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Zuni Maud (1891 – 1956) was a Yiddish-American cartoonist, satirist, caligrapher and co-founder of the first Yiddish-language puppet theatre in the United States.

Early life and education

Zuni Maud (זוני מאוד) was born Yitzhok Moyed in the shtetl of Vaslikov, Polish Lithuania. His father was a shammes (synagogue sexton). He studied at cheder, yeshiva and Talmud Torahs in Bialystok, Bielsk and Warsaw. While at these schools he would illustrate the Jewish texts.

Zuni Maud, illustration in Yiddish language chilren's book, 1918; cropped

Zuni Maud, the Jewish case for open borders, 1921

Yiddish press and theatre

He came to the United States in 1905 with his brother; he became Isaac Maud at Ellis Island. He did odd jobs while studying art at night at Cooper Union and the anarchist social center, the Ferrer School. While working as a messenger boy, he was given the nickname Sunny; he kept the name, but Yiddishized it to Zuni. In 1907 with other young intellectuals he founded the Yiddish magazine Di Yungt and later they started a satirical magazine, Der Kibitzer. His drawings in these journals were one or more panels and were about Jewish life; his first comic story in Yiddish was in 1910. From 1916-1920 he was the entertainment section editor of Forvets, as well as a cartooninist for several other newspapers. In 1924, he joined friends Yosl Cutler and Jack Tworkov to be set and costume designers for Maurice Schwartz's production of Abraham Goldfaden's Di Kishefmacherin. They created puppets for the show and decided to lauch a puppet theatre. The trio expanded their early work during a summer spent in the Catskills, at a summer home of left wing painters and writers, who offered opinions. In 1925 the trio opened the Modjacot (a portmanteau of their names) Spiel Theatre, the first Yiddish puppet theatre in America. Tworkov dropped out very soon, and the amalgam name became Modicot. The "semi-creepy Yiddish speaking puppets" were grotesque and sets tended to the surreal. Plays were delivered with an artful and sharp satire of Yiddish life, with a left-wing political outlook, but maintaining a comic edge. Collaborating with Cutler, their work was always infused with social commentary, surrealism, cubism and cynical humor. The plays articulated "the clash between tradition and modernity marking Yiddish life in New York," and "skewered everything from contemporary politics to Jewish life." In 1929 Modicot toured for three years, first in America, then Europe, with visits to London, Paris, Vilna, Warsaw, Amsterdam and finishing in the Soviet Union. The European tours were well received. In Vilna they played to 75 sold-out performances in one month. In Warsaw the Yiddish press had unmitigated praise for Modicot, recommending it to "all Jewish workers," and noting:

The entire program is full of extraordinary folk humor, wonderful ideas, and splendid technique. We have truly Jewish wrinkles and gestures, words and mumbles, signs and groans, which came about from Jewish sources and a Jewish way of life.

Cutler and Maud had differing but complimentary personality profiles:

Cutler is the opposite of Maud. Maud is difficult, Cutler—easy. Maud is stubborn, Cutler—acquiescent. Maud is brutally critical, Cutler—naive and mild. The poet Zishe Vaynper also commented on how different their personalities were, writing that their artistic work together created a kind of harmony which brought them to their artistic goal. He further stated that they were the only artists who brought an element of fun into the proletarian movement.

A versatile artist he illustrated many books, mainly children's, worked as a set designer for the Yiddish theatre and was a noted calligrapher.

Retrospective

In 2015 the theatre collective Great Small Works performed Muttergang and Other Cheerful Downfalls, a bilingual Yiddish-English revisiting of Maud and Cutler's artistic works, re-working original scripts and using puppets and actors. Their work has recently been considered to be a model for changing power relatinships.

Later life and death

Upon returning from the 1933 European tour Maud and Cutler had a "tragic" split up, for unknown reasons. Maud, described as having "a certain melancholy," largely disappeared from the theatre world. After a failed one man art show, he devoted his time to painting for himself at the family bungalow colony in the Catskills. He was pro-communist. During his tours of the Soviet Union, he met and befriended many Jewish artists and writers. In 1956 he was informed that Stalin had executed many of his friends. He died that night of a heart attack. "Since then he has disappeared into the nether world of Yiddish history."