From Mitch Wagner:
DOES THIS MEAN ALL JEWS ARE THEREFORE SUPERHEROS?. “A debate for the silly season.” Teresa notes that all superheros, unless specifically stated otherwise, can be assumed to be Jewish. “This is an insight of Paul Krassner’s. He explained once in an interview that when he was a kid, he figured all superheroes were Jewish, because where he was growing up, if your name ended in “-man”, you probably were: Feldman, Feinman, Superman, Lieberman, Aquaman, Zuckerman, Iceman, Bergman, Sandman, Goldman, Silberman, Hawkman, Wolfman, Batman, Spiderman, Schneiderman–how much more obvious can you get?”
Interesting insight, but you’re missing one even more profound. Every one of these Jewish superheros are deeply assimilated; they all have “secret identities” they put forward to the public. Spiderman? Peter Parker — not a hint of Yiddishkeit there. Superman? Clark Kent. And it never works the other way, does it? The goyishe superheros — The Flash, The Hulk, Green Lantern, Daredevil (who’s even a lawyer, fer chrissakes) — not a Cohen or Levin in those secret identities, are there?
