Broken Frontier

The Rabbi's Cat.  Written and Drawn by Joann Sfar.  New York: Pantheon Books, 2005.  Translated by Alexis Siegel and Anjali Singh. 

In The Rabbi's Cat, Joann Sfar explores a host of fascinating questions about Jewish life and human relationships in poignant, funny, and powerful ways.  Set in 1930s Algeria, the pages are full of theological debate, historical observation, family dynamics, strong friendships, and colonial snobbery.  But above all, The Rabbi's Cat is a wise and informed look at what family means to a cat.

There is a long tradition of literary cats, from the Cheshire Cat and the Cowardly Lion, to Krazy Kat and Mehitabel.  The latest in this honorable lineage is Majrum, the Algerian rabbi's cat.  Majrum is different than his brothers and sisters in literary history, though.  Majrum has a family who loves him.  He has Abraham, the rabbi, who defies his own rabbi's order to drown Majrum. "The rabbi tells his rabbi that he won't drown me," the cat narrates, "because he loves me and I don't like water."  And he has Zlabya, the rabbi's beautiful daughter who cries when she is separated from Majrum.  Since he is a member of the family, the stories Majrum tells are the stories of his family.  With deft pacing, beautiful art, and unerring sensitivity, Sfar creates a profound picture of the way cats experience the humans who love them.

In the first panel on page 6, Majrum tells the reader, "I can't talk, but I know how to listen."  He has stepped onto the paper Zlabya is reading.  In the next panel, he reports, "When my mistress pets me, I listen to her for hours."  In this panel, he has snuggled up to her arm.  While she scratches him behind the ears, he stretches out his front feet and kneads her sleeves.  "I give her deep looks," he tells us in the next panel, "to tell her that I understand her."  In this panel, we get a look at Zlabya's beautiful face from the cat's point of view.  We can imagine the deep look he is giving her.  In the next panel, he tells us, "Sometimes I close my eyes to show that with her I feel safe."  And in universal cat body language, Majrum's head is lifted, his claws knead the air, and his back leg is raised to give Zlabya's fingernails better access to his belly. 

As far as Majrum is concerned, his time spent with Zlabya is the very essence of life, and no further meaning is needed.  But the parrot irritates him, and one day he eats it.  To his utter surprise, the result of eating the parrot is that he can talk!  And the first thing he does with the power of speech is lie to the rabbi.  So the rabbi bans Majrum from spending his days with Zlabya.  The cat now has one goal, and that is to be reunited with his mistress.  He figures that if he can be proved a good Jew, he can spend his days with Zlabya.  So he asks for a bar mitzvah.  The rabbi takes the cat to his rabbi, who refuses Majrum's bar mitzvah.  On page 18, as Majrum argues with his master's rabbi, he explains how he feels about his mistress.  "I say that God is a reassuring myth.  [I tell the rabbi] that he doesn't have anyone to take care of him because he is old and his parents are dead.   I say that I have my mistress and I will never be alone because I will die before she does."

The loyal love that this cat feels for his master, the rabbi, and his mistress, the rabbi's daughter, intertwines with this newfound power of speech to produce some surprising experiences.  Majrum dreams, but since he has learned to speak, he has a poignant nightmare that Zlabya dies and he is not allowed near her.  He has deep and satisfying conversations with the rabbi.  And when the rabbi is required to prove himself acceptable to the French rabbis, the cat resolves to help him. 

Majrum accompanies the rabbi to an exam designed to prove that the rabbi knows the French language, but the cat is barred from entering the building.  The cat watches instead from the window, and it seems to him that the rabbi is failing the test.  So the cat invokes the holy name of God.  He reminds himself of the commandment, "Thou shalt not invoke the Lord's name in vain."  But the cat protests, "It's not in vain."  He resolves to "perform an act of sacrilegious magic."  The intensity of his resolve is reflected in the panel on page 62, which is entirely black except for two huge green eyes with a piercing, imploring stare.  "We need a miracle," he says.  "I don’t care if it's forbidden, I invoke the name of God."  And the cat begins his magical chanting, "Adonai, Adonai, Adonai," and so he goes until he says, "Adonai, Adonai, Meow."  The power of speech leaves him in the middle of his sacrilegious act. 

In the course of the novel, family dynamics are upset by a marriage.  The changes in his household, and a trip to Paris, cause the rabbi to revisit and reshape his faith, finding something deeper and more principled in his acceptance of the compromises demanded by modern life.  The atheistic cat makes the same adjustments as his master.  In the end, they seem to be the same as they always were.  The rabbi teaches, the cat is silent.  But the complexities of religion and morality have been reduced to one reliable simplicity, and that is family. 

The contentment is palpable, and the prayers begin.