The ten stories making up most of the 123 pages of Steve Sheinkin‘s “The Adventures of Rabbi Harvey: A Graphic Novel of Jewish Wisdom And Wit in the Wild West” are great for several reasons: the stories are funny, the stories teach you real wisdom via unreal, Talmud-based humor, the characters are humans (i.e. mixture of positive and negative characteristics.) As with any graphic novels– and this was my second only, the first being Maus– the visuals are just as important as the text. These seemed were done in simple woodcuts style, helping to recreate the feeling of the era, the 1870′s wild west. Besides blacks for the lines only three, light brown, colors were used in coloring the pages. One color for the background, another for the text bubbles and a third for the occasional foreground objects. To get a sense of the design visit the opening scene of the book’s website: rabbiharvey.com
The ten stories are:
- Meet Rabbi Harvey – where he helps a poor candlemaker to get some money against the evil merchant
- Rabbi Harvey: bearded chicken – where he convinces a reclusive boy to get out of the table with participation/observation
- The juice princess – where he explains the balance between beauty and smartness
- Rabbi Harvey: human scale – where he uses their own weapon to trick fraudsters
- There’s a new rabbi in town – where we learn how he arrived to town to outlaw ruthless outlaws
- One hungry rabbi – where he manages to get a Sabbath dinner invitation
- Forgive me, rabbi – where he teaches that only the insulted can forgive the insultee
- You’re a brave man, Harvey – where he scores challah as a young boy
- Stump the rabbi – where he gives advice at the popular five cent event, “stump the rabbi”
- Bad Bubbe – where het gets wine for a wineseller
These one-liners cannot give back of course the twisted and distinctly melancholic humor of the book and Rabbi Harvey. I recommend it and looking forward getting my hands on the recently published sequel.