by Bruce Feiler
The most influential use of Moses as pro-American propagandist during these years may be the least known. It comes from two bookish Jews in Cleveland, Ohio, who in 1938 channeled their religious anxieties into a cartoon character they modeled partly on the superhero of the Torah. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were born twelve blocks from each other in Cleveland. They met while working on their high school newspaper and shared a passion for science fiction. In 1938, a five-year-old proposal they had submitted under the Gentile-sounding pseudonym Bernard J. Kenton was chosen as the cover feature of a new series, Action Comics. The first cover showed a man with bulging muscles, blue tights, and a red cape lifting a wrecked car to save a passenger. The story followed a klutzy reporter with spectacles who led a double life; he used X-ray vision and extrahuman strength to fight for social justice. The character’s name was Superman.
Superman drew from many sources, including Greek mythology, Arthurian legend, and the science fiction of Edgar Rice Burroughs. But many of its principal themes are drawn from the Hebrew Bible, and its backstory is taken almost point by point from Moses. Just as Moses was born into a world in which his people faced annihilation, Superman is born on the planet Krypton, which is facing extinction. Just as baby Moses is put into a small basket and floated down the Nile by his mother, baby Superman is placed into a small rocket ship by his mother and father and launched into space. Just as Moses is rescued by the daughter of the pharaoh, Superman is rescued by Jonathan and Martha Kent in a midwestern cornfield. Like Moses, Superman is raised in an alien environment where he has to conceal his true identity. Just as Moses receives a calling from God to use his powers to liberate his people from tyranny, Superman receives a calling from his father to use his great strength “to assist humanity.”
Even Superman’s name reflects his creators’ biblical knowledge. Moses is the leader of Israel, or Yisra-el in Hebrew, commonly translated as “one who strives with God.” The name comes from Genesis 32 in which Jacob wrestles with a mysterious man who represents God. El was a common name for God in the ancient Near East and appears in the Bible in names like Elohim and El Shaddai. Superman’s original name on Krypton was Kal-El, or “Swift God” in Hebrew. His father’s name was Jor-El. Superman was clearly drawn as a modern-day god.
To help understand what all these connections meant, I went to see Simcha Weinstein. A thirty-two-year-old Orthodox rabbi from Manchester, England, Simcha grew up, by his own admission, short, shy, and pimply, not unlike the inventors of Superman. “I’d walk out of Hebrew school,” he explained, “take off my kippah, and shove it in my pocket. I was always scared of the big, non-Jewish kids on the corner. They’d ask my name, and instead of saying Weinstein, I’d say Jones or Smith.” He took solace in pop culture, especially comic books. “I related to the double identity. With Clark Kent, who’s weak and unsure of himself; with Peter Parker, aka Spider-Man, because he can’t get a job or get the girl. Yet they can still save the world. On the one hand, you read all these stories about Moses and the chosen people, and on the other hand, you walk down the street and there’s a swastika on the synagogue and everyone’s bashing Israel.” Simcha moved to America, donned the black hat of Hasidism, and eventually wrote a book, Up, Up, and Oy Vey!, about how Jewish culture shaped the comic-book superhero.
“Today, Action Comics number one with Superman on the cover sells for over a million dollars,” said Weinstein, who lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two children. “But in those days it was a joke. For Jewish artists, getting into advertising was hard, getting into high-brow art was harder. But with comic books, the barriers to entry were nothing. So people like Siegel and Shuster started drawing these superheroes who were metaphors for their own lives.”
A similar thing happened in the film business. As Neal Gabler described in An Empire of Their Own, many of the pioneering moguls of Hollywood, including the founders of Universal, Paramount, Warner Bros., Fox, and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, came from eastern European Jewish immigrant families. Beyond their religious background, what united these men was a desire to reject the oppression they left behind and embrace their new Promised Land. Assimilation was hardly new, Gabler wrote, “but something drove the young Hollywood Jews to a ferocious, even pathological, embrace of America. Something drove them to deny whatever they had been before settling here.” A similar dynamic took hold in comic books, where a small coterie of Jewish artists created Superman, Batman, the Green Lantern, Captain America, Spider-Man, the Incredible Hulk, the Fantastic Four, and the X-Men.
