Saturday, August 23, 2008

Such a Nice Young Superman . . . .

In the course of surfing the Web and procrastinating on writing a magazine article I promised to complete by the end of the month, I came across this blog post from two years ago by a comics fan/blogger who is also an orthodox jew. The blogger nitpicks (his characterization) a scene from a then-recent Superman story, written by Gail Simone, in which Superman is a guest at the Shabbos dinner of one of Clark Kent's co-workers. This sparked a lively discussion in the comments section. The comments included several by the story's writer, who said she wanted to pay tribute to the fact that Superman was created by two jews (Siegel and Shuster), has a Hebrew name (which he changed to something more middle-American when he emigrated to earth), and might well be described as a nice jewish boy; but who has always been depicted as Christian. (Or Raoist, if he's practicing Kryptonian religions.)

One of the most interesting comments postulates that no jewish law applies to Kal-El, because he is not human. It further hypothesizes that Wonder Woman should be banned from any kind of jewish celebration, because her existence violates a commandment: Since she began life as a clay figure into which the Greek gods breathed life, she is an idol, or a graven image. (Another commentator pointed out that if a B'aal Shem had brought her to life, she would be a golem, and would be perfectly kosher.)

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