{"id":7130,"date":"2021-12-26T15:38:42","date_gmt":"2021-12-26T21:38:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.draugas.org\/news\/?p=7130"},"modified":"2021-12-29T20:42:39","modified_gmt":"2021-12-30T02:42:39","slug":"al-jaffee-reverse-immigrant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.draugas.org\/news\/al-jaffee-reverse-immigrant\/","title":{"rendered":"Al Jaffee \u2013 Reverse Immigrant"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Mary-Lou Weisman<\/strong>. <\/span>LITHUANIAN HERITAGE March \/ April 2021<\/p>\n

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The author and Al Jaffee in 2010. (personal archive)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

F<\/span>or more than half a century, writer and cartoonist Al Jaffee has been gleefully putting a premature end to the innocence of American youth in the pages of <\/span>MAD<\/i><\/span>, this country\u2019s first popular satiric magazine. Suddenly, parents were hypocrites, teachers were dummies, politicians were liars, life wasn\u2019t fair, and our culture was changed forever. <\/span>MAD <\/i><\/span>ceased publication in 2018 after 67 years, leaving millions of fans without MAD\u2019s freckle faced \u201cWhat me worry\u201d mascot, Alfred E. Neuman. Gone, too, were Al Jaffee\u2019s signature \u201cfold-ins,\u201d \u2013 a spoof on <\/span>Playboy <\/i><\/span>magazine\u2019s fold outs \u2013 a marvel of artistic engineering that no one has been able to replicate. Happily all of <\/span>MAD<\/i><\/span>\u2019s 550 issues can be found on line. <\/span><\/p>\n

On March 13th of 2021, Al celebrated his 100th birthday! I was asked by the editor of <\/span>Lithuanian Heritage <\/i><\/span>to write this article, which focuses on extracts from my book, <\/span>Al Jaffee\u2019s Mad Life<\/i><\/span>, published in 2010, (by !t Publishing, a division of HarperCollins, NY). The book describes a unique aspect of Al\u2019s life \u2013 his relationship to the Zarasai region of Lithuania. <\/span><\/p>\n

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Book by the author; cover illustration by Al Jaffee.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I met Al Jaffee and his wife, Joyce, in the early 1970s on Cape Cod, where, along with eight other families, we shared space in a repurposed 19th century inn on Provincetown Bay. A common deck and laundry room made friendships inevitable. One day while Al and I were walking on the flats at low tide, we came upon a veritable blanket of dead jellyfish. \u201cToo bad we don\u2019t have any peanut butter,\u201d Al quipped, thus sealing a friendship between two silly people that lasts until this day. Of course, I knew him as a writer and cartoonist for <\/span>MAD <\/i><\/span>magazine, and, as I got to know this shy man, he began to open up to me and tell me the story of his life as a \u201creverse immigrant.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

Born in Savannah to parents who emigrated from Lithuania, he was effectively kidnapped at the age of six, along with his three younger brothers, by his mother, Mildred, an Orthodox Jew, who couldn\u2019t tolerate modern American life and yearned to return to Zarasai, a shtetl near the Latvian border. By contrast, her husband, Morris, had become an instant, enthusiastic American and soon landed a lucrative job as manager of Blumenthal\u2019s Department store. Mildred told her husband, that she was taking their four sons back to visit her parents for a month or so, but in fact she had no intention of returning. <\/span><\/p>\n

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The happiest times in Al\u2019s Savannah life had been Sundays, when he and his brother Harry, would sprawl on the floor while his father read them the funnies. Morris had a unique artistic talent. He could draw exact copies all the comic characters of the day, like Maggie and Jiggs and the Katzenjammer Kids. Before they left, a tearful Al made his father promise to send him the funnies. Over the next few years, the funnies would serve as a fragile lifeline between Al and his brothers, his father, and his native land. (illustration by Al Jaffee in Weisman M-L, Al Jaffee\u2019s Mad Life, p. 23).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The fearsome journey, which took them from the 20th to the 19th century, consumed more than three weeks. They traveled by boat from New York to Hamburg and Klaipe\u0307da, then to Kaunas, and finally, 184 kilometers later, in a rickety bus by gravel road to Zarasai. At a time when Jews were fleeing Eastern Europe, Mildred Jaffee chose to return to Lithuania. <\/span><\/p>\n

