2023-10-04
A welcome introduction to the work of an artist and children's book illustrator well known in her native Israel.
The daughter of a rabbi (“When I was a kid, the expression ‘the Rabbi’s daughter’ made me feel uneasy and like I didn’t belong”), Sherman-Friedman grew up in a walled settlement imbued with conservative values. In an early scene, the author depicts her family taking part in a vociferous protest against Ariel Sharon’s order that the Gaza Strip be evacuated, anathema to the right wing that would take power with the Netanyahu government a decade later. Sherman-Friedman took a lesson in the power of prayer from her mother: Accidentally left alone at home, “I prayed with all my heart for someone to come and save me, and hug me tight,” only to receive a reassuring call seconds later from her mother, who promises to come home immediately. “Even now, when I hear my mother’s voice, I never feel alone,” she writes. In panels with a plain-spun style somewhat akin to the realms of Roz Chast and Marjane Satrapi, Sherman-Friedman recounts that her approaches to the supreme being were less successful, leading her to atheism: “You don’t reply,” she addresses God, “and perhaps You don’t even hear, and You’re surprised that I don’t, either.…Do you know who I am? Do I know? No, and why’s that? Because I suddenly realized that You don’t have an answer, that there isn’t an answer at all.” Sherman-Friedman’s book, originally published in French in 2021, is provocative, but it makes no overarching universal claims: This is her life, she makes clear, with her loves, her disappointments, her worries, her sorrows. Modest but self-assertive, the author touches on large issues and small ones with equal attentiveness, clearly unafraid of the consequences of speaking openly.
A charged memoir of political and religious transformation that’s just right for young readers questioning such things.
