Will Eisner - Michael Schumacher [3]
Mother and son, in an undated photo. (Will Eisner Collection, the Ohio State
University Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum)
Billy Eisner, age three, with his parents, Sam and Fannie Eisner. (Will Eisner Collection,
the Ohio State University Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum)
Each new neighborhood meant establishing a presence, making friends, fending off threats, and meeting new schoolmates and teachers. The neighborhoods were occupied by Irish and Italians with appalling anti-Semitic attitudes, and young Billy Eisner, not the most patient person to begin with, wasn’t inclined to take a lot of crap. He’d use his fists whenever he felt it necessary, despite his father’s counsel that brainpower would beat brutishness. Sam Eisner had faced such anti-Semitism in Europe, and for him, the United States was just more of the same. Billy would come home with cuts and scrapes and black eyes, still seething in anger from the latest string of slurs flung in his face, only to have his father advise him that bigotry, sadly enough, was an element of living in a city where different kinds of people gathered. At one time, Sam explained, the Italians and Irish picking on Billy had been victimized by prejudice themselves.
One incident, when Eisner was nine or ten years old, stayed with him his entire life. He’d talk about it in interviews and depicted it in To the Heart of the Storm. Sam Eisner had just started up his fur business and had relocated his family to a tough neighborhood in the Bronx. One day shortly after the move, Billy was taking his younger brother for a walk when they ran into several neighborhood bullies who asked Eisner for his name and demanded to know if he was a Jew. When Eisner told them that he was, they announced that they were Catholics and didn’t want any Jews around them. Eisner replied that there was nothing he could do about it, that his family had just moved into the neighborhood. The kids then asked about the little boy clutching Billy Eisner’s hand. What was his name?
“Julian,” Eisner responded.
The kids laughed. “Jew-leen,” they taunted. “A sissy name.”
Eisner launched himself, fists flying, into the group. The fight, of course, was entirely one-sided. Billy came away with torn clothing, cuts and bruises, and a black eye. He took little solace from his father’s usual suggestion that he use his head rather than his fists to deal with these kids.
Later that day, he took his father’s advice in a way that would permanently change Julian’s life. If Julian’s name sounded Jewish to the kids on the street, Billy reasoned, maybe it would be safer for all concerned if he had another name.
“From now on,” Billy told his younger brother, “your name is Pete.”
The name stuck.
Eventually, Will Eisner would be recognized for the way he addressed his Jewish heritage and the anti-Semitism he and others endured in his graphic novels, but his feelings on the subject were more complex and, at times, ambivalent than he let on. He never changed his name, as did many Jewish comic book writers and artists, and he never backed away from the pride he felt in his heritage or the anger he felt toward the slights he witnessed on a daily basis.
The religious elements of his Judaism were another matter.
The Eisner family was far from Orthodox, regardless of whether that meant kosher cooking or attendance at the local synagogue. The family went to temple sporadically, usually on the High Holy Days, and both Eisner boys were bar mitzvahed, but practicing religion was never a high priority in their household. This might have been simply a matter of convenience for Sam and Fannie Eisner, but it was a far more calculated decision on Will’s part.
It was one of their observances of the High Holy Days that set off his strong feelings on organized religion. As Eisner told the story, his father had taken his family to the synagogue for one of the holy days—he couldn’t remember which one—and as they