kinda random but do you have any panels of peter using yiddish/jewish slang? im tryna prove a point lol
Sure, anon, can do. I try to save Peter using Yiddish whenever I stumble across it, but I don’t have those panels organized in a separate folder, so I think this is probably far from a complete list. I have some good ones though.
ASM #76 – a “kibitzer” is a Yiddish term for a spectator who offers unwanted commentary, but you could define it more usefully as a complainer, a backseat driver, someone whose nitpicks are neither useful nor wanted. I find this one in particular interesting because some of Peter’s Yiddish use is very commonplace, words you could conceivably pick up through cultural osmosis, but kibitzer is not typically something I would expect a goy – even a New York goy – to be using in the privacy of his own mind. (Apologies for the underline, I was probably making a point somewhere with this panel.)
(Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man #18) “You’re not just any schmuck.” A schmuck is an idiot, a dumbass, but a contemptible one – a lovable idiot is not a schmuck. A stupid dick – schmuck means penis – is a schmuck.
“He cobbles tchotchkes.” (Marvel (2020) #1) Tchotchkes are knick-knacks, bric-a-brac, trinkets. A tchotchke can be monetarily expensive but on every other level it’s cheap.
This is from somewhere in Bendis’ Invincible Iron Man but I saved it without the issue number unfortunately – Shavuos/Shavuot is the name of a Jewish holiday, which, okay, even assuming that Peter would for some reason be referencing lesser known Jewish holidays as a joke (this assumes that the mere mention of Jewish holidays is funny because the word sounds foreign or because it’s so improbable for a popular pop culture figure to be Jewish – both would be very poor jokes, and especially unlikely ones coming from a Jewish writer like Bendis), the pronunciation here is worth noting. He goes for “Shavuos” instead of “Shavuot.” There’s pronunciation politics which I won’t go into here, so just suffice to say this is the more old school New York-styled pronunciation. As a side note I’m focusing on 616 examples here because they’re what I have on hand, but Bendis’ Ultimate Spider-Man also includes plenty examples of Peter using Yiddish, and Bendis has said on his own blog on that every version of Spider-Man is Jewish, so his personal penchant to have the character spout Yiddish isn’t too surprising.
This example is a bit controversial but I find arguments against it very shakily conducted – in Spider-Man: Who Am I?, a digital comic, Peter has amnesia and, upon realizing he has a pretty good command of Yiddish, assumes he’s Jewish. I’ve had multiple people tell me that this actually proves that Peter is not Jewish, because he says he is with amnesia which – it’s a bad argument, because Peter assumes he’s Jewish based on his pretty good command of Yiddish. The argument that should be made is why would Peter, with or without his memories, have such a good command of a Jewish language if he is in fact not Jewish or does not identify as such? It is in fact a pretty intelligent guess to make that if you wake up with no memories but a good command of Yiddish you might in fact be Jewish. Sometimes the simplest answer is in fact the right one.
(ASM: Who Am I?) “Speak short Yiddish sentences” is particularly interesting because it implies Peter has command of the language beyond simply throwing out “tuchas” (which means ass) occasionally – to be able to speak a sentence, even a short one, implies a command of that language’s grammar and structure. In any case, regardless of the amnesia, I think this is a good example of the fact that when Peter is using Yiddish he is both fully aware of the fact that he is using Yiddish and that this is a distinctly Jewish trait.
I think at the end of the day it does have to be respected that, no matter how one personally views Peter Parker The Fictional Character’s in-universe religion, he has been written by a lot of very influential Jewish creators who put their own experiences and culture into the character in order to breathe life into him, to make him more realistic and lifelike, and that the Jewish influence plays a large part in making the character so distinctive and unique, and that the least anyone can do is respect those creators’ religion and culture and that influence when discussing the character.
(Spider-Man/Human Torch #1)
(Ben Reilly: Scarlet Spider #8 – this is Ben Reilly, not Peter, but we’re gonna go ahead and count genetic duplicates who share the first twenty years worth of Peter’s memories, you know?)
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