Our Favorite Jewish Superheroes and the Stories We Need to See With Them
My favorite Jewish comic character is Polaris, who many don’t associate with having a Jewish identity being a cornerstone of who she is as a character, but her ethnically being Jewish, and not religiously Jewish is something that many people who don’t completely understand this about the Jewish people. We are an ethno-religion, which means that we don’t have to practice or even recognize any of the core tenets of the religious beliefs that’s helped shape who we are as a people in order to be considered Jewish. It was at this moment, all the way back during Chuck Austen’s run on Uncanny X-Men, that it was revealed that she was a daughter of Magnus, one of the most prominent Jews in the Marvel Universe that she became my favorite Jewish character. It’s this dichotomy of being ethnically Jewish, yet not religiously that I found my connection to Lorna. My dad’s Jewish, my mom’s not, and this yearning to be accepted by my family struck those cords deep into the core of my being.
What is a storyline you’d like to see related to this character?
As Magneto’s daughter, Lorna gained a whole new layer of depth that we weren’t used to seeing with her. She was now the daughter of one of the most popular mutants in the world, who was also a survivor of the Nazi’s extermination of European Jews during the Holocaust, and she was also a survivor of something that could be used and explored as an allegory with the destruction of Genosha. Unfortunately, the creators didn’t take the time to mine it for all the emotional resonance it should have been. I’d like to see Lorna take the trauma from this to discuss with her father the trauma that helped shape him into the man that the world would come to fear, as he would pledge to never let the mutants face the genocide that he lived through. It’s something that I can connect with, as my paternal grandfather would tell me the stories of what he endured under a Nazi regime Germany, as he, his father, and sister would flee to England, and later the United States, and then return as a troop during WWII. It’s something that still resonates with me nearly 40 years later.
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