PELONI: Gerald Honigman provides a fascinating connection between Jacob and a modern day superhero…
By Gerald A. Honigman
Video created via AI
A friend recently reminded me of the very clear analogy of the story of Superman with that of the Hebrew baby Moses in the Hebrew Bible Book of Exodus.
As Moses was placed onto a papyrus reed raft by his family to save him from certain death by Egyptians killing Hebrew firstborns, and was subsequently found by Pharaoh’s daughter to be raised as her own, a prince of Egypt, the infant Kal-El was placed on a space vessel by his parents Jor-El and Lara to escape their exploding planet, Krypton. Kal-El would be found by Earthlings in America’s heartland and named Clark Kent. He would grow up to fight for justice and against tyranny, as did the baby Moses much earlier, later in life. The first five books of the Hebrew Bible, Ten Commandments, and the wisdom of the Hebrew Prophets became his and G_d’s legacy.
Back in the early 1930s, two Jewish high school students from Cleveland created “Superman.”
Writer and artist, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, sold their creation to what would later be known as DC Comics in 1938.
While various sources have attributed the Superman stories to the allegedly Leftist politics of his creators and their affinity with the idealism of FDR’s “New Deal,” let me propose at least one other factor which might very well have had an impact, and also note that the allegedly “great” FDR betrayed the Jews horrendously…
Religious or not (and I really don’t know how observant they were), the millennial influence of the Hebrew Bible (“Old Testament”) and the Hebraic Prophets’s teachings regarding such things as healing the world, taking care of the widow, orphan, and under privileged in society, the stranger, and so forth continued to have great influence even after many people had turned away from formal religion. Furthermore, both Christianity and Islam rely heavily on Hebraic teachings and personalities, and Moses (Musa) is mentioned more than any other religious figure, other than Muhammad himself, in the Qur’an.
It is no accident that, despite their small numbers (largely due to others slaughtering or forcibly converting them in both the Christian West or Muslim East), Jews have been in the forefront of many movements for the betterment of mankind, humane treatment of animals, scientific progress, and the world at large.
Some, like Karl Marx, would seek solutions in a broader non (or anti-) religious context via political and socio-economic reform…”Liberalism,” “Socialism,” “Woke-ism,” “Progressivism,” “Marxism,” or whatever.
While Marx and other self-hating Jews (increasing in numbers today) despised or unfairly accepted others’s unfair vilification of themselves (and today the Jewish People’s sole, minuscule, resurrected nation), ironically they wound up sounding like Hebrew Prophets in their demand for social justice for “the other”—as long as “the other” was not the Jews.
Isaiah, Micah, Amos, Hosea, Jeremiah, Samuel, Elijah, and Jewish teachers like Rabbi Akiva and Hillel and Yehoshua/Jesus would understand their passion…indeed, they were the mentors of such anti-religious “Progressives.”
So, whether Siegel and Shuster envisioned Jor-El and Kal-El in a Hebraic connection to G_d or not, as others with a suffix “El” in their names have had (Daniel, Ezekiel, Michael, Gabriel, Israel, etc.), or, if instead, this was just a matter of coincidence (of all possible combinations of letters in the alphabet, why else would the all-important Hebrew suffix, El, for G_d be selected by two Jewish teens for their superhero story?), one way or another, the Hebraic/Jewish passion for justice, compassion for the oppressed, and pursuit of righteousness still manage to shine through in Karl-El’s thoughts and deeds?
Since so much of the Superman narrative deals with repeated transformations of Clark Kent into his superhuman self, there is an important account about another transformation, one also involving someone who would wind up with the suffix “El” in his name which comes to mind, and he (and the nation named for him) has been in the news far too often in its struggle to survive as much, if not more, than Kal-El over the past century, and for several millennia before as well.
If you haven’t guessed by now, it’s the saga of one of the original Hebrew Patriarch Abraham’s grandsons that I’m referring to.
Some four thousand years ago, Abraham and Sarah moved from Ur of the modern day Chaldean People in predominantly Iraqi Kurdistan to Hebron, in that part of the land G_d promised to Abraham which would later be apportioned by Jacob to his son Judah. Abraham had a son, Isaac, who in turn had two sons, Esau and Jacob, with his wife, Rebecca.
While it was evidently decided in Heaven that Jacob, though younger of both very imperfect twins, should gain the birthright blessing because he was more spiritually suited, in the long run, to the “light unto the nations” task G_d had in mind for Abraham’s descendants, the rights of the firstborn were still Esau’s by the mores of the time. While he willingly ceded those rights to Jacob, that still didn’t change this.
As usual, the Hebrew Bible makes human imperfections of even its greatest personalities (King David and Moses included) obvious so that no human can ever be compared to G_d. At a time when pagan cultures deified great leaders, this was the ultimate blasphemy for the Hebrews. Roman historians took note of this peculiarity as seen here…”They Show No Respect for Their Caesars”
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In Jewish tradition, for atonement to be made, sins before G_d must be dealt with in true, heartfelt devotion—teshuvah, a turning of the heart. He knows humans are imperfect and allows for a fresh start, as long as the teshuva is sincere.
Having done this, however, does not clear people from sins they have committed against fellow human beings. For this atonement to occur, people must seek forgiveness and work out justice with those who’ve been harmed, one way or another.
