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New Yorker Holy Week Cartoon – “It is Downright Offensive”

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The New Yorker magazine has just managed to insult Christians and Jews alike with a cartoon depicting the Last Supper in its April 14, 2025, issue.

Adam Sacks, The New Yorker

It’s tone-deaf. It’s outrageous. It probably earned Sacks a pretty penny.

It’s not funny.

Phyllis Zagano at the National Catholic Reporter takes umbage at an Adam Sacks cartoon that appeared in The New Yorker magazine dated April 14, 2025 – the day after Palm Sunday and leading into Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

The New Yorker – April 14, 2025

For The New Yorker to poke fun at what Christians understand as the institution of the Eucharist, at a meal that might be considered a proto-seder, is beyond tacky.

It is downright offensive. 

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Comments 18

  1. I’m a church-going Catholic, and I’m not offended. I see it as a comment on the trivialization of a holy day.

  2. Lent and Easter were always conflicting messages for me growing up. Doing the stations of the cross in parochial school was torture, but the rosary beads my grandparents gave me were treasured. Good Friday was always a description of whips and thorny crowns, but the basket of malted eggs and jelly beans would make me forget the whole thing. This cartoon captures that very well, but he should have tried to work in an egg hunt.

  3. Proto-Seder? PROTO-SEDER?! BOLDFACE PROTO-SEDER?!
    Remind me again which religion spun off of which.
    Between the cartoon and the article, the only thing offensive to Jews is the article.
    Seriously? An offence to Catholics=an offence to Jews? How does that even make sense? Because the people depicted were Jews? Newsflash, they weren’t Jews, they were Jewish Christians. My understanding is that the Christian Bible is full of stories about the tensions between the respective groups. (The Talmud may or may not contain stories about the tensions between the respective groups.)
    What if the cartoon depicted the last supper as a seder? (Which, I understand, is not so simple since the dating isn’t explicit or contradictory or something)
    This bread, why are we eating it?…It is my body.
    This wine, why are we drinking it?…It is my blood.
    This chocalate bunny, why are we eating it?…It is a fun springtime treat.
    Is that offensive? No, it’s hilarious. At least one public intellectual Rabbi would still complain about it. But the New Yorker cartoon as-run? It ain’t got nothing Jewish to it.

  4. She’s offended because Jesus is portrayed as drawing a bright line between the religious and secular observances of Easter? Too bad she missed the Onion cartoon that showed the Bunny on the cross and Jesus delivering eggs. That would have really given her the vapors!

    1. Just wait until she catches wind of Kevin Smith’s Buddy Jesus…

  5. I felt compelled to count that Sacks drew 12 disciples. Check. The spirit of National Lampoon magazine is alive in this cartoon. I agree with Ignatz.

  6. Everything is offensive to someone. No exceptions.

  7. Is this one of those rage bait things? Someone gets overly offended over something that isn’t offensive which causes others to get upset that the first person got offended which drives engagement with the content? It just might work. Because this is probably the least offensive thing I’ve seen all year.

    1. “rage bait,” excellent neologism. I believe basic questions good cartoonists ask before tapping “send” are, “Am I outraging someone?” and “Will their outrage make the world a better place?” Sub “enlighten” “comfort” or even just “entertain” if you are not an editorial cartoonist.

  8. Thirteen years of Catholic school here. Active Episcopalian. Former senior warden at my church.

    I think Phyllis Zagano needs more roughage in her diet.

  9. I am a (very) lapsed catholic and this cartoon,

    A. is quite funny. and,

    B. is not offensive at all. and,

    C. That lady needs to lighten up a lot.

  10. I grew up celebrating both Jewish and Christian customs. It was my understanding that the last supper WAS the Passover Seder.

    Was I misinformed?

    Also, the cartoon is very funny. I’ve spent my adult years explaining the whole Easter basket/bunny/Peeps thing to my immigrant in-laws, and usually mucking the whole thing up.

    1. One argument is that the “sabbath” the day after the crucifixion was Passover, not the weekly sabbath.

    2. Yes, you were misinformed. The Last Supper was *not* a Passover seder. The creation of the seder was originated after the destruction of the 2nd temple – the rabbinic authorities’ attempt to replace earlier, temple-based Passover observances with rituals and practices that could be done without a temple. The temple was not destroyed until 70 AD, decades after the last supper.

      For more, see https://reasonsforhopejesus.com/last-supper-not-passover-seder/

  11. A little surprised to see this in the National Catholic Reporter rather than the National Catholic Register. Of the two Catholic publications that share the same three-letter acronym, the Reporter is the “liberal” one and the Register is the “conservative” one. The Register is usually the louder one in terms of complaining about how Catholics are put-upon by secular society.

  12. I laughed at the cartoon. Am I supposed to feel bad?

  13. Clearly, you will go to Hell.

    Bummer.

  14. When I was 19 years old I was saved from a life of violence and drug addiction by the lord Jesus Christ. I am now 70 and my life has miraculously changed. I find the cartoon extremely offensive because Sacks insulted my best friend. I’m also shocked that others don’t find it so offensive.

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