay. Cast your bread upon the waters. In What if Baba were in the Bible?,
47. Meshek 33, Moshav Ben-Shemen, Israel: Modan, 2005.
. What if Baba were in the Bible? Meshek 33, Moshav Ben-Shemen, Israel: Modan,
2005.
Eisner, Will. Comics and sequential art. Poorhouse Press, 2000.
Gringas, Robbie. The Bottom Line. Forward, January 2010. http://forward.com/
culture/124445/the-bottom-line/.
Hermann, Tamar. The National-Religious Sector in Israel 2014. Technical report. The
Israel Democracy Institute, 2014. http://en.idi.org.il/media/3863902/MadadZ-English_WEB.pdf.
Israel, The Jewish Agency for. Makom. http://makomisrael.org/blog/album/shaycharka-blogspot/.
Matthew J. Smith, Randy Duncan. Critical Approaches to Comics: Theories and Methods.
Routledge, 2011.
Mccloud, Scott. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. Harper Paperbacks, 1994.
Oppenheimer, Aharon. Am Haaretz. Brill Archive, 1977.
Talmon, Shemaryahu. The Judaean Am HaAres in Historical Perspective. Fourth
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Revel/Kings/Talmon%20- %20Judean%20- Am%20Haaretz-%20in%20Historical%
20Perspective.PDF.
Wikipedia. Makor Rishon Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. [Online; accessed 3August-2016], 2016. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Makor_
Rishon&oldid=732076347.
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