A graphic account of Jewish ethics

I have only just heard of The Illustrated Pirkei Avot, published back in 2017. This is the handiwork of a US-based artist, Jessica Tamar Deutsch, and it clearly found favour with the reviewer who wrote it up for the Jewish Book Council in the following terms:

While there are many com­men­taries to choose from, one of the most inter­est­ing and engag­ing is the recent­ly released Illus­trat­ed Pirkei Avot by Jes­si­ca Tamar Deutsch. Nav­i­gat­ing between the seri­ous and whim­si­cal with equal mea­sure, Deutsch has trans­mut­ed every word of Pirkei Avot from the stuff of parch­ment and crin­kled pages to a hand­some, sin­gu­lar col­lec­tion of sequen­tial art and imag­i­na­tion. (For good mea­sure, the entire trac­tate is repro­duced at the back of the book, just in case read­ers want to refer to the orig­i­nal while reading.)

The review continues in the same vein, adding that

Deutsch’s work is a new par­a­digm. It would be too much to say that this work breaks all the rules of nor­ma­tive Tal­mu­dic com­men­tary; that was prob­a­bly nev­er her inten­tion. To the con­trary, the acces­si­bil­i­ty stems from the book’s appeal to all ages in a wel­com­ing way. One could be a schol­ar or a neo­phyte when it comes to learn­ing Tal­mud and still learn some­thing from this work. At times Deutsch inserts a thought that is sep­a­rate from the art (i.e. the sto­ry of Hil­lel and the skull) that adds an ele­ment of reader/​author inter­ac­tion where it might not exist in oth­er commentaries.

I am not averse to the use of graphic art as a means of promoting the message of Avot, as is obvious from the launch of Avot Today's Instagram account. I do however wonder how a young and female artist would handle some of the more sensitive content of Avot, for example Hillel's pronouncement on women in the second perek ("...the more women, the more witchcraft; the more maidservants, the more immorality...", 2:8).

If any reader of this weblog is familiar with the book, can he or she please share any relevant thoughts on it and on the extent to which it succeeds in opening up the content of Pirkei Avot to an audience of people who respond more to images than to the printed word.

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The Illustrated Pirkei Avot is available from Print-O-Craft Press, Philadelphia Pa. Details here: https://printocraftpress.com/.../the-illustrated-pirkei.../

Imrei Yaakov: another of Avot's "forgotten books"

Today one of my chavrutot showed me a copy of Imrei Yaakov, this being a commentary on Pirkei Avot by a certain Rav Yaakov Henech Cymerman. This work, which was self-published in London 1955, consists of some 220 pages of discussion of Avot reproduced alongside the commentary ascribed to Rashi.

I have never come across this work before and have never seen or heard any reference to it. Sadly this seems to be the fate of so many self-published works on Avot, written by earnest but unsung scholars and enthusiasts before the days of the social media -- that almost magical means by which people with something to say on Jewish interest topics can be connected to those who share their interests.

Jeffrey Maynard's Jewish Miscellanies weblog has some biographical information about this author, who has apparently written a commentary on the Torah, but this has nothing to add about the commentary on Avot. A Gerer chasid, Rabbi Cymerman was also a strong advocate of women's education.

Does anyone know anything about this little book on Avot, which I look forward to reading in the near future.