Liana Finck is adapt­ing old Yid­dish press self-help columns into a book. This week, she’s let­ting us peek behind the cur­tain at her source mate­r­i­al. On Mon­day, she looked at the first two pages of her com­ic. Today, she takes a look at the sec­ond sto­ry. She will be blog­ging here for Jew­ish Book Coun­cil and MyJew­ish­Learn­ing all week.

This is the text from the sec­ond sto­ry (trans­la­tion by the excel­lent Jor­dan Kutzik):

Hon­or­able Mr. Forvertz Edi­tor,

Allow me a lit­tle space in your dis­tin­guished news­pa­per to tell your esteemed read­ers about what tran­spired at my house in the month before my wed­ding. As you prob­a­bly know the bride whom God has blessed with many good friends receives var­i­ous gifts for her wed­ding. I too have many friends as well as many acquain­tances from the old coun­try. A week before my wed­ding they all gath­ered at my mother’s. They brought a whole wag­on full of wed­ding gifts to my room.

Among my coun­try­men, how­ev­er, there was also a man who was con­sid­ered to be some­what of a crank.” (I didn’t con­sid­er him as such, just my coun­try­men.) When he saw the presents that they had brought, the spir­it took him and he began to scream. Fools!” What exact­ly have you all brought here? Four muslins, ten lamps, three sets of bed­dings for a couple…Come, it would be bet­ter if we all came into this room here and had a meet­ing to decide what every indi­vid­ual should bring based on what the cou­ple needs to have, and what not to bring if they don’t need it.” But as my clever coun­try­man is of course a crank,” nobody paid much atten­tion to his pro­pos­al.

There­fore I turn to you Mr. Edi­tor. Tell me who’s right, the crank” with his pro­pos­al to give me one coor­di­nat­ed set of wed­ding gifts or the rest of my fel­low coun­try­men, who’ve brought me four sets of beddings?

Nasye Frug

And here is a page from my ver­sion of the sto­ry. This is the one I was least faith­ful to, and the first one I made.



Liana Finck­’s Bin­tel Brief com­ic is being made with help from the Six Points Fel­low­ship for emerg­ing Jew­ish artists, a part­ner­ship between Avo­da Arts, JDub Records, and the Foun­da­tion for Jew­ish Cul­ture. The com­ic is being seri­al­ized in The For­ward News­aper. 

Liana Finck is the author of Pass­ing for Human and Excuse Me and a reg­u­lar con­trib­u­tor to The New York­er. She is a recip­i­ent of a Ful­bright Fel­low­ship, a New York Foun­da­tion for the Arts Fel­low­ship, and a Six Points Fel­low­ship for Emerg­ing Jew­ish Artists. She has had artist res­i­den­cies with Mac­Dow­ell, Yad­do, the Low­er Man­hat­tan Cul­tur­al Coun­cil, Head­lands Cen­ter for the Arts, and Willa­pa Bay.