arts & culture
An Asian-Jewish Superhero
Fights the 1970s Chinese Mob
in Comic Book Debut
Julian Voloj | JTA.org
A n independent comic book
publisher that aims to promote
diversity in comics is about to
spotlight a historic new character: the
Asian-Jewish Leah Ai Tian, aka “The
Last Jewish Daughter of Kaifeng.”
The character is the brainchild of
Fabrice Sapolsky, co-founder of the
Queens, New York-based FairSquare
Comics, which aims to “promote and
give more exposure to immigrants,
minorities and under-represented
creators of the word.” “The Last Jewish
Daughter of Kaifeng,” which debuts
June 7, is the latest installation of the
Intertwined series of comics, which
Sapolsky and fellow Frenchman Fred
Pham Chuong started in 2017.

Leah, who made a brief appearance
in the first Intertwined book, has the
ability to manipulate anything water-
based and travel through streams —
not unlike a certain character in the
popular TV show “Avatar: The Last
Airbender.” The book tells her complex origin
story, which Sapolsky said is meant to
“explain the reality of being a minority
in a country that does not accept you
as a minority.”
At first, Leah lives freely as a Jew in
1970s New York City — she wears a
chai necklace, has opened a kosher
Chinese restaurant and says her rabbi
calls her powers “a blessing” from God.

But the reader learns that she had left
China to avoid a forced marriage to a
mob lord who now terrorizes Kaifeng
— a large city in eastern China home
to the remnants of the country’s only
native Jewish community.

That community, once thought to
be at least a few thousand strong, by
the time of Leah’s story was thought
to be mostly dispersed or assimilated
Leah Ai Tian is the hero of “The Last Jewish Daughter of Kaifeng.”
“When working on the original concept of Intertwined,
I knew we had to have a Jewish character, and there
had never been an Asian-Jewish character in comics”
into the non-religious society of the
Cultural Revolution. Leah returns home
to try to save her parents and bring
them to New York, where they could
practice their religion freely.

Sapolsky’s interest in the Jewish
community in Kaifeng dates to the
1990s when he was a teenager and his
Jewish camp in France one year held
“Kaifeng-themed” activities, meant to
educate campers about Chinese Jews.

Born in France to a Sephardic
mother from Algeria and an Ashkenazi
father with roots in today’s Ukraine, his
background informed his interest in
Jewish diversity.

“When working on the original
concept of Intertwined, I knew we
had to have a Jewish character, and
there had never been an Asian-Jewish
character in comics,” Sapolsky said.

For Sapolsky, it was important
to make Leah’s story “real, make it
authentic, make it believable.” He
talked to consultants about Kaifeng
history and culture, making sure even
the architecture depicted on the page
was realistic.

“The two artists, Fei Chen and Ho
Seng Hui, are from China and Malaysia,
and never thought about Jews before
this project, so they learned while
drawing the book,” he said. Will Torres,
a Christian of Puerto Rican descent,
helped with the inking, and the coloring
was done by Argentine Exequiel Roel.

The goal of the story was not only to
refer to the minority experience in China
— but also to the realities in the United
States, Sapolsky’s adopted home.

“Unlike in France, where Jews are
clearly defined as a minority, in this
country they are widely perceived as
simply white, which denies the diver-
sity of Judaism,” he said. ■
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