Brooklyn writer and artist team up to breathe new life into story of the Maccabees with graphic novel.
It’s a captivating tale of court intrigue, sectarian strife, and holy war. Not only that, but it contains within it spiritual and ethical lessons that have helped sustain the Jewish people through the dark winter of millennia in exile. Yet for all its excitement and depth, the history of Chanukah receives perhaps the most superficial treatment of all the Jewish holidays.
Families and congregations don’t typically gather around the table to read Megillas Antiochus the way we do that of Esther, or the Haggadah. Instead, we tell a watered-down, G-rated version of the story that’s more appropriate for our children as they enjoy their latkes and sufganiyot. Part of the reason for this, perhaps, comes from Chazal, who deliberately chose to emphasize the miracle of the light so that Judaism would not become a faith rooted in militancy and belligerence – and perhaps also because even the Hasmonean Dynasty, the descendants of the heroic Maccabees, eventually lost their way. Yet still, for eight days of each year we thank the Almighty for the victory he wrought, delivering “the strong into the hands of the weak, the many into the hands of few, the impure into the hands of the pure…” So obviously, there’s more to this holiday than supernaturally long-lasting olive oil.
The true, largely unspoken story of the Maccabees, which has at its heart a conflict between the forces of assimilation versus those Jews who refused to bow before any but G-d, has an obvious relevance to the present generation. But how to convey that story in way that’s accessible to those who stand to benefit from it the most? Enter Daniel Perez and Mark Strauss. Perez is a ba’al teshuvah and New York transplant whose previous writing credits include serving as managing editor of the Jewish Voice, as well as freelance reporter and op-ed contributor to several Jewish weeklies (including this one), and English-language Israeli outlets like Arutz Sheva and Breaking Israel News. Strauss is a native Brooklynite and a graduate of Manhattan’s illustrious School of Visual Arts. How did they meet?
“Actually, it was our rabbi who made the shidduch,” Perez jokes. “I had this script – Maccabæus began as a screenplay – that people kept telling me would make an incredible graphic novel. So I go to Mordechai Schiffman, the assistant rabbi of Kingsway Jewish Center, just to cover my bases, really. I didn’t expect anything, but I asked him: ‘I don’t suppose you know any talented artists who know how to draw comics, do you?’ And he says, ‘Well, actually…’ And that’s how Mark and I met.”
The story of Maccabaeus, goes back several years before that. Perez had long entertained the idea of a Maccabee motion picture, a sort of “300” with yarmulkes (“300” being another comic book-turned-blockbuster that depicts a fantastical interpretation of the Battle of Thermopylae between the Persians and the Greeks). Of course, in Perez’s story, the Greeks are the villains. He had never pursued the idea seriously for the simple fact that he was not, nor had he ever aspired to be, a screenwriter. Then in 2011, Mel Gibson announced his intention to create a Judah Maccabee biopic, and everything changed.
“I was covering celebrity news for the JV when I first heard about it,” Perez explains. “It was more than I could take. The thought of Hollywood’s most famous anti-Semite being the one to put one of our people’s greatest stories of faith and courage and triumph to film? Give it to Steven Spielberg. Let Darren Aronofsky do it! But this? This was obscene. And that’s when I started putting pen to paper.”