As immigrant Jewish kids in the 30’s, 40’s - seeing a dude named Kal-El pass for goy and be a superhero to boot was, as I have heard it, a big deal. Heck, Michael Chabon wrote a “lit-ra-chure” novel based on the premise, Kavalier and Clay.
I am saying, more or less, that Superman was a superhero equivalent of Hank Greenberg, the big Detroit Tigers first baseman who was a hero to Jews for years, regardless of their main team fanboyness…
I don’t know what any of that means.
Dude - really? Greenberg was kinda like a Jackie Robinson for Jews but in the 1930’s. Subjected to HUGE anti-semitic abuse, didn’t play on Yom Kippur and was abused for that, while nearly breaking Babe Ruth’s homerun record. Took time out of baseball to serve in WW2 - basically a great, big, gentle giant of a great player who was a role model to everyone but especially Jews across the country.
He gave Jewish immigrant kids, like my dad who was second-gen immigrant Ukranian Jew, a hero and role model regardless of who their favorite team was otherwise.
Whether Superman was “officially” Jewish or not, folks like my dad saw him as a metaphor for their immigrant experience in a way…
“Superman” was created by two Jewish kids. According to Larry Tye in his book “Superman: The High-Flying History of America’s Most Enduring Hero” he is based on several very old Jewish folk tales.
Does being Jewish make him less super? Why is it necessary to prove he’s not?
The real question is, why didn’t he go kick nazi butt in 39.
Mostly because DC wasn’t Timely. Captain America is shown punching Hitler on the cover of his first issue. But DC was already trying to be respectable and was rapidly pulling Jerry Shuster away from the liberal social commentary he wrote into the early Superman stories.
DC saw a gold mine in Superman. By 1939 it had started a newspaper comic strip and was in negotiations for a radio show. The character also had a special comic book for the 1939 World’s Fair. Every ounce of corporate power was being used to create a safe, lovable, non-controversial character that the masses could idolize. The U.S. was not at war and loudly maintaining neutrality. There was no chance that DC would do anything to jeopardize the mint it was making by jumping out in front of popular opinion.
When the U.S. entered the war Superman was considered too powerful a character to beat up Nazis because he could end the war too easily and steal credit away from the actual soldiers. So they had him as Clark flunking his physical by “accidentally” using his X-ray vision to read a different eye chart in another room. Safely 4-F he could do good deeds on the home front and cheer the soldiers on.
Different companies, wildly differing worldviews.
Okay, celebrating xmas and talking to a pastor or both pretty solid evidence. However, surely, with all of the comics over the years, there’s a frame that shows Clark or his parents (with or without him*) going into a church-shaped building with a cross on it?
The fact that he resembles a jewish messiah is meaningless. The ‘foundling with a secret saves the world’ has been done for centuries in hundreds of variations, even by people who weren’t raised with any of the Abrahamic religions.
Also, I meant Jewish as the faith and set of values, not a race. Racially, Clark Kent is Kryptonian-American. The Kor-el link is dubious, at best. The only way he could be Jewish is if there were a canonical story about Jews being somehow descended from Kryptonains in the DC universe.
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So, Superman may or may not be Jewish, but he has same-sex Jewish parents. Doesn’t get any cuter than that!
If I’m not mistaken, that included battling Axis spies and fifth columnists in the USA. Many years ago, the late Bud Collier, who played Superman on the radio, reprised the role on The Tonight Show (Johnny Carson played Jimmy Olsen), and I think that was the plot of the old script they used. (I wish I could remember who Lois Lane was; I want to say Noel Niell, but I don’t think that’s right.)
It’s been ages since I’ve seen an episode of the TV series with George Reeves, but I’ll bet there was at least one with Red agents (it was, after all, the 1950s).
Just a bit ironic, considering that Muslims already do acclaim Jesus as the Messiah.
Seems to me that claiming to love the Jews just for what you can get out of them—mere pawns in an eschatological scheme—or claiming to love them on the condition that they convert to Christianity is not the sort of “love” that anyone really wants. If you truly love somebody, love them for who they are unconditionally, without seeking to exploit them for your own purposes to which they don’t even subscribe.
Wait - you think this discussion is about the “DC/Superman canon” and about where he has been portrayed as actively Jewish within the actual comic books?
Of course he hasn’t. If that is the topic, the thread wouldn’t have gotten out of the gate.
I don’t have a link if that’s what you’re asking. I heard it in one of those modern marvel shows that History Channel used to do before they switched to the alternative ‘science’ stuff. That’s why I used the “supposedly” qualifier; I suspect it may not be accurate.
No, it just makes Hitler a little less crazy and that simply cannot be tolerated.* It’s much more fun to imagine this quote as childish sulking than some clever insight or actual knowledge.