Comix Friday: Talking Talmud Comics with Yonah Lavery

Several weeks ago I wrote about Talmud Comics, an amazing site that showcases the work of the very talented Yonah Lavery, a 23-year-old Canadian artist and Talmud scholar. Yonah creates comics mainly based on passages in the tractate Berachot, which range from when to say the Sh'ma in the evening to proper bathhouse etiquette to the tale of one sage's ghostly landlady.

I recently got a chance to talk with Yonah about Talmud Comics, before she leaves for Israel later this summer to study at the Conservative yeshiva in Jerusalem. (Psst: She's selling posters of her work to raise money for her studies. More info here!)

Yonah Lavery

Rachel: How did the idea for Talmud Comics come to you?

Yonah: When I started formally studying Talmud with a teacher, I felt there was a risk of letting all these stories and this information just fly through you. After a few weeks it gets dimmer and dimmer. I wanted a way to keep it with me. You end up spending so much time on a drawing that it’s a great help for your memory.

Rachel: Have you had any formal art training?

Yonah: No. My family does a lot of drawing, so it’s a fairly normal thing. [Yonah's sister is also a comic artist, focusing on autobiographical comics.]

Rachel: Why did you decide to start studying Talmud?

Yonah: Because it’s so awesome! (Laughs)

I didn’t have any [Jewish education growing up], and [Talmud] was something that was always sort of inaccessible to me, and maybe that was a reason why I wanted it more. Things like Hillel and Shamai I had read about when I was younger, but without an apparatus around them, they’re really baffling stories. So this was something that was floating around in my consciousness, and I wanted to make sense of it. And the stories are really compelling -- it’s just a whole world of thinking and imagining and creating. By studying it, you feel a little like you’re a part of it, and it’s a beautiful thing to be a part of.

Rachel: Do you focus on Berachot in your comics for a reason? Is it the one you just happen to be studying, or does it have particular meaning for you?

Yonah: It’s the one that I’ve studied most, and I also feel like it has a lot of material that’s more conducive to people being interested in it. If I were doing Bava Metzia, there would be, like, 10 comics about cow rental, and I think that would get a little sad!

I remember I went to this used bookstore, and they had a lot of these really old Talmud tractates there. I knew very little about the Talmud at that time, so I picked each one up and looked into it to see what sort of things they were talking about. Immediately Berachot jumped out -- there are so many passages about dreaming and about feeling a real intensity, which doesn’t have a chance to come through as much in the more legalistic tractates.

Rachel: What is the process of creating a page like?

Yonah: First, I look through the actual tractate to remind myself of whatever stories are there, good words, that kind of thing. Then the story or the legal concept has to be the right length, because if it’s much longer than a page I don’t normally do it, and if it doesn’t have enough content there then it’s not going to fill the page. I seem to be capable of only doing one length!

I generally start with a central image that I think is important, and then work around it. I use ink pens and black watercolor.

Rachel: Is there anyone from your life that you draw in the comics?

Yonah: Totally. Rabbah, for example, is one of my Talmud teachers. Rabbi Yochanan is basically drawn after my boyfriend. My sister is in [“The Holy One’s Promise to Women”] -- she’s the one in the headband, with the square glasses.

Rachel: Do you have any visual inspirations?

Yonah: There’s no particular place, but I think a lot of things in my neighborhood end up getting reflected in the comics. Especially people -- there are some faces that tend to crop up again and again.

I think the way that Jews generally look here, and the type of buildings, is very distinctive. Where I live is right by this marketplace which is very old and full of circus types, carnies, that hang out there -- I like that aesthetic very much, so I put it on the page.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Want more Talmud Comics? Part II of my interview with Yonah Lavery (including peoples' reactions to her work, the one story Yonah just can't illustrate and the future of Talmud Comics) will be in next week's Comix Friday!

~~~~~~~~~~~

Comix Friday is published in the Art Scene blog every Friday, and focuses on Jewish comic artists and Jewish-themed comix. If you know of anything I should be blogging about in Comix Friday, let me know!

Comments

Be the first to comment!

Leave a Comment

In order to post a comment, you must first log in.
Are you looking for user registration? Or have you forgotten your password?