>> book fair ,t1ISH erv6, V4p 4 / From Kal-El To Clark Kent The Jewish origins of Superman. Larry Tye Special to the Jewish News H e didn't look Jewish. Not with his perfect pug nose, electric blue eyes and a boyish spit curl that suggested Anglo as well as Saxon. No hint in his sleek movie-star name, Clark Kent, which could only belong to a gentile and probably one with a lifelong membership at the country club. The surest sign that Kent was no Semite came when the bespectacled everyman donned royal blue tights and a furling red cape to transform into a Superman with rippling musdes and magnifying superpowers. Who ever heard of a Jewish strongman? The evidence of his ethnic origin lay elsewhere, starting with Kal-El, his Kryptonian name. El is a suffix in Judaism's most cherished birthrights, from Isra-el to the prophets Samu-el and Dani-el. It means "God." Kal is the root of the Hebrew words for "voice" and "vessel': Together they suggest that the superbaby rocketed to Earth by his dying father was not just a Jew, but a very special one. Like Moses. Both babies were rescued by non-Jews and raised in foreign cultures — Moses by Pharaoh's daughter, Kal-El by Kansas farmers named Kent — and all the adoptive parents quickly learned how exceptional their foundlings were. Clues mounted from there. The three legs of the Superman myth — truth, justice and the American way — are straight out of the Mishnah, the codi- fication of Jewish oral traditions. "The world:' it reads, "endures on three things: justice, truth and peace: The explosion of Krypton conjures up images from the mystical Kabbalah, where the divine ves- sel was shattered and Jews were called on to perform tikkun olam by repairing the vessel and the world. The destruction of Kal-El's planet and people also rings of the Nazi Holocaust, as well as the effort to save Jewish children through Kindertransports, both brewing when Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were publishing their first comics. Larry Tye A last rule of thumb: When a name ends in "man:, the bearer is Jewish, a superhero, or both. Superman had even stronger cultural ties to the faith of his founders. He started life as the consummate liberal, champion- ing causes from disarmament to the wel- fare state. He was the ultimate foreigner, escaping to America from his intergalactic shted and shedding his Jewish name for Clark Kent, a pseudonym as transpar- ently WASPish as the ones Siegel chose for himself. Kent and Siegel had something else in common: Both were classic shlep- pers. Kent and Superman lived life the way most newly arrived Jews did, torn between their Old- and New-World iden- tities and their mild exteriors and rock- solid cores. That split personality was the only way Kent could survive, yet it gave him perpetual angst. You can't get more Jewish than that. Was that what Siegel and Shuster had in mind when they created Superman? Neither was religious or attracted to organized Judaism. Some of Superman's Jewish accents — spelling his name Kal-El versus Siegel's more streamlined Kal-L — were added by later writers and editors, the preponderance of them also Jewish. But Siegel acknowledged in his memoir that his writing was strongly influenced by the anti-Semitism he saw and felt and that Samson was a role model for Superman. What Siegel did, as he said repeatedly, was write about his world, which was a neighborhood that was 70 percent Jewish, where theaters and newspapers were in Yiddish as well as English, and there were 25 Orthodox shuls to choose from but only one option — Weinberger's — to buy your favorite pulp fiction. It was a place and time where every juvenile weakling and wheyface — and especially Jewish ones who were more likely to get sand kicked in their face by Adolph Hitler and the bully down the block — dreamed that someday the world would see them for the superhe- roes they really were. ❑ Larry Tye, a former reporter at the Boston Globe and author of five previous books, including Home Lands: Portraits of the New Jewish Diaspora, will speak about his new book, Superman: The High-Flying History of America's Most Enduring Hero (Random House) at 11:30 a.m. Sunday, Nov. 11, at the JCC's Jewish Book Fair in West Bloomfield. Free and open to the public. www.jccdet.org . This side-splitting comedy is about the writing, fighting and wacky antics in the writers' room of a weekly variety show circa 1953, It follows the antics of the star of "The Max Prince Show" and his ongoing battles with NBC executives who fear his humor is too sophisticated for Middle America. The characters are based on Neil Simon's real-life co-workers (Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Sid Caesar, Larry Gelbart and Selma. Diamond) when he was a comedy writer for the television program "Your Show of Shows." 4 CALL I 248.788.2900 VISIT I WWW.c.TETTHEATIi.E.ORG JET performs in the West Bloomfield Jewish Community Center's Aaron DeRoy Theatre - Corner of Msple k Drake Roads. 179,326 - "CONSISTENTLY DELICIOUS IS THE DRIVING FORCE BEHIND SPOSITA'S SUCCESS" anny Raskin, 2012 DEMA ND! ' OUR PETITE FILET DINNER Sunday, November llth-Thursday, Nov 15th And November 21 st Sunday, November 18th-INedne Closed Novem * pate,- l s ide of Petite Rlet includes any pasta, salad and soup, potato 8 vegetable Private party room available for showers, anniversaries and birthdays up to 80 people Hours: Mon-Thur 4-10 • Friday 11-11 • Saturday 4-11 • Sunday 4-9 33210 W. 14 Mile Road In Simsbury Plaza, just East of Farmington Road West Bloomfield this offer is VOID with any other coupon or offers (248) 538-8954 Fine Italian Dining in a Casual Atmosphere November 8 • 2012 43