With a heartfelt, Adieu! Jules Feiffer, Acerbic Cartoonist, Writer and Much Else, Dies at 95.

The New York Times wrote in their obituary of Feiffer: “In his long-running Village Voice comic strip and in his many plays and screenplays, he took delight in skewering politics, relationships, and human nature.

Mr. Feiffer was primarily known as a cartoonist. His syndicated black-and-white comic strip, “Feiffer,” which astringently articulated the cynical, neurotic, aggrieved, and ardently left-wing sensibilities of postwar Greenwich Village, began in The Village Voice in 1956 and ran for more than 40 years. But his career also encompassed novels, plays, screenplays, animation, and children’s books.

A recurrent element in much of his work was his acerbic view of human nature. An honest liberal and his very funny satire rang true even if you didn’t agree with him.”

Born on Jan. 26, 1929, in the Bronx, Feiffer was the son of a clothing shop Dad and a dress designer Mom. He worked for The Village Voice and then for The New York Times for many years. In 1986, Feiffer won a Pulitzer Prize for his cartoons.

One of the main characters in his cartoons was Bernard, “a young urban liberal given to anxiety attacks, stomachaches and obsessive confessionals.” You could see Feiffer in the character. His female dancing character could blithely dance through the most terrible times.

Feiffer told an interviewer from the Forward, “We were about as religious or not religious as 1930s Bronx Jews who wanted to assimilate. So there was a recognition of the High Holidays, and you were shoved into Hebrew school somewhere before bar mitzvah if you were a boy. That’s all. But this was rather common at that time unless you were Orthodox — that’s the way a lot of Jews lived. They wanted to melt into America. The best comparison is the Jewish movie producers who went to Hollywood at that time and essentially invented the American dream. It was never their intention to portray their people or Jewish history. Everybody wanted to be a goy.”

“But going to shul or praying or putting on a shawl was never part of my childhood or my thought process.”