Gadi Pollack

Gadi Pollack (Hebrew: גדי פולק‎; born 1969/1970[1]) is an Israeli illustrator and author of Haredi children's books.

He has 45 published books, some of them collaborations with Baruch Chait.[2][1]

Biography

Early life and education

Gadi Pollack was born in Odessa, USSR (now part of Ukraine) to a secular Jewish family. His family then moved to Moscow due to his father Yona Pollack being an officer in the Russian army. Gadi Pollack's grandfather, Moshe Yehuda Pollack, was a religious Jew but was murdered by Ukrainian peasants due to rampant Ukrainian anti-Semitism; his wife died of typhus while attempting to flee.[2] Yona Pollack was raised in an orphanage in Kirgizia without any connection to Judaism. When he became eighteen, he enlisted in the Russian army as a musician.[2] Gadi Pollack's mother was a doctor.[1]

Pollack was raised in a musical home. Everyone in his family played an instrument, and he himself took piano lessons for four years.[3] Despite this, at the age of ten he asked his father to let him attend art school.[2] At the age of fifteen, he unsuccessfully applied to the sculpture program in an art academy. Upon returning home, he became an apprentice under a well-known sculptor for a year,[3] after which he successfully reapplied to the Academy of Music, Theatre and Fine Arts in Kishinev in the sculpture department at the age of seventeen.[2] Pollack studied there for about four years, after which he served in the Russian army per mandatory conscription.[3] While in the army, Gadi Pollack worked as a graphics designer and cartoonist for an army newspaper.[1]

Following his army service, Pollack returned to Kishinev and worked for an advertising agency as an artist. According to him, around this time he was first exposed to Judaism by a priest who hired him to illustrate a weekly comic based on Biblical stories.[1] He began to study the Bible to create his comics and came up with theological questions that he later posed to the priest, who failed to answer them. Pollack thereafter met a group of skullcap-wearing Jewish youth. He asked them questions related to Judaism to which they gave answers that seemed reasonable to him. Following this incident, Pollack developed an interest in Judaism and gradually became observant and adopted religious practices.[2]

Illustrating and writing career

Gadi Pollack immigrated to Israel in 1993 and started to work as a graphic designer[1] and as an animator for children's learning software.[4] He married and started learning in a kollel. He met illustrator Yoni Gerstein and asked for help in finding clients, which led Pollack to meet Baruch Chait, a composer and author of Jewish books for youth. They collaborated to make multiple books, the first book which Gadi Pollack illustrated being Tell Me What You Think.[3]

Pollack has illustrated since then around 50 books,[5] including collaborations and independent works, some of which have become very popular within the observant Jewish world, like musar literature works such as The Terrifying Trap of the Bad Middos Pirates, The Lost Treasure of Tikun HaMiddos Island, and others; as well as a book on the Purim story entitled PurimShpiel and a Passover Haggadah, which involved extensive research into relevant commentaries and midrashim. He also wrote a series of three (as of 2020) books, known as A Yiddishe Kop, which is a series of puzzles.[2] Over 200,000 A Yiddishe Kop books were sold.[5]

Personal life

Gadi Pollack lives in Kiryat Sefer, Israel.[6][2] He does not allow the media in interviews with him to publish photos of him to protect his anonymity.[7][3] He learns every day in a kollel with fellow artist David Goldschmidt[6][4] and does most of his work at nighttime.[7]

References
  1. Rath, Riki (2 July 2017). ""הספר שמשגע את הנוער החרדי: "עם חילונים זה לא היה עובד" [The book that excites the Haredi youth: "It wouldn't have worked with the secular public"]. nrg (in Hebrew). Retrieved 11 November 2019.
  2. Zuroff, Avraham (11 October 2019). "The Yiddishe Kop behind A Yiddishe Kop: TJH Speaks with Artist and Author Gadi Pollack". The Jewish Home. pp. 88–90. Retrieved 17 October 2019. Fischel, the naive schlemiel with an untucked shirt, is easy bait for the sly antics of fraudsters. Fischel and other colorful characters appear in many of Gadi Pollack’s 45 published books that teach timely Torah messages to young and old. Gadi’s most recent publication, Part III of his Yiddishe Kop series of illustrations aimed to sharpen one’s mind, is enjoyed by adults, as well by children.
  3. Pomerantz, Riva (20 September 2010). "The Art of Illustration". Mishpacha. No. 327. Archived from the original on 25 April 2016. There’s a new phenomenon in the world of publishing today, an aesthetic, masterful revolution that began with a brushstroke and exploded in a flash of talent never glimpsed before. Behind it all is a name, Gadi Pollack. Meet the artist whose creations are keeping kids and adults spellbound.
  4. Levy, Batsheva (10 May 2015). "לכתך אחרי במדבר: ראיון עם האומן גדי פולק" [An interview with the artist Gadi Pollack]. Hidabroot (in Hebrew). Retrieved 18 October 2019.
  5. Frankel 2020, p. 95.
  6. Rotem, Tamar (25 May 2004). "Tickling the Religious Funny Bone". Haaretz. Retrieved 17 October 2019. Pollack, an immigrant from Russia and a sculptor by profession who lives in Kiryat Sefer, relates that he began the process of becoming religiously observant after a gentile asked him to make a comic strip about the Bible and he began to delve into the subject. He and Goldschmidt study in the mornings at the kollel (yeshiva for married men) in Kiryat Sefer, which Pollack smilingly calls "the artists' lane." The flowering of comics has created a demand for good artists in the ultra-Orthodox community; about a year ago, when Pollack was overwhelmed by offers, he started a course for comics artists in Kiryat Sefer. One of his students is Beifuss. Yoni Gerstein, the cartoonist for Yated Ne'eman, who is also newly observant, has taken a group of comics creators under his professional wing.
  7. Frankel 2020, p. 92.
  • Riemer, Nathanael (2016). "Past Is Future: Gadi Pollack's Haredi Comics". European Journal of Jewish Studies. 10 (1): 108–147. doi:10.1163/1872471X-12341288.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Frankel, Dvora (1 January 2020). "Gemara Kop: Interview with Gadi Pollack". HaSiyum Youth. Agudath Israel of America. pp. 86–95.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
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