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March 21, 2007
Jobnik!
Via On the Face, a comic chronicle of life in the lowest echelons of the IDF.
Raised in a religious home in Ohio, Miriam immigrated to Israel as a teenager and volunteered for service in the IDF. Classified by the army as excessively emotional and sexually ambivalent, and possessing poor Hebrew skills, she was not considered suitable for a job in Intelligence or as a medic, so instead she was sent to do clerical work at a base in the middle of nowhere. "The service was unbelievably boring, but I don't regret it, mostly because that experience was the inspiration for my comics. Army service exposed me to an aspect of Israeli society that I wouldn't have experienced otherwise."The comics series is called Jobnik!, which is Israeli slang for someone who did their mandatory army service in a low-prestige job - like clerk or a truck driver.
Go to Miriam's website to view the first 4-5 pages of each comic - I think you will want to buy them.
A long article in Zeek about the Jobnik! series, and Libicki's other comics, Ceasefire! about the recent Lebanon War, and Towards a Hot Jew: The Israeli Soldier as a Fetish Object:
Labeling it a pictorial essay, Libicki has produced a very nice complementary work to Jobnik! which explores pop culture body image of Jews in the Diaspora versus those in Zionist literature. Zionist publications often feature virile, tough male and female soldiers. Quoting Jewish feminist Riv-Ellen Prell and cultural theorist Maurice Berger, Libicki explores the “New Jew” or “muscular Jew” of Zionist literature as a reaction to the image of the weak, ghetto-dwelling, bookish, and mercantile Jews of the Diaspora, particularly in Europe. This a powerful draw for non-Israeli Jews, including Libicki, whose self-portrayal in Jobnik! as a soft, suburban American girl amidst the hardened sabras for whom she both pines and lusts play off of these very stereotypes.Libicki also writes (and draws) about threading her way between the Scylla and Charybdis of rightwing exploitation of Israel and leftwing demonization of same. In one comic she identifies as a Left Zionist follower of Rabbi Michael Melchior, and adds forlornly "you've never heard of it."
“I don’t have the answers to anything,” Libicki explained in a recent interview. Despite this neutrality, Libicki, who identified herself as an Israeli American, says she experienced some anti-Israeli flak when she returned to the United States and attended Seattle University in Washington for a year. One student anonymously wrote hostile messages on the marker board of her dorm-room door. And her parents, who now live in Israel, often worry that their daughter might be forced into some verbal jousting among the largely liberal ranks at comic-book conventions — a concern that only increased during recent events in Lebanon. “People have asked, ‘What’s your opinion [of the incursion]?’” Libicki said. “And I say, ‘Oh, I think it’s lousy,’ without specifying. That seems to be good enough for most people.”
Judith | 03/21/07 at 04:29 PM | Categories: Eretz Yisrael
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