(Jewish Group) Superman was secretly a symbol of Jews standing up to Nazi bigotry

[Behind the Aegis]

“The literary narrative is a place where theory takes place,” author Barbara Christian asserted. I would add that science-fiction provides the occasion to stretch the possibilities, to transcend the constitutive bounds and constraints by providing a context in which theory can function unencumbered.

I often think of the figure of Superman, that immigrant from a distant planet who came to Earth with powers far beyond those of moral humans.

Superman can be interpreted as a Jewish man passing as an Anglo Gentile on a number of levels. Two young Jewish high school friends from Cleveland, Ohio created the comic strip. Though Jerome Siegel (1914 – 1996) and Joseph Shuster (1914 – 1992) fashioned their superhero in 1934—one year after Adolf Hitler’s ascendancy to power in Germany—they would wait four long years until a comic book publisher, D.C. Comics would pick up the strip and introduce their super-powered man to the public.

Siegel wrote the text, and Shuster illustrated their creation. Both science-fiction fanatics, Siegel and Shuster graduated from Glenville High School in 1934, at a time in world history of extreme moral crisis, a time that signaled the beginning of the end of European Jewry as they had known it.

more...

[quaint]

1. Maybe...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superman#Religious_themes

[Behind the Aegis]

2. There is no maybe about it.

Then along comes non-Jews to "Christfy" Superman. Not uncommon for the dominant culture to co-opt, rebrand, of culturally appropriate, if you will, the works of a minority.

[quaint]

3. Whatever you wish.

All that said, historians such as Martin Lund and Les Daniels argue that the evidence for Judaic influence in Siegel and Shuster's stories is merely circumstantial. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were not practicing Jews and never acknowledged the influence of Judaism in any memoir or interview.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superman#Religious_themes

[Behind the Aegis]

5. Um...yeah, odd for me to take this stance in the JEWISH GROUP.

First, practicing or not (where was that "fact" pulled from), they were Jewish and experienced their lives as Jews. The themes are obvious to those who actually know what a Jew is and what the Jewish experience was at that time.

The following year, Siegel re-used the name The Superman to develop a new character that became one of the most famous superheroes of all time. Shuster modelled the hero on Douglas Fairbanks Sr., and modelled his bespectacled alter ego, Clark Kent, on a combination of Harold Lloyd[5][20] and Shuster himself, with the name "Clark Kent" derived from movie stars Clark Gable and Kent Taylor.[9] Lois Lane was modeled on Joanne Carter, a model hired by Shuster. (She later married co-creator Jerry Siegel in 1948.)[9] Siegel and Shuster's origins as children of Jewish immigrants is also thought to have influenced their work. Timothy Aaron Pevey argued that they crafted "an immigrant figure whose desire was to fit into American culture as an American", something which Pevey feels taps into an important aspect of American identity.[21]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Shuster

In his memoir, Siegel recalls how he’d been increasingly frustrated with rising antisemitism in Europe and the U.S., and was “very favorably impressed by a movie called the ‘The Golem,’ about an avenging being who used his awesome strength to crush a tyrant and save those who were being oppressed.”

Elliot S. Maggin was Superman’s principal writer from the 1970s to the mid-1980s. His Judaism and studies of kabbalah and Martin Buber heavily influenced his work, and he acknowledged ascribing “effectively Jewish doctrine and ritual to the Kryptonian tradition.” That Superman is Jewish, he said, “is so self-evident that it may as well be canon.”

https://forward.com/culture/504342/superman-10-jewish-things-siegel-shuster-samson-moses-golem/

[willamette]

6. Judea was renamed to Palestine by the Romans in (about) 163 Common Era.

This is my analysis as to the question of, "Is Judaism a religion, or a culture, or a race?" People who come/came from this area carry the mores and characteristics of that civilization. They may have different religions and taboos, but their commonality is their area of origin. People from the originally named Judea are not all Jews, nor are they all Arabs, Muslims, Christians, or Druze. In my opinion, one of the confusions is that people don't always get to define what group they belong to. One could identify as not a member of a religion or place of origin, but the decisions of who was/is killed based on group membership was/is not up to the people assigned to the different groups. Likewise, the religions and the different law structures passed/pass laws against supposed miscegenation. That reinforces a morphological similarity within groups. "Funny, you don't look Jewish."

I have been accustomed to saying that I am a secular Jew. Or, a Jewish atheist. Or, a Golda Meir Jew (she was also an atheist). I've been doing a lot of reading, and have been watching a lot of presentations and interviews by Middle Eastern scholars since the Hamas hordes overran the kibbutzim. I have come to the conclusion that I am Judean American, rather than a Jewish American. I carry the culture and the civilization, the mores and the ethics of the region, but not the religion. I do understand that there are Jewish congregations who are redefining the religion for their congregants (Reconstructionist) to get rid of the most egregious of the inequalities, taboos, and required performances. But for me, I am more comfortable in affirming the culture, and having ancestral roots in Judea.

[no_hypocrisy]

4. Ubermensch!