By Samuel G. Freedman
The New York Times
October 13, 2006
When Rabbi Simcha Weinstein speaks of repentance at the B'nai Avraham synagogue in Brooklyn Heights, he often thinks of a young man he met decades ago by the name of Peter Parker.
Parker had been walking home after competing in a wrestling match, vain in the aftermath of his victory, and as a robber dashed past him, he did nothing. That same robber proceeded to attack and kill Parker's uncle.
Coming upon the scene, the nephew was struck by such guilt and remorse that he resolved to spend the rest of his life fighting crime.
As any fan of comic books would recognize, Peter Parker is Spider-man, created by Stan Lee and drawn by Jack Kirby. Parker's moment of moral awakening occurred in the first issue of the Spider-man strip, published in 1962 and discovered by Weinstein during his own boyhood in the early '80s.
Something else that Weinstein came to learn much more recently was that Lee and Kirby were Jewish -- born Stanley Lieber and Jacob Kurtzberg. So it seemed to the rabbi no accident that their comic resonated with a quintessentially Jewish theological theme.
That insight, among others drawn from Weinstein's study of the classic superhero comics, infuses a new book, Up, Up and Oy Vey! The volume, which has nearly sold out its first run of 5,000 copies, contends that writer-artists of the classic comics, many of them Jewish, were influenced by their religious heritage in devising characters and plots.
"I feel queasy when I read people who use pop culture to try to proselytize," said Weinstein, a member of the Lubavitcher Hasidic sect who is the campus rabbi at Pratt Institute. "And I didn't want to enforce my own fantasy.
"But I knew the writers were Jewish. That's a historical fact. And when I bought all the comics, and gave them my rabbi's reading, I saw something there. Judaism is filled with superheroes and villains: Samson, Pharaoh. And it's a religion rich in storytelling and in themes of being moral, ethical, spiritual."
That thesis made sense to another expert in the field, the author David Hajdu.
"Many of the important early comic-book creators were barely adults when they started working," said Hajdu, whose coming book, The Ten-Cent Plague, explores the comics craze of the postwar years. "Nor were they worldly, nor very well read or educated. They drew, literally, from what they knew. That is, the culture of their homes and their neighborhoods, which were mostly Jewish."
Weinstein has gone deep in making the connection between Judaism and the comics. His upbringing gave him a firm footing in each world.
Reared in a secular family in England, he started reading comics as an offshoot of his passion for the movies. He went on to study at film school and work as a location scout for productions. In his late teens and early 20s, though, he also felt the pull of faith and, ultimately, enrolled in a yeshiva in Jerusalem.
Ordained in 2003, Weinstein, 30, wound up being appointed the rabbi at Pratt, the institution devoted to the visual arts. There he found that his knowledge of and ardor for comics provided a common language with the students.
In his research, the rabbi delved into the biographies of comic-book greats. Kirby was the son of an Orthodox father and grew up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
In the early '60s, when he developed the character known as the Thing as part of the Fantastic Four, Kirby gave the bricklike being a human past as Benjamin Jacob Grimm, using his and his father's Jewish names, and a tough childhood on Yancy Street, a thinly veiled version of the real Delancey Street.
For his home, Kirby even made a drawing of the Thing wearing a yarmulke and a prayer shawl.
Along with those examples of Judaic influence, Up, Up, and Oy Vey! offers instances like the name of Superman's father, Jor-El, with "El" being the suffix to many biblical names. The book also cites the common use of masks and false identities among superheroes, akin to the heroine Esther in the Purim story, who goes by an alias in Persian society.
Since publication, Up, Up and Oy Vey! has brought Weinstein invitations to book fairs, Jewish events and comics conventions in places like San Diego and London.
Trying not to overreach, Weinstein deleted a passage that likened Batman's bat cave to the Machpelah, the so-called Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, where the Bible says Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca and Leah are buried.
"Simcha," he says aloud to himself, "the night you wrote that, you had too much Starbucks."