One expression of these writers’ Jewish point of view was their characters’ double lives—the awkward public self striving for acceptance and the heroic private self that still felt the tug of the old country and hoped to defeat the perpetrators of evil. A number, including Superman, even took their battles abroad.
Superman battles a thinly disguised Adolf Hitler, as shown in Look magazine, February 27, 1940.
“The superheroes fought Hitler before the Americans did,” Weinstein said. “And coming from Jewish immigrants who are getting wrenching letters from home about their families, the effect is poignant.” In Superman number one, published in 1939, Clark and Lois Lane travel to a thinly disguised Nazi Germany, where Lois ends up in front of a firing squad, until Superman rescues her. In Superman number two, also from 1939, Clark Kent visits faux Germany again and meets Adolphus Runyan, a scientist clearly modeled on Adolf Hitler, who has discovered a gas so powerful “it is capable of penetrating any type of gas-mask.” The front cover of Captain America number one, published in March 1941, shows the hero smashing Hitler across the face.
“These writers are tapping into the stories they grew up with,” Weinstein said. “But even more, they’re tapping into their own frustrations with America and its inability to stand up for what’s right.”
Americans may or may not have noticed Superman’s Jewish identity, but Hitler sure did. As early as April 1940, Hitler’s chief propagandist, Joseph Goebbels, denounced Superman as a Jew. The weekly SS newspaper lambasted Jerry Siegel as “an intellectually and physically circumcised chap who has his headquarters in New York…. The inventive Israelite named this pleasant guy with an overdeveloped body and an underdeveloped mind ‘Superman.’” Goebbels went on, “Woe to the American youth, who must live in such a poisoned atmosphere and don’t even notice the poison they swallow daily.” And swallow they did: One in four American soldiers carried a comic book in his back pocket during World War II.
But while it makes sense that young Jews might identify with these superheroes, why did they resonate so much with Americans as a whole?
“Neal Gabler has a line in An Empire of Their Own,” Weinstein said. “‘The American Dream is a Jewish invention.’ It’s a profound idea, because once Hollywood, comics, and other pop media invent this idea, they help make it a reality.”
“But why isn’t Jesus part of this?” I asked. “Or David, or Abraham? Why is Moses the foundation of so many of these stories?”
“Because Moses is the greatest prophet,” he said. “And the story of Moses is the story of the hero. He’s weak. He’s fleeing his past. He can’t speak so well. Yet he becomes the greatest leader in the history of the Jewish people. If you look at any narrative—in film, theater—there’s an element of Moses in it. It’s the ultimate journey. The hero starts out doubting himself—‘I can’t do it. I can’t be a leader.’ Yet he rises to the occasion and saves the day.”
“So if you think back to yourself as a boy,” I asked, “have you been saved by this story?”
He smiled. “The rabbis say that when Moses was standing at the burning bush, he saw in the fire all of the pain, all of the suffering that befell the Jewish people. And he also saw their greatness. That’s the dichotomy of Moses, and that’s the dichotomy of Clark Kent and Superman. And I think every one of us taps into that. Sometimes I’m standing at the pulpit, and I can’t connect. I feel nothing. But other times, I’m standing there and I really connect. I’m prepared.
I’m spiritual. I feel like Moses the leader.
“The word for Egypt in Hebrew is Mizraim,” he continued, “which means ‘to constrict.’ Every one of us faces constrictions every day. We live in our own Egypt. Yet every one of us aspires to escape that. We can save the world.”
