lack of comics

Hello,

This is just a note to say that everything is basically okay and that I haven't abandoned the comics project. Hopefully next week I'll have something! It's just been very crazy. I got swine flu and broke a rib from coughing, fell in love, and was saddled with a gigantic leyning assignment, any of which can easily kill free time for awhile - what little I have outside yeshiva.

But stay tuned! I miss this project very much and will b'ezrat Hashem catch up soon.

6 Tishrei, 5770: Yom Tov Art

I was asked to bring fruit to a Rosh Hashanah lunch, but everyone else was an amazing chef, so I had to do something a little special. Here we have...

A pomello painted with the first day's haftarah (the story of Channa)

A pomello painted with an Akeida theme (here are some other pieces)

A guilded pomegranate. Since puns are traditional for Rosh Hashanah, may the rimono shel olam grant us a sweet new year.

Tzom kal to all my observing readers; g'mar chatima tovah.

Erev Erev Rosh Hashanah, 5769: R. Yishmael Omer

Sorry for lateness; I have the worst cold. This week I decided I wanted to remember better R. Yishmael's 13 rules for interpreting Torah (you may remember them from birchot hashachar), so I made a small picture out of them. You can see the results here. It was done with green, blue, and gold and silver metallic paints.

I started also another comic, but I don't think this will be practical to finish until after the Yamim Noraim, so stay tuned after Yom Kippur. If you want notification or simply to be on the coolest awesomest mailing list of all time, simply send a blank (or otherwise) email to: yonah.lavery (@) gmail (.) com.

Shanah tovah,
Yonah

19 Elul 5769: More R. Yochanan

Here is the new comic. Unfortunately, it's cut off at the bottom, but hopefully I'll get to scan it again later, maybe next week when if I'm lucky I'll also have another one finished. It's another one of R. Yochanan.

R. Yochanan really does merit two comics of him, since he lived in two eras: the time of the Bayit Sheini and the post-destruction era. This drawing is of the transition, when he escaped in a coffin out of Jerusalem during the siege (which is too nice a word for what happened). He is carrying the sayings of his teachers inside him, which are taken from Pirkei Avot.

On his right hand, from Hillel: "Be like the students of Aharon, loving peace and pursuing peace." (I think this showed Hillel learned well and compassionately from his teachers Avtalyion and Shemaiah, who first articulated this distinction between being sons of Aharon and learning from his example.)

On his left hand, from Shammai: "Make Torah habit; say little but do much."

On his left leg, from Shimon the Tzaddik: "The world stands on three things: Torah, service, and kindness."

On his right leg, from Shemaiah: "Love work, hate the rabbanut (!), and don't be friendly with authority."

On his left side, from Anshei Kneset HaGedolah (the men of the great assembly), "Be patient in administering justice," and below, from Yehoshua ben Prachyah, "Judge all people favourably."

On his right side, from Jose ben Yochanan ish Yerushalayim, "Let your house be wide open, and treat the poor as members of your family."

The blood on his ear, his hand, and you can't see because of the cutoff but it's dripping down also his right foot, is a reference to the kohen gadol, both the blood of the loss of the Temple and showing R Yochanan coming into a new position in the world, having to take leadership in an unexpected way.

Broken Links

Oops. Sorry, the new comic is here. Before I was rushed on an internet timer and put up the wrong url; sorry.

At the moment, I'm in Jerusalem, in my new place. I can't quite believe that it's real. The batim here really do look like tefillin batim... everything is so square, except for the streets, which are crazy and go up and down and never stay straight. For davening, I asked a flatmate which wall was east, and had to smack my head. It's not east anymore!

An encounter with some crazy boys made me feel sympathy with Rav Kahana, but so far nobody died because I got mad. There's another Yerushalmi Berachot anecdote I love where a rabbi comes up to Israel from Babylon, and goes to the butcher to buy meat. The butcher says it costs a certain amount of money, "plus a whipping." The rabbi says "How about double the money, and no whipping?" "WHIPPING!" Finally he submits, then goes back to the yeshiva, asking "is this normal?" They're all "We'll sort this out for you," and everybody goes to the butcher's. But just as they arrive, a coffin is coming out of the butcher's store! "Did you have to be that angry with him, that you killed him [with the force of the anger]?" they ask. "I swear I wasn't angry," he answers, "I thought that was just your custom here."

I wish I could find the citation and text for that, but had to leave my Yerushalmi in Canada. Anyway, the story rings very true, for many travellers to many countries perhaps. The guy who drove the sheirut from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem all but included a whipping in his price for sure.

aaaagh

In Germany, no time for proper update, new comic here. Expect Talmud Comics to be sporadic in the next couple of weeks... like, really sporadic.

Slight Site Redesign

It has been not-so-gently brought to my attention that the website kind of... sucks, in the design department, so I did something about that massive jumble of text in the middle. You can see the new, slightly cleaner layout here. Any recommendations are welcome, of course, although I'm the world's worst at html (in case you couldn't tell) and can't do much.

Pretty soon I hope to include links beside the comics to their corresponding blog posts - I guess that will only apply to the newer comics.

Thank you so much for being patient with me!