Copyright © 2006, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
The New York Times
October 13, 2006
When Rabbi Simcha Weinstein speaks of repentance at the B'nai Avraham synagogue in Brooklyn Heights, he often thinks of a young man he met decades ago by the name of Peter Parker.
Parker had been walking home after competing in a wrestling match, vain in the aftermath of his victory, and as a robber dashed past him, he did nothing. That same robber proceeded to attack and kill Parker's uncle.
Coming upon the scene, the nephew was struck by such guilt and remorse that he resolved to spend the rest of his life fighting crime.
As any fan of comic books would recognize, Peter Parker is Spider-man, created by Stan Lee and drawn by Jack Kirby. Parker's moment of moral awakening occurred in the first issue of the Spider-man strip, published in 1962 and discovered by Weinstein during his own boyhood in the early '80s.
Something else that Weinstein came to learn much more recently was that Lee and Kirby were Jewish -- born Stanley Lieber and Jacob Kurtzberg. So it seemed to the rabbi no accident that their comic resonated with a quintessentially Jewish theological theme.
That insight, among others drawn from Weinstein's study of the classic superhero comics, infuses a new book, Up, Up and Oy Vey! The volume, which has nearly sold out its first run of 5,000 copies, contends that writer-artists of the classic comics, many of them Jewish, were influenced by their religious heritage in devising characters and plots.
"I feel queasy when I read people who use pop culture to try to proselytize," said Weinstein, a member of the Lubavitcher Hasidic sect who is the campus rabbi at Pratt Institute. "And I didn't want to enforce my own fantasy.
"But I knew the writers were Jewish. That's a historical fact. And when I bought all the comics, and gave them my rabbi's reading, I saw something there. Judaism is filled with superheroes and villains: Samson, Pharaoh. And it's a religion rich in storytelling and in themes of being moral, ethical, spiritual."
That thesis made sense to another expert in the field, the author David Hajdu.
"Many of the important early comic-book creators were barely adults when they started working," said Hajdu, whose coming book, The Ten-Cent Plague, explores the comics craze of the postwar years. "Nor were they worldly, nor very well read or educated. They drew, literally, from what they knew. That is, the culture of their homes and their neighborhoods, which were mostly Jewish."
Weinstein has gone deep in making the connection between Judaism and the comics. His upbringing gave him a firm footing in each world.
Reared in a secular family in England, he started reading comics as an offshoot of his passion for the movies. He went on to study at film school and work as a location scout for productions. In his late teens and early 20s, though, he also felt the pull of faith and, ultimately, enrolled in a yeshiva in Jerusalem.
Ordained in 2003, Weinstein, 30, wound up being appointed the rabbi at Pratt, the institution devoted to the visual arts. There he found that his knowledge of and ardor for comics provided a common language with the students.
In his research, the rabbi delved into the biographies of comic-book greats. Kirby was the son of an Orthodox father and grew up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
In the early '60s, when he developed the character known as the Thing as part of the Fantastic Four, Kirby gave the bricklike being a human past as Benjamin Jacob Grimm, using his and his father's Jewish names, and a tough childhood on Yancy Street, a thinly veiled version of the real Delancey Street.
For his home, Kirby even made a drawing of the Thing wearing a yarmulke and a prayer shawl.
Along with those examples of Judaic influence, Up, Up, and Oy Vey! offers instances like the name of Superman's father, Jor-El, with "El" being the suffix to many biblical names. The book also cites the common use of masks and false identities among superheroes, akin to the heroine Esther in the Purim story, who goes by an alias in Persian society.
Since publication, Up, Up and Oy Vey! has brought Weinstein invitations to book fairs, Jewish events and comics conventions in places like San Diego and London.
Trying not to overreach, Weinstein deleted a passage that likened Batman's bat cave to the Machpelah, the so-called Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, where the Bible says Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca and Leah are buried.
"Simcha," he says aloud to himself, "the night you wrote that, you had too much Starbucks."
Copyright © 2006, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
No comments:
Post a Comment