SAVING THE WORLD was a central reason behind Cecil B. DeMille’s decision to remake The Ten Commandments in the 1950s. To help understand why, I went to see Katherine Orrison, a one-woman library of DeMille’s final creation. The fifty-something author has been obsessed with The Ten Commandments since she saw it as a nine-year-old girl in Anniston, Alabama. She eventually moved to Hollywood, befriended Henry Wilcoxon, DeMille’s longtime deputy who also acted in the film, and wrote two books about the movie. She also provided the commentary on the fiftieth-anniversary DVD. She lives in Hollywood in a home filled with overstuffed sofas, mountains of velour pillows, and multiple cats, along with never-before-seen mementoes, including a painting of DeMille and company in the Sinai.
As Orrison explained, DeMille chose to revisit The Ten Commandments because he was motivated by a desire to promote morality and religious freedom both at home and abroad. The director told guests at a luncheon in 1956, “I came here to ask you to use this picture, as I hope and pray that God himself will use it, for the good of the world.” In the conservative 1950s, Hollywood embraced the familiar, with westerns, musicals, and biblical epics all experiencing a revival. For six of the twelve years between 1950 and 1962, a religious historical epic was that year’s number one box-office draw, including Quo Vadis, The Robe, and Ben-Hur. Paramount had resisted DeMille’s entreaties to make another film about Moses, but his longtime rival, Adolph Zukor, an assimilated Hungarian Jew, overruled his staff. “I find it embarrassing and deplorable that it takes Cecil here—a Gentile, no less—to remind us Jews of our heritage! What was World War II fought for, anyway? We should get down on our knees and say thank you that he wants to make a picture on the life of Moses.”
“Zukor and DeMille had been like little dogs growling at each other for twenty years,” Orrison said. “The fact that Zukor ultimately backed the movie showed it was the right movie for the right time. Jews had almost been wiped off the face of the earth in the Holocaust. McCarthyism was rampant in Hollywood with the blacklist. The Cold War was raging. Everybody was scared.” She paused. “But DeMille wasn’t scared.”
A conservative in a town of liberals, DeMille used his film to promote his political views on everything from communism to race relations. In an extraordinary gesture, when moviegoers went to see The Ten Commandments, the curtains parted and DeMille himself appeared on the screen. “Ladies and gentlemen, young and old, this may seem an unusual procedure, speaking to you before the picture begins.” He went on to tell viewers what his movie was about. “The theme of this picture is whether men ought to be ruled by God’s law or whether they are to be ruled by the whims of a dictator like Rameses. Are men the property of the state, or are they free souls under God? The same battle continues throughout the world today.”
In the midst of the Cold War, DeMille’s message was clear: Moses represented the United States; the pharaoh represented the Soviet Union. To drive home his point, DeMille cast mostly Americans as the Israelites and mostly Europeans as the Egyptians—Rameses II was Russian; Sethi I was English; Moses’ adoptive mother was Dutch. (Moses’ love interest, naturally, was American. No cavorting with the enemy!)
DeMille pressed his ideas in other ways throughout the film. The movie opens with a baby Moses being floated down the Nile, then being rescued by a daughter of the pharaoh. The Bible leaps immediately to an adult Moses discovering his heritage, but DeMille sexed up the story, adding a love triangle among Moses, his stepbrother, Rameses II, and Nefretiri, the throne princess. Moses is put in charge of building a treasure city, and he eases the workload of the Israelite slaves, though he doesn’t yet know he’s their kin. A jealous Rameses II tells the pharaoh that Moses must be the Hebrews’ deliverer. Moses then learns his heritage but announces he’s unashamed: “Egyptian or Hebrew, I’m still Moses.” At a time when many Jews still struggled with assimilation, Moses’ open embrace of his faith was a powerful statement of self-confidence.
Moses spends time among the Israelites and murders one of their taskmasters. Brought in chains before the pharaoh, Moses declares it evil that people are oppressed, “stripped of spirit, and hope and faith, all because they are of another race, another creed. If there is a God, He did not mean this to be so!” Again, the emphasis is on inclusion; God accepts all faiths, all races, all creeds. Rameses II banishes Moses to the desert and then marries a heartbroken Nefretiri. Moses also marries and is a peaceful shepherd in the desert until one day he spots a bush awash in flames. DeMille had become intrigued by a rabbinic commentary that said that the voice Moses heard from the burning bush was his father’s. In the scene, DeMille used Heston’s own voice slowed down and deepened. (When Moses receives the Ten Commandments, God’s voice is a mixture of Heston’s, DeMille’s, actor Delow Jewkes, and DeMille’s publicist, Donald Hayne. Perhaps one reason DeMille got such good press is that he allowed his publicist to play God!) Even more telling: When Moses speaks to God in the bush, DeMille omitted Moses’ words from the Bible that imply he was a stutterer. In the Hollywood of the 1950s, the hero did not stutter.
