Yaakov Kirschen – RIP
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Israeli cartoonist Yaakov Kirschen has passed away.
Yaakov (né Jerry) Kirschen
March 8, 1938 – April 14, 2025
From the Jewish News Syndicate (JNS):
(April 14, 2025 / JNS)
Israeli cartoonist Yaakov Kirschen, whose iconic daily cartoons were published by JNS for the last several years, died at Meir Medical Center in Kfar Saba on Monday after a lengthy illness, aged 87.
After making aliyah in 1971, the Brooklyn-born Kirschen began sketching his trademark “Dry Bones” cartoons in 1973. The cartoon was internationally syndicated and published in The Jerusalem Post for 50 years, after which Kirschen moved to JNS.
As explained on the Dry Bones blog Yaakov had experienced health issues this year with a stroke in January and recovery from that being complicated with pneumonia this month.
A profile of the cartoonist from The Dry Bones Project:
Born March 8, 1938. Graduated from Queens College 1961. Wrote and drew funny cards for Norcross. After dismissal for loudness and jocular attitude became a freelance gag cartoonist for the former “Mad Mag” guys who were then doing “Cracked”. Moved on to doing cartoons for Playboy. Included in several “Best Of” Playboy anthologies. Fell in with the anti-Vietnam War folks and was actually elected delegate to the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago where, in spite of all the riots, was unable to get arrested. In 1971 moved to Israel, changed first name from Jerry to Yaakov, and in 1973 began drawing a daily editorial strip called Dry Bones.
From a 2010 New Jersey Jewish News interview:
NJJN: What’s the significance of the name you chose for your cartoon?
Yaakov Kirschen: Ezekiel 37 is the biblical vision of the “dry bones” — a 2,600-year-old dream that details the rebirth of the Jewish people, their return to the land, and the ensuing political woes of the newly reborn state. What better name could I have picked?
Kirschen’s Dry Bones political cartoons were distributed worldwide, including the United States, by The Jerusalem Post, Cagle Cartoons, and by Yaakov himself.
The Grand Comics Database dates Kirschen’s early comic work for Cracked Magazine as 1960-1965.
His Playboy cartoons appeared later in the ’60s.
From March 1980 to January 1982 The N. Y. Times Special Features syndicated Adam an’ (aka Adam’s Apple).
A quote from The Jerusalem Post’s obituary/tribute for the late cartoonist:
“For more than forty years, I have been putting ideas into people’s heads. It is what I do. I am a political cartoonist,” he wrote. “Some of my cartoonist colleagues define the purpose of our work as showing the ‘truth,’ others as ‘expressing our opinion,’ but the fact is that what we do is to attempt to put our own ideas into other people’s heads… and we use cartoons to do it.”
Below is an early Yaakov profile from The Los Angeles Times.
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