What if you could experience the opening chapters of the Torah as a graphic novel—without losing the depth, complexity, or ambiguity of the original text? In this episode, Rabbi Marc Katz sits down with writer and creator Jordan B. Gorfinkel to discuss The Koren Magerman Tanakh Graphic Novel: Bereshit, Volume 1: The Beginning (Koren Publishers, 2026), a visually stunning reimagining of Genesis.

From the first light of Creation through Eden, the Flood, and the Tower of Babel, the book brings the opening chapters of Bereshit to life in an entirely new way. But this is more than an illustrated Bible. Gorfinkel and his creative team ask a fundamental question: What kind of human being can become God's partner in creating a just and compassionate world?

Working alongside Israeli artist Yael Nathan, Gorfinkel combines cinematic storytelling with traditional Jewish interpretation, drawing on Tanakh, Midrash, archaeology, history, and centuries of Jewish commentary. The result preserves the full Hebrew biblical text while using the visual language of graphic novels to illuminate details, tensions, and layers of meaning that readers may have overlooked.

Together, Gorfinkel and Katz explore what happens when one of the world's oldest stories is told through one of its newest visual forms—and whether seeing Genesis differently can help us understand it differently, too.

About the Guest:
Jordan B. Gorfinkel (“Gorf”) is a cartoonist, musician, producer, and storyteller best known for his nearly decade-long career managing the Batman franchise at DC Comics, where he oversaw more than 2,000 stories across multiple media. His work has inspired comics, films, television, and games, including Birds of Prey and The Dark Knight Rises. He is also the creator of the bestselling Passover Haggadah Graphic Novel, which combines traditional Jewish text with the visual language of comics. Through his studio, Avalanche Comics Entertainment, Gorf creates and teaches storytelling across entertainment, education, and Jewish life. He is the writer and producer of The Koren Magerman Tanakh Graphic Novel, bringing his decades of experience in visual storytelling to the ancient stories of the Bible.

About the Host:
Rab­bi Marc Katz is the Senior Rab­bi at Tem­ple Ner Tamid in Bloom­field, NJ. He is author of the books Yochanan’s Gam­ble: Judaism’s Prag­mat­ic Approach to Life (JPS) cho­sen as a final­ist for the PROSE award and The Heart of Lone­li­ness: How Jew­ish Wis­dom Can Help You Cope and Find Com­fort (Turn­er Pub­lish­ing) which was cho­sen as a final­ist for the Nation­al Jew­ish Book Award.

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Huda Fahmy's latest, Huda F Would Love You? (Dial Books, 2026) is a funny and tender finale to the Huda F series, Huda has a plan to find love—but she might need to find herself first! It’s the summer after Huda’s high school graduation, and love is in the air! Or it’s about to be, anyway. Because Huda has the ingredients for a perfect love story: a butt-kicking girl power squad of new friends, and a plan to woo all the aunties into setting her up with their eligible sons. But when she finds herself caught between her friends and her heart, gender roles and ambitions, and her fears and dreams, Huda begins to realize that finding her own “happily ever after” might require changing herself—or her expectations.

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On July 5, 1828, more than a century before Superman arrived on Earth, a superhero took flight in Philadelphia’s night sky. Buried on page three of a small local newspaper, the announcement of his arrival appeared under the title “The Night-Hawk, No. 1” with a cryptic epigraph from Romeo and Juliet: “I’ll be a candleholder and look on.” Who and what was the Night Hawk? As Dr. Matthew Warner Osborn reveals in Night Hawk: A Nineteenth-Century Superhero and the Dawn of American Mass Culture (University of Chicago Press, 2026), this was the sobriquet of a mysterious columnist for the weekly Mechanics’ Free Press, the first radical socialist newspaper in America. Dressed in a mysterious cloak, the Night Hawk soared over Philadelphia, revealing the evil crimes of prominent gentlemen, fighting murderous criminals, and calling out fraudulent moral authorities.

The Night Hawk was the ingenious invention of an impoverished actor, Cornelius A. Logan, who created the character as a public champion of Philadelphia’s Working Men’s movement, the first successful American labor party. The Night Hawk’s nocturnal adventures transformed their socialist ideology into an entertaining fantasy that dramatized the struggle against industrial exploitation and the degradation of working people. The success of the character made Logan into a celebrity, and he went on to become a popular and innovative comedian on the antebellum stage.

A harbinger of the superheroes we know today, the Night Hawk promises to illuminate dark secrets from the past, but he can also shed light on our present. He ignites our need to see corrupt elites unmasked and held accountable for their actions, all while protecting the innocent and oppressed. Americans have always loved to fantasize about powerful superheroes who hide behind masks while chasing bad guys, and Dr. Osborn shows in this entertaining history how the Night Hawk was perhaps the first standard bearer for that enduring mystique.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

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