A comic strip that takes a serious look at the Orthodox community
An unmarried woman – an “older single” by the standards of the Orthodox Jewish community, where most women are married by their early twenties – was discussing her situation the other day in the office of Dr. Meir Wikler, a psychotherapist and family counselor who works in Brooklyn’s heavily Orthodox Borough Park neighborhood.
To illustrate the difficulty that a single woman her age had getting a date with an eligible Orthodox man, the woman mentioned “the hoops” that another single woman whose name she mentioned, Rochi Kichel, also had to jump through in her effort to meet men.
Dr. Wikler knew Rochi Kichel’s name, and her dating situation. He acknowledged the similarities between his client’s problems and Rochi Kichel’s.
Just one problem. Rochi Kichel does not exist. She is a member of a fictitious Orthodox family. The Kichels.
“The Kichels” is a comic strip that began as a three-month experiment, and will mark its tenth anniversary next year. Centered around the day-to-day exploits of a purportedly typical haredi (aka “ultra-Orthodox”) family (the Kichel mishpacha) and the members’ extended circle of friends (and rabbis, neighbors, camp counselors, etc.), it appears weekly on the back page of Mishpacha, a popular magazine that caters to rigidly-Orthodox-but-not-chasidic readers.
The Kichels is the creation of writer Bracha Stein (it’s a pen name), who lives in Jerusalem, and artist Chani Judowitz, a resident of Lakewood, NJ; both are members of Orthodox Judaism’s “litvish” yeshiva-oriented community – the real-life “Kichels” are their friends and fellow congregants. Hence, The Kichels combines both an insider’s knowledge and an outsider’s irreverent perspective on Orthodox actions.
In less than a decade, The Kichels has become a must-read institution, a barometer, for a large part of the Orthodox community, of how its men and women and children operate.
Thought up by Shoshana Friedman, the magazine’s managing editor, The Kichels, which thrives on humorously hyperbolic depictions of Orthodox behavior, has become an eagerly accepted and awaited feature of the magazine. It is an instrument of self-examination that lovingly critiques and accurately reflects life in the Orthodox circles that tend to be foreign territory to many non-Orthodox Jews in the country (and in Israel, where much of the action in The Kichels also takes place.)
The Kichels provides insights into the Orthodox community, which, while a distinct minority in U.S. Jewry, is growing in prominence, affluence and political influence.
Friedman brought Stein and Judowitz, who did not know each other, together, describing her idea for a weekly comic that would serve as “a form of social commentary … fun and thought provoking.”
“We spent a lot of time and discussion figuring out that balance between too mild and overly peppery,” Friedman wrote in an essay, “Not Too Sweet, Not Too Salty,” in Mishpacha. “We didn’t want the back page to become a repository of cynicism, an angry place where our readers’ lifestyle and values get ripped apart.” Or, a kneejerk defender of sometimes-misunderstood behavior.
The Kichel’s popularity attests to its successful balance.
Signs of the comic strip’s popularity?
There are the letters, with praise and occasional criticism and suggestions for future comics, sent to the magazine and to The Kichels’ website (thekichels.com) … a website that includes a shidduch profile of Rochi Kichel, the still-single-at-22 daughter … a fictional figure! There are the readers who recognize the creators in synagogue, on the street, in supermarkets to offer praise or advice. There are several podcast interviews with The Kichels’ creators. There is The Kichels merch – five hardcover published collections of the cartoons, and two games.
And, the creators report, there are the stories they hear of readers recognizing Kichely actions in their lives – the so-called “Kichel moments.”
“It hits the bulls-eye,” accurately portraying Orthodox Jews and their often-unspoken-about “foibles,” says Dr. Wikler, who has lived in Borough Park nearly six decades. “It’s so realistic – on target It helps people see themselves.”
The Kichels (based in an unnamed, generic heavily Jewish U.S. neighborhood, presumed to be Flatbush, Brooklyn) clearly serves a niche community – the English-speaking “yeshivishe – Litvish” (largely non-chasidic) crowd that reads magazines like Mishpacha and Ami. These readers understand the lifestyle and nuances and “Yinglish” language of the strip’s characters, and share their concern about such topics as shidduch procedures, frum one-upmanship and one-upwomanship, and prestigious yichus.
The Kichels’ sustained popularity is an indication of the Orthodox community’s – especially the yeshivishe community’s – maturity and confidence, and its willingness to accept good-natured spoofing. Another example is the Orthodox-skewering comedy of Ashley Blaker, a British stand-up and BBC writer who is himself a haredi Jew.
Largely apolitical – “The Kichels are a politically neutral, equal opportunity, hypoallergenic strip,” Stein says in collection #2 – and ideologically balanced in the current era of vitriolic division in the United States, The Kichels focuses most of the time on the Orthodox community’s cultural norms, poking fun, when venturing into community members’ political preferences, at leanings on both the Right and the Left.
The Kichels follows in a long and proud tradition of satire being used to cast a realistic eye on the behavior and excesses of society, particularly of its religious and ethnic groups. Within Judaism, the tradition has roots in the writings of Sholem Aleichem, who focused on the life of Jews in the Eastern European Pale of Settlement at the end of the 19th century, and more recently has included:
- “Everything’s Relative,” Jordan Gorfinkel’s comic strip about Manhattan’s Upper West Side Modern Orthodox community.
- “How to be an Extremely Reform Jew,” David Bader’s trenchant book about non-Orthodox adaptations in the United States.
