For over 80 years, Superman has been one of the most recognizable pop culture icons. Along with that, his creation has directly impacted contemporary storytelling, and it helped give birth to one of the most popular genres nowadays: the superhero genre. Whether it’s in comics, on television, or in theaters, Superman’s impact is hard to miss, and it’s all thanks to Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, two Jewish men who changed the game for storytelling. However, what they were building off of came long before Superman.
While not canonically Jewish, Superman has Jewish roots. Roy Schwartz’ book, Is Superman Circumcised? The Complete Jewish History of the World’s Greatest Hero, takes a deeper look at the lore and 30s-era culture that inspired Superman. Schwartz sat with CBR for an exclusive interview about his book and discussed The Man of Steel’s history.
Growing up, what appealed? to you about the character of Superman?
When I was a kid, I was always a Superman fan, starting with the Christopher Reeve movies, and that was my gateway drug into superhero comics, which were my gateway into harder drugs, which is comic books as a medium in general, which is why I can’t actually afford real drugs. I’ve always looked up to Superman as a role model. The fact that he’s fictional didn’t make him any less real for me as a kid, as he is for millions of other children, past, present and future. When I was a kid, I’d ask myself what would Superman do? He was sort of the light to show the way.
He is also the first superhero and the mode from which all the superheroes were created. He is the big bang. All the matter, all the energy of the universe begins and ends with him. All the tropes, all the conventions, everything begins from him, and every other superhero following ever is a reaction to him in one way or another.
When I went to undergrad and then grad school, I wrote a lot of my academic research focused on pop culture phenomenon, a lot of it on comic books. I ended up writing my thesis about the heroic figure in Jewish lore compared to European Christian lore and the difference in the concepts of heroism between these two traditions, similarities and differences. Surprising no one more than myself, NYU has a thesis competition, and I won second place out of the entire class, big surprise. That got some press and got me a fellowship at the New York Public Library. I was a writer in residence for a couple of years. I ended up using Superman as the paradigm, as the avatar to explore the Jewish historical context, as well as Jewish themes in superhero comics, beginning in the Golden Age, retracing all the way to today.
With so many iconic and founding superheroes for this genre and comic books in general created by Jewish people, why focus on Superman specifically, especially when he is not in a traditional sense Jewish in the comics, like other characters, looking at The Thing, Magneto or even Harley Quinn?
Most recently, Whistle, who was explicitly Jewish and created as Jewish, not retconned later on, and whose cultural background informs her personality much the same way that Willow Wilson’s Ms. Marvel informs hers. Because like any other culture, it could be incidental or vital to the character. What you are is not what defines you. Who you are does, but those things also inform each other. That changes from person to person.
First of all, Superman is a paradigmatic superhero. He is the mode from which all others are created. He is also the richest in your signification, which is really why I chose him. It’s not so much my personal affinity for him, as much as he was the perfect vehicle for this exploration.
When I say Superman is Jewish, I don’t mean the fictional Superman. He was born on the planet Krypton. He’s an extraterrestrial who just happens to look like a hunky Caucasian male. He might as well be a dolphin, biologically. He was raised in Kansas. He is canonically Christian, usually Protestant or Methodist. In one New 52 story, he was even a Southern Baptist. He is not Jewish, but the real Superman, by which I mean the fictional character in the real world, is a Jewish character. He was created by Jews. He was developed throughout most of his history by Jews, and he was imbued with Jewish signification. Because the context of his creation inevitably found its way into the content.
Creators, as with any other arts, draw upon their background — consciously or not — to inform their creation. That doesn’t invalidate any of their contributions. For example, Superman is also very much a Christ figure. The two are by no means exclusive. Quite the opposite makes him a richer, more interesting, more relatable character for a wider range of people.
Talking about how there has been this focus, especially in adaptations, on Superman in relation to being like a Christ figure, you also touch upon in your book how he pulls from other religious figures. Which other religious figures did you notice that he pulled from? What are their significance to Superman as a character, as well as his overarching story?
I try to be very responsible in my book in saying here’s what we know for a fact. Here’s what’s pretty self-evident or obvious. Here’s what’s likely, here’s what’s possible, and here’s what’s just me being playful. I try to be very responsible clarifying which is which. Superman’s other roots or similarities to things like the story of Samson, the super-strong, super-fast, mighty leaping Israelite judge in the Bible, as well as to the legend of the Golem of Prague has been noted, but it’s been noted as conjecture.
Superman’s co-creator Jerry Siegel wrote a memoir in which he details all the influences for the creation of Superman and the development of Superman in the following years. He wrote in 1979, following the movie, and it was lost. It only got discovered in 2011, when Larry Tye was doing research for his biography of the character, Superman: The High Flying History of the World’s Greatest Hero. He’s the only one before me who dived into this kind of treasure trove of material. He donated the original manuscript found to the Columbia University Library, and I schlepped up there, and I read through the thing, actually scanned the whole thing. I was amazed to find out that Jerry Siegel does acknowledge, amongst many other pop culture influences, comic strip influences Tarzan, Popeye, John Carter, etc., and he was also heavily inspired by his Jewish tradition and consciously drew upon it.