Al was in no mood to appreciate the beauty of hilly Zarasai, a town of about 4,200 people, which is located between two lakes and covered with birch and pine forests. Nor was he prepared for infestations of lice that feasted lavishly on his body, or the menacing wolves, the outhouses, the monthly communal baths, and winters that lasted from October to April, when temperatures often dropped to minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit. Locals called Zarasai the \u201cSiberia of Lithuania.\u201d Today\u2019s tourists call it \u201cthe Switzerland of Lithuania.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

There was no formal ghetto in Zarasai. About one- third of the citizens were Jews, and the rest Poles, Germans, and Lithuanians, all of whom lived on separate streets. In 1928, when Al arrived, anti-Semitism in Lithuania was relatively benign compared to neighboring Poland. Nevertheless, Al was treated like a second-class citizen, much like the Negros in his native Savannah. <\/span><\/p>\n

Mildred\u2019s father, Chaim Gordon, a relatively wealthy and prominent member of the Jewish community, was horrified when Mildred showed up, unannounced, with Al and his brothers, Harry, Bernard and David in tow. Only a crazy person, he assumed, would return from the United States, the land of promise, to primitive Zarasai. Still, Al and his brothers found a measure of stability and kindness with their mother\u2019s relatives, especially when they recognized that Mildred was a neglectful mother who abandoned her children and frequently failed to feed them when she went on religious retreats. <\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cI was a free spirit on the boat. I don\u2019t even think Harry trailed around with me. I knew every part of that steamship. I went down to the engine room on my own. I went on deck. I sat on deck chairs next to people and chatted them up. I stuck my nose into everything.\u201d (illustration by Al Jaffee in Weisman M-L, Al Jaffee\u2019s Mad Life, p. 25).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Al and Harry, the two eldest, had inherited their father\u2019s artistic talent that would eventually help them make friends in Zarasai. Al was teased and bullied when he first arrived, but after he quickly learned to speak Yiddish, they relished his stories of life in America. <\/span><\/p>\n

Al\u2019s father was true to his promise. When the Sunday comics started to arrive and Al shared them with the other kids, the bullying stopped and they included him in their ragamuffin gang of Jewish kids. <\/span><\/p>\n

Al dazzled his new friends by drawing cartoon characters in the dirt with a stick. Paper was rare in Zarasai. <\/span><\/p>\n

Al had been a curious, freelance hell-raiser in Savannah. He lit fires so he and his friends could watch the fire trucks arrive and put them out. He dove from the roof of his house into a palm tree to see if he could fly. He brought that same questionable talent to Zarasai. <\/span><\/p>\n

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This is how the central square of Zarasai appeared to Al Jaffee as a young child. It was near nightfall by the time Mildred wrestled her ragged, exhausted, and bewildered brood off the bus, along with their battered baggage, and into the vast marketplace of Zarasai. (illustration by Al Jaffee in Weisman M-L, Al Jaffee\u2019s Mad Life, p. 28).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After a year in Zarasai, just when Al had adjusted to his new, primitive life, Morris Jaffee arrived to take his family home. He had been writing letters to his wife, pleading with her to come home. The lengthy two-way trip had cost him his job at Blumenfeld\u2019s and left him penniless. <\/span><\/p>\n

Mildred exacted a severe price for agreeing to leave. She insisted upon living in Far Rockaway, where Al imagines there must have been a lot of Orthodox synagogues; this, in spite of the fact that the only job Morris could find was in a cigar store in Charlotte, North Carolina. He commuted to his family on the weekends. Maybe it would have been different if he had returned to Savannah, but Al, bitterly disappointed, felt alienated from his father. Neglected once again by his mother, Al wandered the beaches, harvesting and smoking cigarette butts. Al was relieved when his mother, after a stay of about one year, saved up enough money to return to Zarasai. <\/span><\/p>\n

