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H
e didn't look Jewish. Not with his perfect pug nose, electric blue eyes, and a boyish spit curl that suggested Anglo as well as Saxon. No hint in his sleek movie-star name, Clark Kent, which could only belong to a gentile.
His social circle didn't give it away either: Lois Lane, George Taylor, and even Lex Luthor were, like him, more Midwest mainstream than East Coast ethnic.
The surest sign that Clark was no Semite came when the bespectacled everyman donned royal blue tights and a furling red cape to transform into a Superman with rippling muscles and magnifying superpowers.
Who ever heard of a Jewish strongman?
The evidence of his ethnic origin lay elsewhere, starting with Kal-El, his Kryptonian name. El is a suffix in Judaism's most cherished birthrights, from Isra-el to the prophets Samu-el and Dani-el. It means God. Kal is the root of the Hebrew words for voice and vessel. Together they suggest that the superbaby rocketed to Earth by his dying father was not just a Jew, but a very special one. Like Moses.
Much as the baby prophet was floated in a reed basket by a mother desperate to spare him from an Egyptian pharaoh's death warrant, so moments before Kal-El's planet blew up, his parents tucked...