L ifestyle /C ulture
Books: ‘Tunnels’ Digs for Complicated Truth
B OOKS
SASHA ROGELBERG | JE STAFF
IN GRAPHIC NOVELIST
Rutu Modan’s most recent
work “Tunnels,” published on
Nov. 2 by Drawn & Quarterly,
archaeologist Nili is hardly the
heroic and striking protagonist
Indiana Jones is in “Raiders
of the Lost Ark,” but their
goals are the same: find the
Ark of the Covenant, and do
it quickly.

The frumpy single mother,
followed closely by her first-
grader son Doctor, glued to
his mother’s iPhone, stumbles
upon an inscription to the
location of the Ark in the
possession of a clueless
collector, the catalyst of her
quest to avenge her archaeol-
ogist father — a man sickened
with dementia for the better
part of two decades — whose
scholarly contributions to the
field were wrongly eclipsed.

The task is both daunting
and familiar: Finding the Ark
would not only save her family
name, but it would be a contin-
uation of a dig she began with
her father 30 years prior.

In her perpetually worn
khakis and blue button-up,
accompanied by her apathetic,
but easily swayable Doctor,
Nili embarks with her humble
equipment to the site of the
dig, which, coincidentally, lies
at the crossroads of Israeli and
Palestinian land.

As she approaches the dig
site, she is joined by a gaggle of
eccentric settlers led by the jolly
Gedanken, who is keen on the
spiritual rewards promised to
whoever finds the Ark (and the
claim to the heavily-contested
land on which it’s found).

Out of nowhere appears her
brother Broshi, who is surrep-
titiously in cahoots with their
father’s academic nemesis
Rafi Sarid, and later, in the
tunnels, childhood acquain-
tance Mahdi, a Palestinian
man, digging a tunnel inter-
secting Nili’s, in hopes of
smuggling vegetables to the
other side of the wall dividing
the territories.

The more people interested
in the tunnels leading to the
Ark, the more the meaning of
the holy object becomes convo-
luted, and the more Modan’s
colorful “Tin-Tin”-esque
comic becomes an ensnaring
political allegory, 3,000 years
in the making.

The respective motives for
the characters’ finding of the
Ark — be it glory, vengeance
or an ideal bar mitzvah locale
— are completely contradic-
tory and, in the end, they don’t
matter. Alliances are forged
and broken, lives are put at risk
and the fate of the ark remains
— spoilers — slippery at best.

With smart color work,
clean lines and enthralling
backdrops, “Tunnels” is crystal
clear and consistent stylis-
tically. Its playful drawings,
exemplified best by the classic
cartoon expressions of hair
and eyebrows standing on
end to depict a surprised
character, pleasantly disrupt
the seriousness of the concepts
tackled, preventing the reader
from growing frustrated with
a heated and often-tackled
topic of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict. Modan’s lesson is painted
with the same simplicity and
clarity with which she draws:
everyone’s right; no one’s right;
“Tunnels” by Rutu Modan, published Nov. 2 by Drawn & Quarterly
Courtesy of Drawn & Quarterly
it’s complicated.

On one particularly striking
page, Nili and Mahdi, face-to- it’s our tunnel,” Mahdi says.

the conflict.

face at the mouths of their
“Maybe this part, but from
Clearly rooted in today’s
respective tunnels, begin to there on out it’s the tunnel that day and age, the graphic novel
squabble: “With all due respect, my dad dug,” Nili retorts.

still feels timeless, for better or
The quarrel over the tunnel’s for worse, a snapshot of scenes
rightful digger continues. throughout history, likely on
Mahdi concludes, refer- disputed lands around the
ring to when the tunneling globe.

Through her plea for deeper
began several decades prior:
“Depends where you start understanding of the land’s
fraught history, brought to life
counting.” Even Modan’s biting satire by the conflicting core beliefs
of the pious settler Gedanken, of two groups of people who
fixated on and limited by his ultimately want peace, Modan
hatred for Palestinians, is offers no solace to the reader.

But with no questions answered
pointed, despite its silliness.

News for people
“Tunnels” greatest gift or political solutions proposed,
who know we don’t
is its ability to skirt the line “Tunnels” still remains satis-
mean spiced tea.

of satire and critique while fying in its art and characters.

“In these dark times,”
never explicitly crossing it. In
Every Thursday in the
a time when others politics Modan writes in her afterword,
JEWISH EXPONENT
are assumed, and honest and “I would happily settle for just
and all the time online
vulnerable conversations are the search.” l
@jewishexponent.com. few and far between, “Tunnels”
For home delivery,
offers an easy (or easier) entry- srogelberg@jewishexponent.com;
call 215.832.0710.

point to conversations around 215-832-0741
Chai. 18
JANUARY 13, 2022
JEWISH EXPONENT
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM



L ifestyle /C ulture
Local-born Actor, Comedian Bob Saget Dies at 65
OB ITUARY
SHIRA HANAU | JTA.ORG
BOB SAGET, the Phila-
delphia-born comedian and
actor famous for playing a
wholesome sitcom father figure
but who never lost his flair for
raunchy comedy, died Jan. 9
at 65.

Saget died shortly after
performing in Orlando, where
he had delivered a show with
his trademark mashup of dark
humor and dad jokes that he
first developed while misbe-
having in Hebrew school.

Saget was found dead in his
hotel room in Orlando. The
cause of his death is unknown,
but police do not suspect drugs
or foul play.

