Al Jaffee

Abraham Jaffee (March 13, 1921 – April 10, 2023), professionally known as Al Jaffee, was an American cartoonist celebrated for his satirical illustrations in MAD magazine, particularly the invention of the Fold-In feature that appeared on the back cover of nearly every issue from 1964 onward. Born in Savannah, Georgia, to Lithuanian Jewish immigrant parents, Jaffee's family experienced upheaval when his mother returned with the children to Lithuania amid cultural clashes, prompting his return to the United States in the 1930s where he honed his artistic skills. His contributions to MAD spanned from 1955 to 2020, making him the publication's longest-serving artist and earning him the Guinness World Record for the longest career as a comics artist at 78 years. Jaffee also created features like "Tall Tales," a newspaper comic strip blending exaggeration and vertical panoramas, and received accolades including the National Cartoonists Society's Reuben Award for Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year in 2008. His work emphasized clever visual gags and social commentary, influencing generations of humorists without notable controversies, as his enduring output reflected consistent ingenuity rather than partisan agendas.

Abraham Jaffee, known professionally as Al Jaffee, was born on March 13, 1921, in Savannah, Georgia, to Lithuanian Jewish immigrant parents, Morris and Mildred (née Michlia Gordon) Jaffee, both originating from the shtetl of Zarasai (then Ežerėnai) in Lithuania. Morris had immigrated to the United States in 1905, initially settling in New York before relocating to Savannah for a management position at a local department store, while Mildred arrived around 1913, driven by economic pressures in the Pale of Settlement. The family initially prospered in the American South, with Jaffee's early years marked by relative stability until his mother's persistent homesickness for traditional Jewish life in Lithuania prompted drastic changes.

In 1927, at age six, Jaffee and his three younger brothers were taken by their mother to Zarasai, severing them from their father and American upbringing, where they endured shtetl hardships including poverty, lice infestations, hunger, encounters with wildlife such as wolves, and sporadic anti-Semitic violence. After about a year, Morris traveled to Lithuania in 1928 to retrieve the family, returning them briefly to the United States. However, Mildred soon reasserted her desire for a pious, insular existence, taking the children back to Lithuania in, this time splitting time between Zarasai and the Slobodka suburb of Vilnius, where Jaffee attended a Yiddish-language school and began sketching on walls and floors due to scarce paper supplies. These years abroad honed Jaffee's bilingual proficiency in English and Yiddish, exposed him to Eastern European Jewish customs, and instilled a resilience amid deteriorating conditions, including rising regional tensions foreshadowing Nazi influence.