He describes how the main impetus for the creation of Superman is his frustration with anti-semitism in the United States, the persecution of Jews in Europe, and the difference between the public at large to the suppression. Superman Volume One #4 is a conscious and deliberate homage to Samson toppling the pillars of the Philistine temple.
He was also heavily inspired by the legend of the Golem, particularly in the 1920 movie, which was a huge movie back then. Everybody had seen it. Everybody knew about it. In creating his indestructible, unstoppable defender of the innocent, so he definitely drew upon his culture in several ways.
Along with drawing from his culture, we also see the context of what was happening in the world at the time of Superman’s creation was influencing who Superman was, specifically touching on how there was antisemitism in America. I would love to hear a little bit more about how that context of the late ’30s, early ’40s helped influence who Superman became and what type of stories we saw spawned from that.
I provide a lot of that background and context in my book because I wanted the readers to really be able to place themselves in that time and place and be able to understand the mindset of these comic book creators and their immense fear and frustration and anger. Superman before he was the Man of Steel, was the Man of Tomorrow, which emphasizes progressiveness. So much for the people who don’t like his new slogan, “better tomorrow.”
Before that, originally, he was a champion of the oppressed, which is a different thing. He was specifically a protector of people being oppressed. When you’re created by people who are being oppressed to the highest degree, they’re being massacred systematically in those years, that resonates very differently. Anti-semitism in the United States was swelling, parallel to what was going on in Europe. It was a very scary time to be a Jew in America. You had the American Nazi Party, the German American Bund, marching down Fifth Avenue, 22,000 people strong. They filled up Madison Square Garden. They had a giant militia training camp on Long Island.
Creators like Jeremy Siegel, Andrew Schuster, Jack Kirby, and Joe Simon got threats and bomb threats. People picketed at the offices. People tried to make their way into the lobby and all of these kinds of stories. It was a very scary time, which is one of several reasons why these creators all anglicized their names. They basically assumed a secret identity, but Superman was born out of that historical moment.
Looking back at creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, how have new comic creators beyond the original crew continued to explore this Jewish lore and traditions through these characters in later decades?
That’s a great question. I wish I was asked that more. People tend to focus on the warriors of the Golden Age. I’m not the first one to note Superman’s Jewish parallels. I’m not the first one to write about them, but everything seems to end in 1945, and Jews did not stop existing in 1945. Superman did not stop existing in 1945, and the comic book industry was still predominantly Jewish well into the ’80s, so both the historical, cultural context, as well as themes in the comics, continued, particularly during the Silver and Bronze Ages.
Krypton really was not elaborated upon much until the full origin of Superman was written mostly by Bill Finger, Batman co-creator — also Jewish — in 1948. It got developed in later years, particularly by Seigle, when he came back to DC, and it really became a holocaust metaphor. We tend to think of Superman in the ’50s as this kind of Leave it to Beaver, I Love Lucy happy-go-lucky smiley guy. If you actually read these comics, he clutches his head issue after issue. He cries, and he’s torn, and he’s grief-stricken over the loss of his culture and the loss of his family and the loss of his people. He tries to go back in time again to change things and fails. He tries to learn more about his culture. It’s when the Fortress of Solitude becomes this museum to the long-lost world. It’s his Jewish creators coming to terms with what was coming out in the years following the war.
An example I like to give is this “little known” story from the ’90s called The Death of Superman. The very first story was Jerry Siegel’s Death of Superman from Superman #129, I want to say from November 1961. That story is entirely based thematically, as well as visually, on the real-life story of the capture and trial of Adolf Eichmann, the architecture of the final solution. It’s this kind of imaginary story — a what if — where Lex Luthor manages to kill Superman. He goes into hiding. Supergirl — who at that time is like a covert agent for Superman and the world does not know about her — finds him. She grabs him and she brings him to trial… They try him in this bulletproof prisoner’s docket, which the imagery is directly taken from images from the trial of Eichmann, who was similarly placed in a prisoner docket of glass with a guard on each side. Both trials are broadcast around the world. They’re called the trial of the century. Just in case it’s lost on somebody, Luther when he’s eventually sentenced to death is even called the worst criminal, the worst villain since out of Eichmann. This is one of Jerry Seigel’s last stories. In his memoir, [Seigle] says it’s one of his two favorite Superman stories ever. It’s entirely based on Jewish preoccupations at the time.
Following Seigle, one of the increative force becomes Elliot S. Maggin, who’s still around today. [Maggin] is a brilliant writer who is one of the main people responsible for this being one of the richest, if not the richest, mythology in fiction anywhere. He drew heavily upon his tradition. In one interview, he says it’s so self-evident that Superman is Jewish it might as well be canon.
