Hi! I've read most of your Spideytorch tag and every post where you've mentioned Homecoming, and I've gotta ask, why do you think Peter Parker should be Jewish? I've seen people claim he comes across that way before because he'd used Yiddish words, but never specifically because of his guilt complex. Like, I'm a Jew (an Israeli one) and I've always thought religious guilt was a Christian thing. And wouldn't making Peter Jewish now retcon the bits where he was protestant?
It’s not that I think Peter should be Jewish so much as that I think the character is Jewish, in that he was conceived specifically as a Jewish character at a time where that couldn’t be addressed on the page, much the same way Ben Grimm was intended by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby to be Jewish. It wasn’t until Fantastic Four v3 #56, in 2002, that Ben was ever declared on-page Jewish, even though it was clear long before this point to anyone with the tools to recognize it. The same is true for Peter Parker – we just haven’t hit our Fantastic Four v3 #56. Andrew Garfield, who is Jewish on his father’s side, notably recognized it and decided to play the character as Jewish, which is a big reason why, to me, this is the only film version of the character that strikes me as an honest representation of Peter Parker.
Look at it this way: even if we leave out the fact that Stan Lee was raised Jewish and any speculation on what personal influences a Jewish man living in New York at that time might have brought when creating a superhero character designed to be easy to relate to, who had problems Just Like You, there’s the location to account for. New York is a heavily Jewish and heavily Jewish-influenced area in general, but Peter’s not just from New York City – he’s from Forest Hills, Queens, a historically Jewish neighborhood. (Since you mentioned my Homecoming posts, I don’t think it’s a coincidence they moved him out of Forest Hills, with the writers citing the area as “too old-fashioned.”) To compare him to Ben Grimm again, Ben also hailed from a famously Jewish neighborhood long before the character was ever addressed as Jewish on page, even though, you know, he obviously was. Ben, like Peter, also has a distinctly New York Jewish speech pattern, albeit a different one from Peter’s, accounting for their differently Jewish backgrounds.
While I would normally personally view the use of Yiddish as something of a grey area – the Marvel universe being centered around New York and populated by characters who commonly have fast-paced, banter-y dialogue style, I would expect most of them to have picked up a phrase or two – but it’s the frequency and the skill with which Peter deploys Yiddish in his snappy, aggressive New York banter, coupled with his place of birth and a thousand other things. If Clint Barton throws around an oy vey or a fakakta, I’m like, yeah, that boy’s watched some Seinfeld, huh. When Peter Parker does it, it feels different to me.
In addition to the Yiddish, 616 Peter also references lesser known Jewish holidays:
How many non-Jewish guys would casually drop Shavuos? Or call it, as an Ashkenazi man from Forest Hills is likely to, Shavuos instead of Shavuot? If Peter isn’t Jewish, then I’d be raising a touchy eyebrow at him so casually throwing around mentions of a faith that isn’t his.
But Brian Michael Bendis wrote this. And Brian Michael Bendis knows Spider-Man is Jewish.
When asked about Peter’s tendency to litter his speech with Yiddish in Spider-Men, Bendis flatly replied “he’s Jewish.” When asked if Peter Parker was Jewish in Ultimate Marvel, he replied that every Peter Parker is Jewish. I’ve spoken before about my own personal issues with taking social media statements from writers in multiple creator, non creator-owned properties as hard canon facts, but Bendis is so incredibly prolific that I have to break my rule a little for him. At the very least, given that he wrote all of Ultimate Spider-Man, I think it must be conceded that Ultimate Peter Parker is Jewish. (Every Peter Parker is Jewish.)
Regarding the concept of guilt, I literally have an e-mail from Chabad labeled “How to Manage Jewish Guilt” sitting in my inbox right now, so this might be an American-Israeli Jewish cultural difference –Jewish guilt is very much considered a thing here. Catholic guilt is a thing too, but it’s a different flavor of guilt. (I’m Jewish on my mother’s side and my father was raised Catholic, plus one of my great aunts is a nun – so I’m pretty familiar with both breeds.) There are a lot of articles online detailing the difference between the feeling, but Peter’s version of guilt imho lines up exactly to Jewish guilt, and not to a Christian form. Jewish guilt is responsibility, even if it’s a whacked out neurotic overblown explosion of it. There’s also a thing I get annoyed with in fandom quite often, which is this very Christian desire to “absolve” Peter of his guilt, this “oh if only he could work through this, he wouldn’t feel so responsible, he’d let other people help,” etc, and like, let’s leave the guilt aside for a moment, but from my own Jewish perspective, that sense of responsibility isn’t something that should be resolved. He should feel responsible. It’s good that he feels responsible. We should all feel responsible. Look at what happens when people don’t. Peter Parker’s ethical code is rooted in Judaism. You don’t get to absolve that.
I’ve mentioned before that one of the things I find interesting about Peter Parker is how for a street level superhero, he’s seriously overpowered. Seriously! He’s super strong! Fast enough to dodge a bullet! He heals much faster than a normal man! He has a freaking danger sense! (As a Jewish person in America, I wish I had a danger sense.) What more can you ask for? You can ask for the one superpower the spider didn’t give him: Peter Parker’s super freaking smart. If there are two Jewish super powers, they’re survival (Spider-Man always gets back up) and intelligence. And it’s not just that Peter’s smart, he strives for education. It’s important to him. (I’m not saying that these things can’t exist and be important to non-Jewish characters, of course, but I am saying there is a cultural slant, especially, again, accounting for where Peter comes from.) There’s so much I keep thinking of tackling here: the secret keeping, his spy parents who were framed as traitors by the Red Skull, the stereotype of the weak Jewish intellectual and Peter’s aggressive defiance of that, coupled with people’s desire to strip that out of the character – all of those things feed into the character’s Jewishness.
As for retconning Peter being protestant – see, the thing is, it doesn’t like, matter. It’s not like retconning the religion of a character like Matt Murdock or Nightcrawler, where an integral piece of the lens through which they view the world would have to be altered. Christianity has never informed Peter’s character in any notable way. Okay, so we see him celebrating Christmas at home with his family – that’s not uncommon in America. My family does that. To label Peter Parker Protestant isn’t to have that religion inform the character, which ideally a religion or lack of one should do; it’s a label put in place to say “see, look, it’s okay, he isn’t Jewish.” Because he is Jewish. Marvel, the company, who is concerned with sales and popularity overall, just doesn’t want to admit it, because they’ve built up this concept of Spider-Man as the most relatable character. And if he is the most relatable character in the world, to the most people in the world, then he can’t be Jewish. (Except that he is.)
It’s not that I would even want Peter to be more religious than he is in canon, which isn’t very. As someone with a complicated relationship with my own spirituality, I don’t mind that he doesn’t seem, as a Jew Marvel won’t admit is a Jew, to be particularly observant. I would like of course to see him in temple for the High Holidays, or simply celebrating Hanukkah with Ben Grimm and Kitty Pryde in a Marvel holiday special, but if he continued on the exact way he was – a guy who talks to and argues with God, a distinctly Jewish trait, and that seems to be the end of the story – I’d be okay with that. I would just like it done with honesty, and bravery, and truthful storytelling.
Bottom line, these days I hear a lot of talk about how Peter as a white male nerd doesn’t resonate with readers anymore because he’s supposed to be the underdog, and nerd culture is no longer synonymous with that. To which I say: Peter Parker never belonged to the nerds. He always belonged to the Jews.
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