REVIEW
The Rabbi's Cat
PUBLISHED BY PANTHEON 2005

The tale of a talking cat (who can't always talk when it wants to) who belongs to a widowed Rabbi and his daughter Zlabya in 1930s Algeria. Joann Sfar's artwork is "scritchy" but presents a living world where Judaism is the context, and the love, ambition, and misunderstandings of the characters create adventure and comedy. Well-written, like a novel in tone, the story itself completely transcends the expectations I brought to the book, becoming compelling in it's own right as a piece of fiction.

The cat narrates a great deal of the story, and isn't to be entirely trusted as it is quite capable of deceit. But for the most part the cat is quite transparent as a character, and the other parts of the story are carried by (often) funny dialogue. The Rabbi, worried about his position as the "official" Rabbi in the local community, is threatened when a handsome young newcomer arrives. The Rabbi's efforts to deal with the situation (especially when his daughter, who is pursued romantically by several of the Rabbi's local students, falls in love with the newcomer) comes to a threshold of personal disaster when he realizes the young fellow, who is also a trained Rabbi from France, must have been sent to replace him. It is the cat who investigates this thoroughly, along with the Rabbi's desert "wildman" cousin who arrives with a pet lion.

Though comedic in a light-handed way, there is human tragedy and malicious deeds mentioned, but they exist in a background removed from the silliness and the humanity of the main characters. How the daughter and the young fellow marry, the Rabbi's adventures in Paris, and of course the all-too human curiosity and wisdom of the cat altogether make this a mature tale. The sense of Judaism presented is entirely of the reformed variety, and there is a a bit of humor brought out about the competing traditions of the Sephardic and the Ashkenazi Jewish groups.

Though it's not mentioned, for me the tragic underpinning of this sunny story about the foibles of human beings is that the early 1930s world of Jewish and Arabic co-existence depicted no longer exists, but was annihilated in Algeria via Arab Nationalism and the Vichy-French collaboration with the Nazis. In the two-dozen towns where once lived enough Jews to make up 2% of the total Algerian population in 1931 there is approximately only 100 Jews left in the capitol city of Algiers.

A set of "Preview" pages are available at the Random House web site here. Read about the history of the Jews of Algiers at answer.com.

Buy the book at amazon.com