My favorite example of his body of work is Miracle Monday, which is this year’s long, ongoing saga that starts in the comics, becomes a novel, goes back into comics, goes from 1978 or [1979], and goes into 1984. Then we have Superman #400, written by Elliot Maggin in October 1984. We learn all the details about Miracle Monday. It’s a spring festival celebrated in the far future, commemorating not just how Superman saved humanity time and again, but how he quote “taught us to live as a free people.” The father of the family raises a toast. The Father’s name Hertzog. He also happens to look like Hein Hertzog, the president of Israel at the time. He starts by saying, “This night is different from all other nights.” Then he raises a glass of wine, and he says, “Let all who are hungry come and eat,” which is literally the translation of the prayer from Passover Seder. Then each member of the family symbolically puts a portion of their food on a plate aside, symbolically to wait for Superman’s return.
This isn’t even meant to be on the slide. This is meant to be a playful adaptation of the Passover Seder, which thematically really works because the Seder, first of all, uses the famous Haggadah book, which is essentially an OG comic book. It’s an illustrated manuscript and the only one in Jewish tradition that is illustrated. It is to commemorate Moses who is the biggest hero of Jewish tradition, from which Superman draws an awful lot, primarily the parallels and their origin stories as babies sent to safety to avoid the doom of their people, found by people not their own, renamed and growing up to be saviors.
When looking back at the original Superman, and then the Superman we have today, what changed the most would you say about his character or what has stayed the same?
Superman, particularly if people aren’t actually readers of Superman, tends to be thought of as monolithic, never changing. He’s always been Superman. How dare you change this? How dare you change that? How dare you remove a comma from this thing? But the fact is that Superman has always evolved and always changed to reflect the culture of the moment. The Superman of 1938 is very different from the Superman in 1943. He started out as this kind of pugnacious, angry New Deal liberal who bullied the bullies, and he would throw people out windows and beat up wife beaters and take on slumlords. He was what we call today a social justice warrior. Then come the war year, and he becomes a role model. He becomes this war bond salesman, all American flag-waving guy, but still promoting heavily FDR’s new deal throughout the war.
He became this kind of buttoned-up super conservative patriarchal figure in the ’50s. Often we have this heavy theme of misogyny come in because women coming back from war and the place a woman society — all that is in the book. In the ’60s, particularly his identity changed from every issue to every issue, just like American identity was in constant flux. He grows ant’s head, the lion’s head. He produces a homunculus from his hand. He shoots rainbows from his fingertips, etc. All these crazy stories that at the time appealed to the very young or the very high.
Today, we understand this really works as a metaphor of identity exploration at a time when that was in great tumult in American society. The Burn made him a super republican explicitly, that’s what Burn was going for. We have the post 9-11 Superman, who is much more introspective and much more consequentialist in his attitude. Gone is the right and a wrong in the universe, and that distinction is not a difficult one to make. Now everything is, “Is this right? What is the responsibility to use my powers, but also what are my rights to enforce that on others?” — which is very much an America post 9-11 question to ask. Superman has always changed. That’s part of what makes him last. That’s part of what makes him an eternal character.
One thing that appealed to me about this book is how it looks at how Jewish immigrants and their kids would be so influential on the comic industry, and what would then become the superhero genre at large. Could you speak more to how they laid out the foundation for one of the most influential industries nowadays and one of the most influential genres?
It’s the biggest intellectual property, the biggest game in showbusiness, the biggest intellectual property ever. I would argue that, with all due respect to other action heroes, from Tarzan through James Bond to John McClane, what sets superheroes apart is that they inspire us to be better people. Superman, in a very real sense, has bettered the world. I think that’s something that should be recognized.
It’s very easy to be cynical, but it’s very real. Story after story, people became doctors because they grew up with superheroes. They became soldiers because they grew up with heroes. They became policemen and became teachers because of a group of superheroes. That’s a very real world impact, and that’s very valuable.
Also, Superman’s infamous publishers, Harry Donenfeld and Jack Liebowitz ended up donating all their money to charities in New York. The Long Island Jewish Hospital, which is now part of Northwell, was entirely funded by that money. Lives are being saved every day today, thanks to Superman cash, which I think is really cool.
Much like Jazz can be traced to a specific group of people in time and history, right? Jazz was created by Black Americans in Harlem and New Orleans in the early days of the 20th century. Comic books can be traced back to Jewish Americans, immigrants, and the children of immigrants, mostly in New York, who — between the depression and anti-semitism — couldn’t find a job doing anything else and created an industry of their own. Again, they drew upon their culture in creating these characters, sometimes consciously, sometimes not.
When Joe Simon was asked about it, he said, no, that it’s nonsense. When Jack Kirby was asked about, he said, “No, absolutely, that’s what I did.” Nonetheless, those themes are there. They can be found, and some of them are very obvious, and some of them are conjectural, but they’re there.
This isn’t about ownership or bragging rights. It’s about contribution and recognizing their contribution, which only makes the tapestry of the mythology that much richer, only adds layers. It’s something that inspires us, and it’s something that binds us.
Look at Comic Con, look how wonderful the microcosm is, that is of the world, people from all walks of life, from all backgrounds, all ages and all other different interests, all body shapes and races and ages and interests, and all get together, all to celebrate together their own kind of respective passions and attitudes and perspectives of this thing in this kind of judgment free, celebratory, joyous event. That is the best metaphor I can think of for how the rest of humanity should behave. We all owe it to comic books.
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