8: Comic strip, Samuel Zagat’s “Abie’s Moving Pictures," 1913, Yiddish.

8: Comic strip, Samuel Zagat’s “Abie’s Moving Pictures," 1913, Yiddish.

Samuel Zagat was one of the most popular cartoonists for the Yiddish press and the creator of the most beloved Yiddish-language comic strips, including "Gimpl Benish." This strip, “Abie’s Moving Pictures,” focusing on two young brothers and their experiences with the newfangled art form of moving pictures, ran about fifty times between 1912 and 1913 in Di varhayt (The Truth), a New York Yiddish daily.

Suggested activity: Each strip appears first on its own, then in the next resource alongside a translation. Try showing each strip first without its translation. Can students figure out what’s happening? (Either do or don’t tell them that Yiddish comic strips run from right to left, rather than left to right.)

Source: Samuel Zagat, “Abie’s Moving Pictures,” Di varhayt, January 31, 1913. Retrieved from microfilm at the Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library, University of Michigan <http://mirlyn.lib.umich.edu/Record/005148788/Description#tabs>.