On their return trip to Lithuania in 1929, when Al was eight years old, their mother rented a small cottage on the estate of 21-year-old Karolka Mikutovistsch (Karolis Mikutavic\u030cius), a Polish-Catholic, and his three sisters. At a time when Al had given up all hope of ever seeing his father again, Karolka filled that emotional vacuum, serving as both father and big brother. Unlike most of the gentiles in Zarasai, Karolka harbored no anti-Semitic feelings. He took Al and Bernard spear fishing in the winters and fly-fishing in the summers. They relished a meal of non-kosher food with his family. Al, a master adapter, had become a thoroughly primitive shtetl boy. <\/span><\/p>\n

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Location of Zarasai in the northeast corner of Lithuania. (Wikimedia)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

With little parental guidance, Al, always hungry, learned to fend for himself. In the summertime he invented a fruit-stealing device, and tied reeds from the lake together so he and his pals could float in the lake. In wintertime, he fashioned sleds out of discarded lumber so that they could careen down the hills and onto the frozen lakes. Years later, his talent for invention would find its way into <\/span>MAD <\/i><\/span>Magazine as \u201cAl Jaffee\u2019s MAD Inventions.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

For reasons unknown to Al, in 1932 his mother displaced him and his brothers yet again to the predominantly Jewish Slobodka district in the capital city of Kaunas. Once again, she left Al and his brothers grieving for Karolka, the comfort of his grandfather\u2019s home, and his friends. <\/span><\/p>\n

By 1933, when Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, Morris Jaffee had been reduced to poverty by Mildred\u2019s constant requests for money. Anti-Semitism was on the rise throughout Eastern Europe. Fearing for the life of his family, Morris borrowed money from his American relatives and arrived in Kaunas, prepared to bring his family home. \u201cGo tell your mother that I\u2019m here and I\u2019m going to take everyone back to America.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

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Two years before, the boys had only dared to wade, but now they were ready to learn to swim. To that end, they invented water wings from bundles of spongy reeds. (illustration by Al Jaffee in Weisman M-L, Al Jaffee\u2019s Mad Life, p. 73).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Mildred refused to leave. She would part with the three older boys, but she insisted upon keeping six-year old David, the youngest and her favorite, the child who, as a babe in arms in Savannah, had never really known his native land. However, she promised to \u201cget her affairs in order\u201d and return with David to America in six months. <\/span><\/p>\n

Al\u2019s fear that returning to America might not be \u201ca particularly good turning point\u201d was realized in spades. Morris Jaffee now lived in New York and worked part time as a mail sorter in Grand Central Station. The family was split up. He could not afford to hold them together. Al was separated from his two brothers who, in turn, were separated and farmed out to different relatives. Al would stay with his father, now a broken man, who could only afford to rent a single bedroom in a series of eight different households. (Because of the Depression, homeowners granted two months free rent for a single bedroom, an inducement that kept Morris and Al constantly on the move.) To this day, Al suffers from terrible stomach aches when he has to change places. <\/span><\/p>\n

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At dinnertime the entire Gordon clan (Chaim Gordon was Al Jaffee\u2019s grandfather) gathered in the dining room around a long, polished wood table… A large object, which Al would later learn was a samovar, stood surrounded by glasses on its own table at the end of the room. Chaim Gordon, wearing a double-breasted dark blue jacked and white shirt, presided at the head of the table. Al\u2019s mother sat in a chair near her father, holding baby David in her arms. On a bench next to her the three other children sat in ascending age order: Bernard, Harry, and finally, Al. (illustration by Al Jaffee in Weisman M-L, Al Jaffee\u2019s Mad Life, p. 33)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

If Al first had difficulty adjusting to life in Zarasai, life for a country boy in noisy, crowded New York was at least as awful. He arrived on what was now a foreign shore, an unschooled Lithuanian boy, wearing cobbled boots, and speaking his native English with a foreign accent. He was twelve years old, but he was placed in the third grade and bullied anew. \u201cThe kids called me \u2018greenhorn.\u2019\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

