Yaakov Kirshan 1938-2025

 

Yaakov Kirshan, one of the giants of the Israeli cartooning, died Monday after a lengthy illness. He was 87 years old.

His comic strip Dry Bones was internationally syndicated and published in The Jerusalem Post for 50 years, after which Kirschen moved to the Jewish News Syndicate.

The name of Kirschen’s comic strip referred to the biblical vision of the “Valley of Dry Bones,” with its main character named Shuldig, which is Yiddish for guilty or blame.

“The cartoon started on January 1, 1973,” he once explained. 

“I named it ‘Dry Bones,’ thinking that everyone would immediately connect the name with the ‘dry bones’ that will rise again, from the book of Ezekiel. 

But the question that I get asked most often is ‘Where does the name ‘Dry Bones’ come from?’ 

So what I thought would be most obvious was not obvious at all.”

Born in Brooklyn on March 8, 1938, Jerry Kirshan graduated from Queens College 1961.

He wrote and drew funny cards for Norcross before becoming a freelance gag cartoonist for Cracked and then for Playboy.

He 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 he moved to Israel and changed his first name from Jerry to Yaakov.

A member of the U.S. National Cartoonists Society and the Israeli Cartoonists Society, Kirschen won several awards and was considered a “national treasure of the Jewish people.” 

Among the prizes he received were the Israeli Museum of Caricature and Comics’ Golden Pencil Award and the 2014 Nefesh B’Nefesh Bonei Zion Prize for his contribution to Israeli culture and the arts.

Kirschen is survived by his artist wife, Sali Ariel; three daughters; eight grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.