Gimpel Beynish the Matchmaker Bundle!
Buy all seven books, with caption files, for $30.00, by clicking here:
.Gimpel Beynish the Matchmaker Bundle!
Gimpel Beynish the Matchmaker Volume 7 2nd edition
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Gimpel Beynish the Matchmaker Volume 6 2nd edition
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.His wife Ida Roji (Rojansky) Zagat published a book of his illustrations and comics in 1972, Samuel Zagat: Drawings and Paintings: Jewish Life on New York's Lower East Side 1912-1962. I got a used copy from the Strand Bookstore. Ida wrote that Sam's formal education ended with elementary school because he and his brother had to support the family. He attended evening sessions at the Art Students League and the Academy of Art.
In the 1910 census Zagat's job is listed as artist/newspaper. He was drawing for Der Kibetzer, a satire and humor newspaper. Here he is in his early 20s.
The editor of Warheit, Louis E. Miller (Ida incorrectly wrote his name as "Louis B. Miller"), hired Zagat (who had frequently lampooned him in Di Kibetser) in 1912; Zagat's political cartoons first appeared in March of that year and his first Gimpel Beynish cartoon appeared in December. Jacob C. Rich, one of his editors, wrote that, while the ideas and text accompanying the drawings were Miller’s, "Zagat endued them with a playfulness and a Jewish charm that no other artist was able to duplicate"
I found Zagat while researching a song called "Gimpel Beinish the Matchmaker" in the American Yiddish Penny Songs collection. In the song, Gimpel grumbles that his livelihood is being destroyed by the personal ads in Der Toybn Post - turns out this was the Warheit personals column.
Sam's Gimpl Beynish der Shadchen cartoons ran in the Warheit until it folded in 1919 and subsequently, intermittently in the Forverts for several decades. The NYU library has a large collection of his original drawings. I found the cartoons in the Warheit on-line, downloaded 252 of them, cleaned them up, translated them, and re-typed the tiny Yiddish captions (free pdf file of the Yiddish available on request).
The Yiddish Forverts wrote about my book on December 3, 2015: Gimpel Beynish af English.
I post strips at the Gimpel Beynish blog.
I post Gimpel images at Jane Peppler on Instagram.
Yiddish Theater Songs (recordings and sheet music)