With Eyes Toward Zion: The Political Cartoons of Noah Bee
Exhibition opened January 10, 1999

Beginning in the 1950s, anyone who picked up a local Jewish newspaper nearly anywhere in the United States or Canada encountered the work of the syndicated political cartoonist Noah Bee. Week in and week out for more than thirty years, Bee commented in pen-and-ink on events of Jewish interest around the world, and especially in the land of Israel. The bulk of Bee's cartoons chronicle the twists and turns of Middle East politics. Whether they rejoice in the triumphs or lament the setbacks, all of Bee's cartoons are drawn from the perspective of a passionately committed American Zionist.

Noah Bee was born Noah Birzowski in Warsaw, Poland, on September 25, 1916. In his teens, he emigrated to Israel, where he took the name "Bee" as an allusion to the Hebrew phrase ben-Israel, or "son of Israel." His youthful Zionism and sense of adventure led him to enlist in the underground Jewish militia, the Haganah, serving as a member of the organization's Special Police Force during the Arab rebellions of 1936 to 1939. At the outbreak of World War II, Bee joined the British army as a civilian interpreter.

Bee experienced professional artistic success at a young age. Under the sponsorship of the popular Hebrew poet Shaul Tchernichowsky, he held the first exhibition of his cartoons in Tel Aviv in 1938, when he was twenty-two years old. His first book, Faces of Tel Aviv in Caricature, containing some of the earliest caricatures of many of Israel's most prominent political figures, was published in 1939.

Bee and his American wife, Marian, immigrated to the United States in 1943. They settled in New York, where Bee worked as an art director at McGraw-Hill Publishing Company for thirty-three years. His devotion to the Jewish homeland, however, remained strong throughout his life. As he continued to draw cartoons, most of the events on which he chose to comment were ones that had great import for the security of Israel.

In addition to his cartooning, early in 1948, Bee created a design that was used on the first paper money circulated in the newly formed Israeli state. He also created many designs for the Jewish National Fund, including the well-known "Blue Box" in 1950, which brought his artwork into Jewish homes all over the world.

In 1959, Noah Bee began to draw weekly cartoons for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, which distributed them across the United States and Canada. He continued to enliven the editorial pages of many Jewish publications through this agency until his death in 1992.

A collection of Bee's political cartoons entitled In Spite of Everything was published in 1973 to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel. Two more collections, The Impossible Takes a Little Longer and Israel at 40: Years of Triumph, Trials and Errors followed in 1983 and 1988, respectively.

Bee and his wife moved to Los Angeles in 1977, where he continued to create his weekly cartoons for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency as well as his own paintings. In 1997, Marian Bee donated a collection of twenty-one of her late husband's cartoons to the NMAJH.

Click on the right arrow to begin.



On subsequent pages, use the arrows or click on the cartoon to navigate to the next page.