Ever the adapter, once again Al made himself at home. He made friends by drawing cartoon characters, this time in chalk on sidewalks. Academically, he made up for lost time in Public School 6 and then at Herman Ridder grammar school, where his art teachers were so amazed by his artistic ability that they recommended him for admission to The High School of Music and Art. <\/span><\/p>\n

So, in 1935 Al, took a drawing test that won him a coveted place in Music and Art and changed his life forever. He found his worth. He found life-long friends. He found his career. It was there that he deepened friendships with two other art students \u2013 Will Elder and Harvey Kurtzman. It didn\u2019t take long for the threesome to recognize one another\u2019s comic talent. Even in high school, Kurtzman dreamed of someday starting a humorous magazine. Years later, after all three had gone their separate artistic ways \u2013 Al was drawing Patsy Walker comic books \u2013 Kurtzman became the editor of <\/span>MAD <\/i><\/span>magazine and hired his high school pals, Will Elder and Al Jaffee. From here on in, Al\u2019s life took a permanent turn for the better. Together they changed the face of cartooning and humor in America. Nevertheless, Al\u2019s years as a reverse immigrant, a man who never feels at home, made Al Jaffee the man he is today, a permanent alien who observes life in America from a distance through a unique comic lens. <\/span><\/p>\n

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One night, after they\u2019d gone fishing… Anna (Karolka\u2019s sister) noticed that Al was constantly leaning down and scratching and asked to have a look. \u201cI\u2019m wearing shorts… I got up from the dinner table. Both legs were covered with leeches. \u02bbDon\u2019t do anything,\u2019 Anna told me. \u02bbDon\u2019t pull, don\u2019t scratch.\u2019 She carefully slid a knife under the leeches and removed them.\u201d (illustration by Al Jaffee in Weisman M-L, Al Jaffee\u2019s Mad Life, p. 63)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By 1939, Morris Jaffee, worried that his wife, who had moved back to Zarasai, perhaps to settle her father\u2019s estate, would be murdered by the Nazis, along with David. He wrote to her, begging her to return with David to the states. She refused. \u201cGod will provide,\u201d she wrote back, prompting Morris to arrange for David\u2019s successful rescue through an American Jewish agency. <\/span><\/p>\n

By that time, Al had made enough money to buy a modest house and bring his father, Harry, Bernard and David together under one roof at last. <\/span><\/p>\n

Postscript: Many of the gentile citizens of Zarasai enthusiastically joined the Nazi effort to slaughter its Jews. Mildred did not survive, but Holocaust records show that one brave man defied the Nazis by hiding a Jewish family in his house. His name was Karolka Mikutovistsch (Karolis Mikutavic\u030cius).<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

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A monitor came by, collected all the drawings, and took them up front to the teacher, who took a few minutes to examine each picture and then announced, \u201cEverybody is excused except Abraham Jaffee and Wolf Eisenberg [Will Elder].\u201d Then the monitor came over and said he was going to take us to the principal\u2019s office… \u201cYou are two very lucky boys,\u201d the principal said. Mayor La Guardia is creating a brand-new music and art high school. Kids from all over the city are taking the test. You two have qualified to take the final test.\u201d (illustration by Al Jaffee in Weisman M-L, Al Jaffee\u2019s Mad Life, p. 123).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Mary-Lou Weisman. LITHUANIAN HERITAGE March \/ April 2021 For more than half a century, writer and cartoonist Al Jaffee has been gleefully putting a premature end to the innocence of American youth in the pages of MAD, this country\u2019s first popular satiric magazine. Suddenly, parents were hypocrites, teachers were dummies, politicians were liars, life …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":7129,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69,206,204,122],"tags":[247],"class_list":["post-7130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-art","category-books","category-culture","category-diaspora","tag-weisman-m-l"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.draugas.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.draugas.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.draugas.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.draugas.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.draugas.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7130"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.draugas.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7208,"href":"https:\/\/www.draugas.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7130\/revisions\/7208"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.draugas.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.draugas.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.draugas.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.draugas.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}