As a performer, Saget alter-
nated between the raunchy
stand-up comic known for
darkly funny bits peppered with
curse words and the wholesome
dad that he played on the 1990s
sitcom “Full House,” bringing
together his audiences of
children and adults in his role
as host of “America’s Funniest
Home Videos.”
Even before he got to
Hollywood, Saget honed his
comedy as a misbehaving
Hebrew school student at
Temple Israel in Norfolk,
Virginia. “Well, a lot of it was rebel-
lion,” Saget told the Atlanta
Jewish Times in 2014. “In my
Hebrew school training, I
would spend more time trying
to impress the girls in the class.

I remember the rabbi taking
me up to his office and saying
‘Saget, you’re not an entertainer;
you have to stop doing this.’ I
couldn’t stop.”
He never did.

After a short stint contrib-
uting to CBS’ “The Morning
Program,” Saget was cast to play
a morning show host on TV. As
Danny Tanner on “Full House,”
Saget played a widowed dad and
morning show host raising three
daughters in San Francisco with
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM the help of his brother-in-law
and his best friend. Saget played
the role until the show ended
in 1995 and reprised it in the
“Fuller House” reboot that
premiered in 2016. In 1989,
Saget started hosting “America’s
Funniest Home Videos,” which
he continued until 1997.

Saget was
born in
Philadelphia in 1956 to Jewish
parents but spent much of his
childhood in Norfolk. His
father, a supermarket execu-
tive, and his mother, a hospital
administrator, probably would
have preferred to see their son
follow through on his original
plans to become a doctor.

But Saget’s plans changed in
high school when his English
teacher, Elaine Zimmerman,
encouraged him to become
a filmmaker. “To the next
Groucho-Fellini,” she wrote in
his yearbook.

For college, Saget was the
typical Temple University
commuter, taking public
transportation while living at
home. He’d already figured
out that entertainment was
his bag: comedy, singing and
filmmaking, he said in a 2017
Jewish Exponent article.

“I opened for Frank Stallone
at Stars, Stephen Starr’s old
restaurant,” he said. “I did
improv at the University of
Pennsylvania and hung out
with a bunch of guys called
the Mixed Nuts. And I won
the student Oscar for Through
Adam’s Eyes, about my nephew
who had his face reconstructed.”
Saget moved to Los Angeles
and became a regular at the
Comedy Store, the legendary
comedy club famous for
launching the careers of
comedians like
David Letterman and Jay Leno. His
comedic role models included
Richard Pryor,
Rodney Dangerfield and Don Rickles,
who, as Saget recalled in 2017,
once said of him: “He comes out
like a Jewish Clark Kent.”
At the same time that
Saget was becoming the most
Comedian Bob Saget performs at the Improv Comedy Club at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in
Hollywood, Florida, on Feb. 24, 2006. 
Ralph Notaro/Getty Images
recognizably beloved father in
America, he experienced his
own share of tragedy within his
real family. Saget lost both of his
sisters relatively young; Andrea
died of a brain aneurysm in
1985 and Gay of systemic sclero-
derma in 1994. Throughout
his career, Saget frequently
performed at events to benefit
charitable causes and served on
the board of the Scleroderma
Research Foundation.

In 2021, Saget participated
in a Purim spiel, or comedic
reading of the Purim story,
to benefit the Met Council,
in which he played the villain
of the story, Haman. “I’m
self-loathing, too,” he quipped
as he and other members of the
cast sounded groggers to drown
out Haman’s name.

Saget recalled his Jewish
upbringing, including his
Hebrew school experience
and the Jewish foods his
bubbe cooked, in the foreword
he wrote for the 2011 book,
“Becoming Jewish:
The Challenges, Rewards, and Paths
to Conversion,” by Rabbi Steven
Carr Reuben and Jennifer S.

Hanin. “I was born a Jewish boy. I
was circumcised. Thank God
by a professional. That is not
something you want done by
JEWISH EXPONENT
a novice. Or someone doing it
for college credit. So I ‘became
Jewish’ instantly upon birth,”
he wrote.

As a teenager and through
college, Saget worked at a deli.

Food was an important part
of Saget’s Jewish upbringing,
especially his bubbe’s stuffed
cabbage and mandelbread
cookies. Speaking to Jay Sanderson of
the “Jay’s 4 Questions” podcast
in 2018, Saget recalled the time
he almost got fired from his
deli counter job after he stuck
a half-smoked cigarette in a
carp’s mouth and showed it to a
customer who wanted to be sure
the carp was fresh. Despite the
years he spent grinding carp,
Saget never lost his taste for
gefilte fish, though he couldn’t
stomach the jarred variety.

His preferred combination for
gefilte fish, he told Sanderson
in 2018, was a mix of carp, pike
and whitefish.

“The food of the Jewish
people stays within me. It is
still within me. I am writing
this with a matzah ball inside
me from 1975. It is next to
the kishka,” he wrote in the
foreword to “Becoming Jewish.”
Saget did not consider
himself to be very obser-
vant. But he did feel a sense of
spirituality on a trip he took to
Israel with his parents in the
’80s or ’90s.

“It was quite a gift and there
were many spiritual things that
happened throughout and that I
think is still the closest I’ve felt,
because you can actually see it
and feel it in the air in Israel,”
he said.

And he talked about being
Jewish in the 2017 Exponent
article. “I have more pride now than
before about being a Jew,” he
said. “It’s what I am. I’m not
very observant, but I like the
traditions. And, at this time,
when it feels like a fuse is being
lit because of ignorance and
lack of caring for your fellow
man, I show my love through
my comedy.”
Having lost his sisters and
both of his parents — his father
in 2007 and his mother in 2014
— at the time of his conver-
sation with Sanderson, Saget
talked about the difficulty in
feeling spirituality or belief in
God after experiencing so much
loss. “I go back and forth with my
belief system, by the way. I’m
not the best, most observant
Jewish person you’ve ever met
or talked to, and yet I’m Jewish
and proud to be,” he said. l
JANUARY 13, 2022
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