Prior to his experiences with G_d at Beth El and meeting his brother again at Peniel/Penuel (sites in Judah/Judaea and the Judaean Wilderness, not “illegally occupied West Bank”), Jacob’s life could be explained as a series of struggles enabling his spiritual growth. In the meantime, Esau had become a powerful chieftain in an area once part of the Hebrew tribal regions of Reuben, Gad, and half-tribe of Manasseh, now in Jordan. To return, upon G_d’s instructions, to the land of Abraham’s family’s inheritance and Biblical Promise, Jacob had to pass through his powerful brother’s territory, a worrisome ordeal.
The following interspersed excerpts from http://www.biblegateway.com/resources/asbury-bible-commentary/Jacob-transformation provide a good synopsis of this important celestial transformation and evolution of Jacob into his much better self, Israel…
“The theophanies (appearances of G_d to mortal men) are of historical interest for the nation. They explain why Beth El is an important religious shrine (among other reasons, Jacob was renamed Israel by G_d there), and how the nation of Israel got its name.”
(GAH: likewise, the name “Judaean/Jew” means a person whose origins were in the land of Judah—where King David was born in the Judaean town of Bethlehem nine centuries after Abraham, and Yehoshua/Jesus was also born a thousand years after David—the land itself thus named for one of Jacob’s twelve sons, Judah, or in Hebrew, Yehudah, since there is no letter “J” in Hebrew).
“The unexplained meeting with the night stranger (Angel of the Lord, or G_d Himself?) provides insight into the meeting with Esau. The perceived enemy seems not so much to be the brother as it is the stranger with whom Jacob must struggle. He must first be reconciled with the divine visitant fore he can seek reconciliation with Esau.”
Filled with fear, Jacob does everything possible to have a peaceful reunion, sends messengers with gifts, prays to G_d for help, and begs for mercy.
Before his encounter with Esau at Penuel/Peniel, near the stream of Jabbok, Jacob struggled all night long with what appears to be G_d himself to become his better self, and…”the blessing the struggle brings is presented in Jacob’s name and, by implication, transformed character. Jacob is forced to confess…his old name, “supplanter.” He becomes Israel, which may be translated as “G_d rules,” or one who struggles with G_d.
As in the beautiful Joseph story of later centuries, there is a nice ending (at least temporarily), and after Jacob bows to Esau repeatedly, Esau rushed to his brother and embraced and kissed him, with both brothers weeping. Later, the descendants of Esau, the Edomites, were often enemies of both Israel and Judah/Judaea.
The hated Roman puppet, King Herod of Judaea, was descended from the Edomites/Idumeans, who were forcibly converted to Judaism decades earlier by the Hasmonean (“Maccabean”) ruler, John (Yohanon) Hyrcanus, around the early first century BCE. He did this to eliminate a hostile neighbor who supported Judaea’s powerful enemy, the Seleucid Empire based in Syria, allied with Macedonian Greeks, the folks who tried to earlier stamp out Jewish independence and convert the Jewish People to pagan beliefs, the origins of the Chanukah revolt of the fierce Judaean Maccabean warriors (‘hammers’) for independence and religious freedom, which began in Modi’in, once again, in Judaea, not the “occupied West Bank.”
This forced conversion of Esau’s descendants backfired big time when Judaea wound up with a king more aligned with Imperial Rome’s interests than the freedom of Judaea…Herod.
But, back to Jacob…
“The father of the tribes of Israel thus prevails by submitting himself to G_d. That is the only kind of victory man has with G_d. When day breaks (after a night’s struggle), the stranger is gone. Jacob is gone. Only Israel is left. The transformation of the Patriarch is complete. He is ready to meet Esau. Peniel will forever serve to remind us of a G_d who transforms the lives of men and women.”
The heart wrenching choices the modern nation of Israel is forced to make on a daily basis just in order to survive and not be condemned for taking measures to prevent the slaughter of its innocents also come to mind right now. There are no good options when a country which requires a magnifying glass to locate on a world globe is surrounded by hundreds of millions of enemies sworn to its destruction and has to fight cowardly supremacist jihadi butchers who routinely commit atrocities and then run back to hide behind their own women and children in densely populated urban areas.
While Clark Kent’s transformation into Superman may not be as profound as Jacob’s into Isra-El, the quest to rise to the Higher Good and to achieve justice and fight evil make Kal-El, nevertheless a worthy namesake, courtesy of two Jewish teens in Ohio, of those who, like his own family, were given the Hebrew suffix pertaining to G_d in their names.
Kal-El, like an imperfect but relatively speaking far better than most other nations existing today on a moral scale, Israel, despite its biased detractors, still acts as a light unto the nations and promoting G_d’s work on Earth.
How many other militaries when forced to fight wars against existential enemies drop millions of leaflets, make hundreds of thousands of cell phone calls, supply their enemy population with thousands of tons of food and other supplies, and so forth, endangering their own young soldiers lives by telegraphing its “punch,” allowing butchers to escape, and so forth? Answer—practically none, besides Israel’s IDF.
When faced with calumnies and vilification from multiple directions regarding slanders about genocide, apartheid, colonization, ”illegal settlements,” and such which are actually being practiced by Israel’s Arab and Arabized accusers and their sycophants, there are thankfully sound expert sources on urban warfare and such to make a mockery of those false accusations and the liars and hypocrites so indulging, as seen in just one of numerous examples below.
But before concluding, first note that a four thousand year old soundly corroborated ancestral people does not “illegally occupy” lands on which they have lived, nor lose its rights of indigenous ownership in international law, despite numerous imperial invasions, forced exiles, and conversions, for longer than most other nations in existence today—with exceptions like China, native Iranians (not Arab invaders who forcibly Arabized and Islamized that country), India, and some others.
Memo to the ‘Experts’: Stop Comparing Israel’s War in Gaza to Anything. It Has No Precedent
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