Hi there!! Just saw your post ranking interpretations of spiderman based on how jewish they are. (Great post 10/10 btw.) At one point you say Spiderman's ethos and values are very Jewish -- as non-Jewish person who doesnt know that much about Jewish culture, I was curious what you were refering to more specifically! Thats potentially a long post so you don't have to answer if that's too complicated haha but I'd love to learn more :))
Hey thank you so much for asking (and for liking my post)! You're right in thinking this is a complicated topic but I love answering complicated questions so you're good :D
That said I'm not going to detail every part of Spider-Man's Jewishness, just because... Honestly, there's a lot. Recently I posted a TikTok on an aspect of his Jewishness I won't even be lightly touching on in this answer. But just because I can't and won't cover everything doesn't mean you can't learn anything at all, so let's focus on the Big One -
Responsibility.
Responsibility is a big part of Peter Parker's story, and by extension and as a result nearly every Spider Person has been burdened with it. Peter Parker is given great power, and therefore has great responsibility, we know this.
(Amazing Fantasy #15)
I think it's interesting the way that this was attributed to Uncle Ben in most of later canon and in subsequent adaptations*, because Uncle Ben does not - and CAN not, for the story to work - know that Peter has superpowers when he tells him this.
(*with the exception of the MCU, the least Jewish of the Peter Parkers...)
But if Uncle Ben isn't telling him this as a warning to use his superpowers wisely, then what could it possibly be referring to?
Everything.
Because a person doesn't have to have superpowers to have great power. This is true in the big sense - politicians and CEOs and your high school principal all holding extreme leverage over the rest of us - but more importantly, more relevantly, we all have a power on the people around us.
Among Jews, we have a phrase, which in Hebrew goes: כל המקיים נפש אחת, מעלים עליו כאילו קיים עולם מלא. In English: anyone who saves a single life, it is on him as if he saved a whole world (adapted from wikipedia's translation of the Mishnah, Sanhedrin chapter 4:5). This is a double edged sword; we are capable of infinite creation, and infinite destruction as well. The phrase is mainly used in the sense of saving a life - you have saved not only that person, but also every person they may help or save or even birth later on. The Sages weren't picturing a superhero when they said this - they were referring to practical matters, and Uncle Ben is doing the same.
By delinking Peter's responsibility from his powers*, the overarching Peter narrative instead positions it as universal - you are alive, therefore you have great power, therefore you have great responsibility. You are a person, therefore you are an entire world. Spiderverse's insistence on the "it could be anyone behind the mask" only makes this argument stronger, in my opinion. The you who is responsible for everything you do is not Peter Parker, it's YOU. You, reading this, have great responsibility. You, reading this, are an entire world.
(*the MCU, in turn, explicitly linking Peter's powers or role as Spider-Man to his responsibility is an extremely early flaw, all the way back in Civil War when he talks around the phrase but we all knew exactly what he meant)
Anyway yeah. By no means comprehensive and not even everything one could say about this particular sub-topic, but, Peter Parker's Jewishness absolutely seeps all the way down to the big Spider-Man thing.
(See this post also as a fuck you to the guy who cried NO NO HE'S NOT JEWISH HE'S RESPONSIBLE!!! as if those two things aren't directly linked lmao)
