Meet the redneck who’s paranoid about antisemites.
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Eli Valley is finishing his first novel. His column, “Comics Rescued From a Burning Synagogue in Bialystok and Hidden in a Salt Mine Until After the War,” appears monthly in The Forward. His Web site is www.evcomics.com.
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Cute. Love the "Marc Rich" heart tattoo!
I don't know how you think of this stuff! You are a funny, funny man.
Bravo, Eli! It's hilarious!
The list of race car sponsors in the top left is the best part.
David is right. We shouldn't allow satire or self-criticism of our community. The risk that Zionist sites like Stormfront will stop loving and support us when we do is too great. If only the Forward and Eli Valley would stop challenging our community, everyone would love us.
Why can't you just publish puff pieces like the Federation papers? Also, have you heard about that "Dry Bones" comic? How about publishing that?
Dry Bones is great and Eli could learn a couple things from that strip. Things like color, taste, humor, good-spirited criticism, and expressing pride in being Jewish.
I continue to read Eli's comic hoping it will eventually get better and not just feed/express contempt within the Jewish community. With friends like this, who needs enemies? I'll take Abe Foxman and the work of the ADL, with all their faults, over comics like this any day.
Eli definitely has artistic talent and a good eye for things that need to be improved in Jewish life, but the love should be expressed along with the criticism.
Exactly, Rich. When Eli is funding the ADL, then we will happy to listen to his criticisms, and not a day sooner.
Eli, with all due respect, Foxman is out there on the front lines, fighting those who disagree with that segment of our community. If you disagree, maybe you should start your own Jewish communal defense organization. We can always use more of those...that's for sure.
"Exactly, Rich. When Eli is funding the ADL, then we will happy to listen to his criticisms, and not a day sooner...If you disagree, maybe you should start your own Jewish communal defense organization. We can always use more of those...that's for sure."
"Why can't you just publish puff pieces like the Federation papers? Also, have you heard about that "Dry Bones" comic? How about publishing that?"
What was that you said about self-criticism?
Actually, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency's comics, published in AIPAC's "Near East Report" are much funnier (unintentionally so.) I particularly like the puppeteers and camel-jockies.
http://irmep.org/ILA/cartoons/default.asp
Good ol' Abe Foxman, right on the frontlines, fighting anti-Semitism wherever he finds it, even in the comics! First he had Grandpa Boris z"l and Grandma Minka z"l killed, then he complains that the Auschwitz prisoners in a Superman story weren't identified explicitly as Jewish. Has the ADL attacked Will Eisner's _The Plot_ yet because it might give anti-Semites ideas? _Edge City_ should watch out too. Last month's Passover storyline did not explicitly state that the matza was made without the blood of Gentile children.
What good the ADL does is often overshadowed by this ridiculous posturing. It's not just that some of the ADL's issues indicate an odd sense of priorities, but some of the charges of anti-Semitism —generally made with Foxman's name prominently featured— are lunacy.
Keep up the good work, Eli!
You are a genius. We will never forget finding the original edition of the New Anti-Semitism, the ADL's attempt to conflate Nazism and the general Left, a book which has since spawned numerous sequels and unrelated cousins sharing the title or the idea. Norman Finkelstein had said in a speech that he wasn't scared of pogroms following Gibson's passion movie because (anti-Semitic heretic) America isn't medieval France, and they said the same thing about Jesus Christ Superstar. We could not believe him. Then we finally found the book, looked it up, and he was right. They also attacked Phillip Roth, arguably the greatest living American novelist and a major pillar in the temple of Jewish accomplishments in letters, because sposably Chmelniecki was going to recur thanks to Portnoy's panty thieving. Since then of course Foxman has gone on to do exactly what anti-Zionists everywhere hope ardently he would do, be a colossal public ass with the PR sense of a flaming zombie Nazi in an orphanage. At one point he was challenged about changing an ostensibly anti-racist forum into an organ for the Zionist state (because Israel doesn't have enough mechanisms of defense already) and he snarled back, "I don't answer to you, I answer to the donors." Now, this was at a meeting of ADL and BB members, obviously people who'd given money religiously, what does he mean donors? He meant extreme right wing mafioso billionaires like Leviev. Hopefully the Jewish community will not only wake up to how many friends it potentially has, it will realize that not all its direst enemies are outside the ghetto wall.
Tasteless, not funny. One stereotype is bad enough; but to combine two stereotypes, that aren't even funny, is terrible. Whether or not you think ADL is too vociferous, you would have to be a fool to think that the Jewish people would be safer with ADL. Abe is articulate and presents a coherent message. I wonder if not for Abe, who would have been the public voice condemning the anti-Semitic atmosphere that encapsulated Ilam Halimi's death? Eli Lake? There is an old Yiddish saying that I am sure has been in the Forward many times that roughly translates, "there are two types of people in this world: Jews and anti-Semites."
Eli looks a lot like Julius Striecher, the Nazi caricaturist
First, Streicher was not a caricaturist, he was a talentless hack publisher of dreck. Second, Eli looks nothing like him: Streicher had a square chin, Eli's is pointed; what little hair Streicher had was straight; Eli appears to be wearing a starter Jewfro; Streicher's nose was a perfect Aryan "inverted seven," Eli's looks like a "six."
Eli doesn't look like Streicher, but his Jews do ... Coincidence? I think not ...