By Bill Simons

Following Israel’s stunning triumph over multiple enemies in the 1967 Six-Day War, the definitive Superman poster appeared. The trademark Superman metamorphosis had him entering a telephone booth to take off his Clark Kent wardrobe and emerge in Superman attire. Riffing on tradition, the 1967 poster depicts a bespectacled Hasid – beard, payot, black coat and hat – removing his religious garments to reveal the Superman outfit with the letter “S” replaced by its Hebrew equivalent, a red crown-shaped shin, centered on the chest of the blue bodysuit. Rather than reinforcing the trope about Jewish physical ineptitude, the popular poster elicited Gentile respect and Jewish pride in Israeli fighting prowess. 
By creation, content and casting, Superman is Jewish. In 1931, writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster, both then 17, were Cleveland high school buddies with a mutual interest in science fiction and comics. They contributed to the student newspaper before founding their own little “magazine,” Science Fiction. In January 1933, the month that Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany, the Jewish teens presented “The Reign of the Superman,” a tale of a mad scientist who dupes a soup-line victim of the Great Depression to ingest a serum giving him the power of thought control and ambition to control the world. 
The scientist and that superman both come to a bad end. But Shuster and Siegel returned to the superman concept, taking it in a different direction. By the late 1930s, the young collaborators fashioned comic strips that invested their Superman with his defining attributes: birth on the doomed planet of Krypton, immense strength, formidable leaping ability (the flying came later), caped costume, secret identity as reporter Clark Kent, and devotion to truth and justice (“the American Way” was a World War II addition). Superman made his national debut in the April 1938 issue of Action Comics No. 1. The popular character soon became an American sensation. 
Hard times create a yearning for a hero, a deliverer, a standard bearer, even a messiah. As isolation and appeasement enervated the great Western democracies, Hitler escalated brutally aggressive policies of rearmament, territorial expansion and antisemitism in 1938, subjugating Austria and the Sudetenland while unleashing Kristallnacht physical attacks on Jews accompanied by destruction of their property. In an America fearful, yet clinging to the desperate belief that it could escape the gathering storm beyond its borders, a 1938 radio broadcast of “War of the Worlds” created mass panic of a Martian invasion. 
Appearing on the cusp of World War II in an America still in the throes of economic depression, the heroic exploits of Superman offered hope. For Jewish Americans, the 1938 pursuit by baseball slugger Hank Greenberg, a landsman, of Babe Ruth’s single season record of 60 home runs provided another form of inspiration in a troubled time. (The Detroit first baseman finished with 58.) Concerned about the dangerous ascent of antisemitism at home and abroad, Shuster and Siegel gifted Superman with qualities that the observant might recognize as Jewish. 
Clearly, the summoning of a champion with singular prowess bears resonances of the golem of Jewish folklore. Roy Schwartz’s “Is Superman Circumcised?” notes that Superman’s Krypton birth name, Kal-El, sounds Hebrew. Like Moses, a prince of Egypt and the son of Hebrew slaves, Superman confronted a polarizing dualism. Following the destruction of his homeland, the Shuster-Siegel hero lived in the diaspora. 
An immigrant Superman negotiated an identity complicated by the otherness of his origins and coupled with dedication to his adopted American home. Competing identities as Superman and Clark Kent signaled unresolved tensions between old and new world expectations. The remnant of a chosen people, Superman labored under the commandment of righteousness. Schwartz likens Clark’s hidden cape to the tallit beneath the pants and the large “S” on Superman’s chest a counter to the Nazi swastika. In the February 27, 1940, issue of Look magazine, Superman captured a frightened Hitler, hoisted him in the air by the collar and threatened, “I’d like to land a strictly non-Aryan hook on your jaw” before delivering the Nazi dictator – and Soviet tyrant Josef Stalin – to the League of Nations for trial. 
A box office blockbuster, the newly released “Superman” (2025) movie has generated widespread debate and discussion amongst fans and critics. This woke and sensitive Superman is more comfortable proclaiming his “love” than is his romantic partner, the redoubtable newspaper colleague Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan, best known for playing Jewish comedian Midge Maisel), from whom his Clark Kent identity is no secret. During a 12-minute interview/lover’s prattle, Lois calls into question Clark’s journalistic ethics for writing a story based on an interview with himself (Superman) and for intervening in the war between Jahranpur and Boravia, a U.S. ally, on behalf of the former. Superman defends himself, explaining that Boravia was the invading aggressor and that his actions caused no deaths and, in fact, saved lives. Several pundits have claimed commonalities between Jahranpur and Gaza. 
The primary storyline in “Superman” (2025) concerns the obsessive attempts of Lex Luthor, a villainous and brilliant Elon Musk-like entrepreneur, technology innovator and arms dealer, to destroy Superman. Luthor’s pathological hatred derives from his flawed replacement-theory perception that Superman remains an immigrant alien whose kind will displace humanity. 
“Superman” (2025) is the first film to feature an actor of Jewish lineage as the protagonist. “Superman” (2025) introduces the muscular and handsome, 6’4”, 238-pound David Corenswet, 32, in the title role. He is the son of attorneys, the late John Corenswet, a Jew, and Caroline Packard, a Quaker. When David married actress Julia Best Warner, a Catholic, in 2023, a priest and Rabbi Edward Cohn co-officiated, and Jewish customs, including the chuppah wedding canopy and the breaking of the glass, were observed. 
Wonder Woman also has authentic Jewish bona fides. Like Superman, she is a virtuous DC superhero, committed to battling evil and defending justice. Since 2017, Gal Gadot, an Israeli Jew, has portrayed Wonder Woman in four films. Despite donning an exotic costume when in superhero mode, Gadot, an athlete, Miss Israel 2004, model, actress and veteran of the Israel Defense Forces, leavens the physicality of Wonder Woman with a modern feminist sensibility. Of the war in Gaza, Gadot advocates return of the Israeli hostages, support for her nation’s citizen soldiers and peace with security. 
I am a fan of Jerry Seinfeld, Fran Drescher and their comedic ilk. But cinematic superheroes Corenswet and Gadot present a counter to the still too frequent casting of Jewish actors as pushy, neurotic and self-absorbed characters.