NY Post
06/19/2006
HE'S the ultimate American icon - tall, built, brave. And hot.
But now, as Superman is set to fly onto the big screen next week, bringing truth, justice and rippling muscles to a new generation of moviegoers, there comes word that the Man of Steel has a secret.
The man behind the red cape is a Yeshiva boy.
Superman - Jewish?
"Only a Jew would think of a name like Clark Kent," says Brooklyn Rabbi Simcha Weinstein.
"He's the bumbling, nebbish, Jewish stereotype. He's Woody Allen. Can't get the girl. Can't get the job - at the same time, he has this tremendous heritage he can't express."
Weinstein has just published "Up, Up, and Oy Vey!" (Leviathan Press), a work that concludes, with scholarly authority and voluminous footnotes, that beneath Supe's form-fitting tights, there lurks a circumcision.
In the book, and on his Web site, www.rabbisimcha.com, he outs the Jewish roots of other superheroes who conceal their true identities - an undoubtedly Jewish trait - such as Batman, the Hulk and Spider-Man.
Weinstein grew up in England as Simon, a boy who worshipped the pop-culture gods of Indiana Jones and James Bond.
After a career as a film-location scout, he married and moved to New York, where he learned that the history of his comic-book heroes and American Jews are intertwined.
"So I'm claiming Superman for the Jews," laughed the now-Chabad-Lubavitch rabbi of Pratt University.
Superman was dreamed up in the 1930s by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster of Cleveland, who wrote for the comics at a time when art and publishing outlets didn't want to hire people with Hebrew surnames.
The boys' influences are strictly Old Testament: Superman comics begin with Planet Krypton about to explode. Desperate to save his baby son, Superman's father, Jor-El ("El" is ancient Hebrew for "God"), sends the child to Earth, alone, in a spaceship.
Substitute a boat, and you've got the story of Moses.
As he makes his way on Earth as a Nazi-fighter, Superman longs for Krypton.
"In this world, he's very much an outsider. He's an alien," says Weinstein. "That's what Jews have been called throughout the world, aliens."
Interest in superheroes has skyrocketed in the recent times.
"The biggest movie after 9/11 was 'Spider-Man,'" said Weinstein. "We're looking for heroes.
"They're based on Jewish traditions and Jewish values, and they're something to be proud of."
And don't forget: Many Jewish names end with "man."
Good enough for me.
andrea.peyser@nypost.com
Copyright 2004 NYP Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.
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