Joann Sfar’s To Life

It was hard for Jewish Americans see how the world turned its back on their pain and suffering in the days following the 10/7 terrorist murders and sexual assaults. It was probably even worse for their French counterparts. At least most mainstream American political leaders expressed their outrage, including Biden. In contrast, Macron fell mute and disappeared for a week, while voices of hate immediately started protesting the victims. It was particularly painful for French leftwing Jewish intellectuals like cartoonist-filmmaker Joann Sfar. In the days that followed, he tried to make sense of the world’s twisted reaction in his notebooks, which have been polished into To Life, which just released in stores.

To Life has enough structure to pass for a graphic novel, but the term notebook warns readers to expect a looser flow. Even before 10/7, French Jews were increasingly reluctant to display the Star of David (and Macron said nothing). Yet, Sfar was rather defiantly inclined to start wearing the Chai, because of its meaning: “to life.”

As the news of Hamas’s mass murder and weaponized rape trickled out, Sfar desperately sought news of his cousins in Israel. Although he briefly lived in Israel with his parents, they quickly repatriated back to France, so he always considered himself French—and rather left-of-center. Nevertheless, the surge in anti-Semitic violence (predating but accelerated by 10/7) and the Charlie Hebdo assassinations already started challenging his world view.

Eventually, Sfar visits Israel, to check-in on family and collaborate with the crew producing a TV series based on his Klezmer graphic novels. The great irony of To Life is that Sfar feels like a liberal Jewish Frenchman in Israel, where engages with Arab Israelis and Jewish Israels who are keenly critical of West Bank Settlers, Netanyahu, and the ultra-Orthodox. Yet, in France, he feels increasingly like an outsider.

There is a lot of anger directed towards leftist Jew-haters and their “more respectable” enablers. However, nobody in good conscience could consider Sfar’s book a rightwing diatribe. In fact, he goes out of his way to express solidarity with the Palestinians. Ironically, though, he remains keenly aware that will never be enough for many French “anti-Zionist” extremists.

To Life is even sketchier than the sketchy style of Sfar’s graphic novels, because they were produced on the go. Still, the nature of Sfar’s art and his frequently raw and unvarnished musings gives the book a visceral immediacy. Readers also vividly feel Sfar’s pain and his sense of betrayal during the segments focusing on France, while he expresses frustration and futility when taking stock of Israeli politics. To Life is not without hope, but it is greatly tempered by reality, which keeps interrupting his freely-forming narrative. It is often quite powerful, because it is so messily personal and unguarded. Highly recommended for its honest depiction of the response to the 10/7 atrocities, in both France and Israel, To Life is now on-sale at book and comic retailers.