- And formerly, the “Oy Vey” cartoons about Brooklyn’s haredi Jews by blogger/video maker/tour guide Frieda Vizel, who grew up as a chasidic Jew.
Outside of Jewish circles, Gary Trudeau’s “Doonesbury” has earned a reputation for a half-century as an indicator of political and cultural norms in the United States; the late Walt Kelly’s “Pogo” looked at racism and intolerance in the U.S. for a quarter century; South Africa’s “Madam and Eve” has satirized the country’s political situation and social relations since the latter days of Apartheid; “Coffee with Jesus” and “Brother Juniper,” for, respectively, Protestants and Catholics, have offered a humorous look at their faiths; and Huda Fahmy’s “Yes, I’m Hot in This,” describes life among observant Muslims.
Sometimes a comic strip is not just a comic strip.
“Comics have long served as a potent medium for social commentary and political satire, offering creators a unique and accessible platform to address complex issues,” according to the nyweekly.com website. “Unlike dense academic texts or lengthy op-eds, comics can engage a broad audience through a combination of visual art and concise storytelling.”
Unlike editorial cartoons, which are usually found on a publication’s editorial page and feature a one-and-done insight into a particular, usually topical, controversy, a comic strip like The Kichels is ongoing, showing development of familiar characters who often acquire a virtual life of their own and are able to deliver a subtle message about community tendencies.
The Kichels is characterized by clueless men, harried wives, and fashion-conscious teens – in other words, stereotypical residents of any part of the U.S., who happen to live in a Jewish milieu.
“Cartoons are all about exaggeration,” like the stereotypical differences between man and women, Stein wrote in collection #5. “The Kichels raison d’etre [is] reassuring readers around the globe that we’re all the same.”
Stein and Judowitz stay clear of “painful problem” like divorce or children at risk or mockery of Torah beliefs. Their targets, they say, are “societal constructs, not features of frumkeit [religiosity].”
Among targets of The Kichels:
- The “Jewolingo” argot of Hebrew- and Yiddish-based words and phrases that mark “frum fluency” that ease communications among members of the community but can be “incomprehensible to non-community members.” One panel shows Mr. Kichel, walking out the door and telling his wife “17 is 50 and 39 is 72.” Unspoken was the context: he was on his way to shul for the Saturday night maariv worship services that would would conclude Shabbat; the numbers 17 and 39 indicated the time, after the next hour, when Mrs. Kichel could end her Shabbat observance at home if she accepted the custom of the day of rest concluding, depending on one’s preference, 50 or 72 minutes after sundown.
- Uniformity of behavior and thought in some parts of the Orthodox community. In collection #1, a half-dozen wives, including Mrs. Kichel – who had just endured frustrating conversations with her children – are sitting together. “I just don’t get kids these days. Why are they always looking at what their friends are doing?” Mrs. Kichel asks. “I don’t understand where they learned to care so much about what others think!!” All six women, including Mrs. Kichel, are outfitted in identical monochromatic dresses, wearing identical shoes, sporting identical necklaces, carrying identical purses, their sunglasses balanced in identical fashion atop their heads.
- The confusing practice of how Orthodox Jews avoid speaking between ritually washing their hands before a meal and participating in the hamotzi blessing over the challah. Talking then is considered a hefsek interruption that may require re-washing one’s hands. In one cartoon, the Kichels, sitting around a Shabbat table as Mr. Kichel is about to make the blessing, are uttering variations of “Nu!” and “Uhhh!” and “Nu uh!” etc., which mean, respectively, “Ta, make hamotzi already. The Mishnah Berurah [guide to Jewish law] brings down that it’s a hefsek if you wait so long!” “Chaviva, bring me the salt,” and “I’m sorry. I thought I put it out before the seudah [meal]!”
To most haredim, the message of The Kichels’ humor is clear.
The comic strip delivers its mussar (rebuke) in a non-abrasive, constructive way compatible with the Torah’s emphasis on sincere-but-not-harmful honesty balanced with sensitivity. No cynicism intended.
“One of the most destructive middos [character traits] is cynicism,” Rebbetzin Esther Reisman, a prominent educator, wrote in the introduction to collection #1. “It promotes bitterness and an inflated sense of superiority over other people. … The Kichels hold up a loving, gentle mirror to many of our internal failings and human foibles.”
The Kichels is perfectly situated for people who keep Shabbat (i.e. no watching videos), don’t go to comedy clubs (i.e., no hearing inappropriate language or content) or read secular novels (i.e., no reading of largely verboten secular literature). Created by its writer-artist team, shaped by the magazine’s managing editor, and influenced by rabbis who supervise the content, The Kichels plays, on a community-wide basis, a role for self-expression that Purimshpil plays do in individual synagogues and yeshivot, expressing the concerns of community members.
While gently poking fun at everyone who populates the world in which The Kichels is centered – husbands and wives, parents and grandparents and children, rabbis and teachers, students and teachers, friends and strangers – the comic strip has a decidedly pro-female-but-not-feminist bent. Including sympathy for the plight of a single-and-searching woman like Rochi Kichel.
The Kichels treats Rochi’s single status with a combination of empathy and humor.
The comic strip achieves the first goal of a magazine, Dr. Wikler says. “It is very entertaining.” And it provides some “ha-ha” content.
And The Kichels serves as a cathartic outlet for the Orthodox community?
“It does that too.”
