Did you know that a tannin is basically a Jewish dragon, dating back to the Bible on the fifth day of creation?
Filmmaker and writer Arnon Shorr has a passion for sharing Jewish tradition and lore like this, the juicy Torah, Talmud, stories and writings that rarely get past the yeshiva.
In his drive to make these crazy stories accessible, Shorr writes the scripts and teams up with illustrator Joshua Edelglass to create beautiful graphic novels. Now, they are launching their newest book, “Signal Fires,” a dramatic pirate story surrounding the legendary Bar Kochva.
If you’re like me, you have likely heard the name Bar Kochva in the context of his famous revolt, but you may not know much more, or that the name “Signal Fires” has a mythic connection to the bonfires we light in honor of Lag B’Omer (the festive day on the Jewish calendar that marks the anniversary of the passing of the great sage and mystic Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, author of the Zohar).
In addition to his work being beautiful and interesting, I’m drawn to Shorr’s desire to create stories and art that dig deep into these tales, and as I’ve gotten to know him, it’s helped illuminate so much about his work. So, as “Signal Fires” hits shelves on May 5 in this season of Lag B’Omer, I wanted to take a moment to share a bit from Shorr about his work and process.
What made you want to write this story?
I love telling stories that explore and unpack lesser-known corners of the Jewish world. For this story, I started out by poking around the history of Lag B’Omer, which is one of those holidays with very little clear information about it. Does it commemorate the end of the plague that killed so many of Rabbi Akiva’s students? Is it a “celebration” of Bar Yochai’s death? (“Celebration” because he instructed his followers to celebrate, rather than mourn, his passing.) Why is it so connected to the Bar Kochva revolt, especially the way it’s celebrated in Israel?
My questions led me down rabbit holes that included “signal fires,” people whose fury caused fire to shoot out of their eyes, different modes of rebellion and resistance, etc. The fires, in particular, got me thinking about dragons, and whether I could find a role for such creatures that might help generate a new folklore to tie some of the holiday’s disparate ideas together in a new way. But that’s the pretentious answer! Really, I just figured how cool it would be to have a couple of dragons send the Roman army fleeing for their lives!
Give us a little more context on the Lag B’Omer connection and how this legend/myth plays into it.
How does “Signal Fires” connect to other graphic novels and projects you’ve done? “Signal Fires” is the fourth comic book story in my series, “Festival of Forgotten Tales,” in which I tie fun, fantastical stories into Jewish holidays and their lore and traditions. It’s all part of my broader ambition to entirely disrupt the way we think about what “Jewish” stories and entertainment look like. We don’t need to—and shouldn’t!—relegate our fiction to hand-wringing dramas about secular Ashkenazi New Yorkers with anxiety issues on one hand, or stories about persecution and Judaism-as-a-liability on the other, and we certainly shouldn’t see the religious aspects of our tradition as too niche for a broader audience to appreciate and find meaning in. And so, I write monster stories, swashbucklers, westerns, sci-fi adventures and all sorts of other tales where Judaism and Jewishness play a vital and authentic role without veering into self-deprecation or self-limiting cliché. What’s one hidden fact from the book that you don’t want us to miss? I’ve written quite a few comics that were illustrated by Joshua Edelglass—who is also known in the Boston area for being a director of Camp Ramah in New England!—but this is the first story I wrote whose protagonist is named Joshua! Josh Edelglass got a lot of joy out of that as he illustrated the book. Join the launch of “Signal Fires,” a new all-ages Jewish comic, on Tuesday, May 5, from 8–9:15 p.m. at Lehrhaus, featuring a live discussion, Q&A and book signing with creators Arnon Z. Shorr and Joshua M. Edelglass.
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