The Secret Jewish History Essay’s Not-So-Secret Problem

If you’ve read The Forward recently, you’ve learned that pretty much everything has a little-known Jewish backstory. But what gets left out in these bite-size, pop-culture takes?

By Andrew Paul
Art by Jason Adam Katzenstein

In 1938, two Jewish kids from Cleveland, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, debuted an original character in the first issue of Action Comics. Their hero, Kal-El, escaped from the planet Krypton’s apocalypse after his family put him in a tiny, basket-shaped rocket ship and launched the vessel toward Earth. There, he grew up unaware of his true past and power until he came of age, when he was called on to stand up for all that was right, just, and true.

“Kal-El” resembles the Hebrew words for “Voice of God,” the basket-escape evokes Moses’ origins in Exodus, and Superman’s moral charge mirrors Jews’ centuries of ethical commentary. Coincidence? Possibly, but more likely, Judaism is not-so-secretly responsible for our early concepts of comic book superheroes.

Of course, Superman isn’t the only bit of American culture with ties to the Jews. The Forward, a Jewish leftist publication lately reduced to centrist devil’s advocate op-eds, is particularly Secret-Jewish-History-happy these days. There’s the secret Jewish history of Joni Mitchell, of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and Prince. Olivia Newton-John, they note, has ties to the Twelve Tribes, as do Stephen King, Judy Garland, and Tupac Shakur. Hey, did you know some Jews wrote a hit for Captain and Tenille once? Oh, and literally the entire 2019 class of the Rock ‘N’ Roll Hall of Fame have SJHs, too.

The Forward isn’t the only offender casting the widest net possible to trawl for Jewish bubbes’ clicks and social media shares—and Lord knows they’ve committed more egregious sins in recent months than reminding us that Tupac knew some Jews once. Other publications have produced SJHs of rum, Walt Whitman, punk rock, and Popeye the goddamn Sailor Man. But in the rush to identify Members of the Tribe with so many aspects of mainstream culture, publications risk unintentionally feeding conspiracy theories pushed by bigots and white supremacists for generations.

To understand Jews’ long-standing plan to reshape the Western world, we need to look further back, to The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. First published in 1903 in Russia, Protocols is a quick, breezy, thoroughly fabricated introduction to all our biggest trade secrets—namely, how we Yids have worked our way over the centuries into the upper echelons of all major European and American governments to push a steady stream of disinformation and discord. This is all in hopes of weakening the wills of otherwise stalwart Aryan men and women, thus making them pliant for a coming New World Order run by yours truly, the Chosen People.

It’s absolute bullshit, obviously. Protocols is a falsified piece of propaganda written by turn-of-the-century Russian czarists and pushed by antisemitic agents to further their claim that Jews bear responsibility for all of society’s ills. Beginning in 1920, Henry Ford personally financed half a million copies of Protocols to be printed and distributed throughout the United States after running excerpts in his own newspaper, The Dearborn Independent. Ford’s Nazi admiration and antisemitism is one of the most obvious examples of engrained American white supremacy, a point along a timeline of intolerance—from Ford to the America First Committee to the White Identitarian Movement—all the way to the October 2018 Tree of Life pogrom and last month’s wave of assaults on the New York Hasidic community, a barely hidden vein of hate coursing through American culture.

As militant Zionists within the Jewish community and their proto-fascist allies in the White House continue sowing public doubt over our American-ness and allegiances, it’s understandable why many Jews often seek to prove we’ve always belonged within society and that we remain vital to it. The Secret Jewish History essay seems to satisfy that desire.

SJH articles can highlight unexpected and interesting instances of Judaism contributing to modern pop culture. But as antisemitism is tacitly accepted and even promoted during the Trump era, these histories feel more like shallow attempts to prove our mainstream social relevance than any true sense of identity reclamation or spotlighting. Much of anything that merits the Secret Jewish History treatment comes from years of marginalization. It’s not that Jews chose to toil away in the shadows; society that forced us into those roles.

As we head into another election year that will undoubtedly see new waves of menacing George Soros-themed advertisements from Republican PACs and oblique references to “globalists” infiltrating the Democratic party, Jewish writers need to be more conscious than ever of antisemitic tropes. How do we balance our very reasonable desire to celebrate reclaimed, forgotten, or overlooked Jewish history with the knowledge it could be both indirectly weaponized by bigots and accepted as confirmation of conspiracy theories by the uneducated? So far, I’m afraid, it seems like we Heebs haven’t quite figured that one out yet.

Back in April, for example, The Forward ran an SJH of Tax Day, inadvertently recalling the stereotype of Jewish ties to globalist cabals, wealth-hoarding, and greed. Yes, the ideas of taxation in the Western world can technically be traced back to the Hebrew Bible. But that doesn’t necessitate a Secret Jewish History of taxing Americans, especially when an 800-word piece doesn’t include space to recount such factors as medieval European cultures pigeonholing Jews into money-lending and banking professions, and how these associations reverberate to this day.

We’ve yet to see real evidence of hate groups utilizing this media trope against us so far, but when they cling to something as cheaply falsified as Protocols, what’s to stop them from eventually stumbling across Secret Jewish History essays and weaponizing them in bad-faith online smears?

As great as it is to learn about our role in shaping the world around us, that also doesn’t mean Jewish stories need be reduced to bits of pop culture trivia at best, or behind-the-scenes string-pulling at worst. Perhaps Jewish publications, their editors, and idea-starved writers (yours truly among them) can instead focus on the histories that are truly hidden or ignored by mainstream and predominantly white Jewish communities.

For example, Mizrahim—Jews originating in Middle Eastern areas such as Iraq, Iran, and Yemen—comprise roughly a third of the 16 million of us around the world, yet continually face discrimination, belittlement, and wholesale delegitimization by Ashkenazi Jewish outlets. Simply acknowledging Mizrahim as real Jews is far from enough—their stories and culture should be as celebrated as mainstream outlets cover Ashkenazim.

Writers can also remember that it’s equally, if not more, important to continue highlighting the Jews who disgrace the rest of us, the modern-day Kapos and State of Israel zealots who enable our biggest threats and further drive a wedge between Jews and secular society. It may not be as surprising to call out Ben Shapiro’s smug, racist horseshit for the millionth time as to learn the tenuous Secret Jewish History of The Matrix, but it can become just as satisfying as politely reminding gentiles that the sexiest guy in America is a nice Jewish boy.

“The Jews were taught that they are Supermen, and that they must keep themselves apart from all other nations,” we are said to have written in Protocols. Of course, we aren’t Supermen. We’re as human as any other culture on this burning planet, and any modern, sane Jew will tell you that the title of “Chosen People” need not solely apply to the literal descendants of nomads purported to have hung out near Mount Sinai thousands of years ago. That doesn’t mean we can’t push back on asshat nativists and their fantasies of a white utopia. But as writers and editors, there are better ways of doing it than repeatedly, desperately reminding everyone of our societal worth at the expense of deeper education and context. It might end up backfiring.

All that said, Superman totally is Jewish, in case you forgot that little secret already.

Correction: A previous version of this article stated that Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were from New York. They were from Cleveland.

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