"Is Superman Circumcised? The Complete Jewish History of the World's Greatest Hero" (McFarland) is the provocative title of Roy Schwartz' detailed analysis of the most famous comic book hero in history. The book is very big, as befitting Superman: it weighs a pound and a half, contains 364 pages and measures 7x12 inches.
Israeli-born Schwartz, a director of marketing and business development for a law firm, has merged his keen knowledge of all things Jewish with his childhood love of comics. The result is a highly readable volume replete with many pages of notes, numerous illustrations, website listings, and a bibliography.
Schwartz presents a fascinating thesis: in 1934, a year after Hitler gained power in Germany, two Jewish young men from Cleveland - Joe Schuster and Jerry Siegel - created Superman. Their mythical "Man of Steel" provided their fellow Jews, and indeed the entire world, with an invincible and beloved anti-Nazi warrior who ultimately morphed over the ensuing decades into a universal fighter for Tikkun Olam, the need to repair a world filled with injustice, evil, and brokenness.
As millions of people know, Superman was born in outer space on the planet Krypton and his father had the Hebrew sounding name Jor-El. The youngster, named Kal-El, leaves Krypton in a rocket ship and is deposited in rural "Smallville, Kansas" at the home of Martha and Jonathan Kent. The couple take in the mysterious visitor and give the child from space a mundane, earthly name: Clark Kent. In time, "the mild-mannered" Clark becomes a newspaper journalist in a Manhattan look-alike city called Metropolis.
Israeli-born Schwartz, a director of marketing and business development for a law firm, has merged his keen knowledge of all things Jewish with his childhood love of comics. The result is a highly readable volume replete with many pages of notes, numerous illustrations, website listings, and a bibliography.
Schwartz presents a fascinating thesis: in 1934, a year after Hitler gained power in Germany, two Jewish young men from Cleveland - Joe Schuster and Jerry Siegel - created Superman. Their mythical "Man of Steel" provided their fellow Jews, and indeed the entire world, with an invincible and beloved anti-Nazi warrior who ultimately morphed over the ensuing decades into a universal fighter for Tikkun Olam, the need to repair a world filled with injustice, evil, and brokenness.
As millions of people know, Superman was born in outer space on the planet Krypton and his father had the Hebrew sounding name Jor-El. The youngster, named Kal-El, leaves Krypton in a rocket ship and is deposited in rural "Smallville, Kansas" at the home of Martha and Jonathan Kent. The couple take in the mysterious visitor and give the child from space a mundane, earthly name: Clark Kent. In time, "the mild-mannered" Clark becomes a newspaper journalist in a Manhattan look-alike city called Metropolis.
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