Super Mensch
By Eric Schwartz
Look! Up in the sky! It’s Noah’s dove! It’s an El Al flight! No, it’s Mr. Mitzvah, who, in his secret identity as 51-year-old recording artist and philanthropist Sir Ivan (aka Ivan Wilzig), has joined 10 other would-be superheroes for the second season of the Sci Fi Channel’s “Who Wants To Be a Superhero?” As Mr. Mitzvah, Sir Ivan will compete for the chance to appear in a comic created by Stan Lee, and to have his character made into an action figure by Shocker Toys.
Lee is once again hosting and producing the hit show, which this season will take place in a fictional city — in the fashion of comic books — where the contestants will live full time as their heroic alter egos. Each week, the would-be superheroes, supervised by Lee, will face challenges based on courage, compassion, resourcefulness and other heroic qualities. They will even face villains in their bid to prove themselves. This season’s contestants include such diverse super people as Braid, a shape-shifter with prehensile hair; Ms. Limelight, a luscious blonde who takes on traits of famous action stars, and Hygena, who fights crime with a variety of super cleaning utensils.
Mr. Mitzvah’s powers are listed as night vision, ability to fly, super-strength and enhanced senses. But it’s his Star of David paddle, which he uses to deflect any attack (God originally gave the paddle to David after David defeated Goliath, and it was passed to Mr. Mitzvah, a direct descendant of David), that makes this hero kosher.
Throughout history, Jews have been intimately involved in comic books and superheroes; many famous characters and stories were drawn and written by Jews (including Spider-Man creator Lee), and many of the stories contain Jewish themes, even if the characters themselves are not overtly Jewish. Mr. Mitzvah, child of a Holocaust survivor, seems a natural choice to fight evil, so long as he can avoid his weakness: nonkosher foods. The season premieres July 26 on the Sci Fi Channel.
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I dont see Mr. Mitzvah as a Jewish superhero, so much as a hero who happens to be Jewish. His lack of total Jewish immersion might be an effort to have a broader connection with the world communtiy as a whole. Hopefully highlighting his Jewish heritage will bring positive exposure to his culture. Just my opinion. Go Mitzvah! -The Defuser
go Ivan!!!!
The last paragraph tries to leave the impression that comic book characters are a Jewish endeavor. While, in fact, it is true that Jews participated in the creation of Superman and others - still, Jewish involvement in a particular field does not mean that we are busy with some expression of Jewishness. This superhero type of entertainment is an American cultural theme, and Jewish interest therein is simply the typical story of Jewish integration into the American mainstream. And more deeply, Jewishness is understood to be merely another way of expressing American culture. Similarly, American Jews speak of "Jewish politicians". However, there are no politicians in the US Congress who see themselves as the representatives of Jewish interests or of a Jewish constituency. They are American politicians, elected by an American public for an American agenda - even though these politicians are of Jewish descent and they might be openly Jewish. Jewish professors of Classical Latin, likewise, do not define Latin studies as a Jewish endeavor. A breath of fresh air in American Jewry would be to see some cultural endeavor that is Jewish from the point of view that only a Jew could really understand the message - something like a Sholom Aleichem story that only an insider (a Jew whose core culture is Jewish) could truly understand. This Mr Mitzvah is just a trite take-off of someone else's culture. Even the initial on his silly uniform is not a Hebrew letter.
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