“They originally shot the burning bush scene in the Sinai,” Orrison said, “but they had to reshoot it in Hollywood because Charlton Heston couldn’t pull off modesty. He couldn’t do humble—no matter what. But the scene does work in the end. The Moses we get in 1956 from Charlton Heston is the way America wanted to think of itself at that time. The country’s no longer humble. The country’s a superpower. And it sees itself as God’s chosen place. So Heston becomes the profile on the coin that says IN GOD WE TRUST. That Rushmore visage. Now the hair is white, the beard is longer. He becomes a Founding Father—at least the way we were taught our Founding Fathers looked.”
The mixture of Hollywood magic and 1950s politics is perhaps best on display in the fan favorite of The Ten Commandments—the ten plagues. The Bible gives enormous weight to the plagues. Moses’ birth, adoption, flight into the desert, marriage, and firstborn son are all dispensed with in only one chapter of the text. The ten plagues take nearly seven. Moses’ brother, Aaron, directs the first three plagues—turning the water into blood, an inundation of frogs, and lice. For a superpower so completely dependent on water for irrigation, transportation, and religious ritual, Egypt would have been traumatized by the attack on its water supply. But just when the pharaoh is ready to relent, his stubbornness returns. Moses takes over and pilots the next six plagues—insects, pestilence, and boils, followed by hail, locusts, and darkness. Again, for a culture in which the highest deity was the god of the sun, darkness would have been particularly devastating. “The Egyptians could not see one another, and for three days no one could get up from where he was; but the Israelites enjoyed light in their dwellings.” Pharaoh begs Moses to take his people and leave, but Moses insists that the pharaoh first make a sacrifice to God. The sides are at a standoff, and God announces plans for one final plague.
DeMille, working with primitive special effects, faced enormous challenges in converting the plagues into believable cinema. He chose to show only three: turning the water into blood, hail, and killing of the firstborn sons. For the blood, prop maestro William Sapp built a section of the Nile in a soundstage and stood in the river with a garden hose just beneath the surface. When Heston touched the water with his staff, Sapp pulled away the nozzle, causing red water to spew forth. DeMille found the first take too slow, so the next day Sapp turned up the pressure and pulled the hose away faster. For the hail, mothballs were considered too toxic and too fragile. So with Heston and Yul Brynner standing together in a Hollywood soundstage, Sapp and his colleagues huddled in the rafters with giant bags of popcorn. The kernels were perfect stands-ins because they could be easily swept up after each take. (Sapp also hand-made
one hundred latex frogs with mechanical feet for another plague, and they taped Anne Baxter’s reaction, but her feigned horror was deemed over-the-top and DeMille managed to do what the pharaoh couldn’t: stop at least one infestation.)
In the biblical account, the final plague follows a celebration of the first Passover. God instructs each Israelite family to take a lamb, sheep, or goat and slaughter it at twilight. “They shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they are to eat it. They shall eat the flesh that same night…with unleavened bread and bitter herbs.” Moses instructs the Israelites to spread the blood with a hyssop branch and stay indoors until morning. God will see the blood, he tells them, and “pass over the door.”
In the film, Moses gathers his Hebrew family around an abundant table and celebrates a Passover meal. DeMille lingers over the scene, which includes the Egyptian princess who pulled him from the water and, in a bold political statement in pre–civil rights America, a band of black attendants. The Egyptians were left outside, Katherine Orrison stressed, where they would be exposed to God’s wrath; blacks were invited inside, where they were protected.
