‘JewCE! The Jewish Comics Experience’ Opens at Capital Jewish Museum
Jews have long taken pride in being known as the “People of the Book.” In recent decades, with the continuing popularity of comic franchise movies like “Marvel Universe” and “DC Extended Universe,” today Jews can also take pride in being people of the comic book. This multi-billion-dollar publishing, film and consumer products industry has its origins on New York’s Lower East Side and the vibrantly imaginative Jewish creators of early pulp fiction and comics.
In recent years — thanks to popular culture references on TV’s “Seinfeld” and Internet and Reddit threads about comic book storylines — it has been revealed that Superman and Batwoman, and therefore, by extrapolation, Batman, among a number of other comic book heroes, have Jewish parents. And that comes as no surprise following an afternoon delving into “JewCE! The Jewish Comics Experience,” a POW! BANG! WHAM! of an exhibit running at the Lillian and Albert Small Capital Jewish Museum in Northwest Washington.
With more than 140 items, ranging from 19th-century Yiddish cartoons to mid-20th-century “Adventure Comics” from one of this industry’s big guns, DC Comics; to a 1943 “Superman” comic; and recent graphic novels from Israel, like “Letting Go,” penned by a Holocaust survivor, this colorful survey traces more than the Jewish history of comics.
Simultaneously, “JewCE!” follows the history of American Jews in the 20th century. The account begins with the early, mostly Ashkenazi immigration, to acculturation and assimilation, the battle against Nazism and fascism during World War II and awareness of the Holocaust, to the women’s movement and social justice activism based on tikkun olam — the Jewish tradition of repairing the world. There’s even a section that showcases a Hebrew-speaking Mickey Mouse — Mickey Maoz or Mickey the Strong — these comic books were used in the mid-20th century to teach children Hebrew in synagogue schools.
Pulp Fiction and Amazing Stories
By the early 20th century, American pulps were cheaply published fiction magazines and novels that leaned into lurid and fantastic tales of crime, scientific fantasy and heroic adventures. Hugo Gernsback, an immigrant from Luxemburg, created the pulp magazine “Amazing Stories,” printed on cheap newsprint rather than glossy magazine paper, that leaned in to using scientific concepts and real and invented gadgets as part of the plot and action. In fact, the term “science fiction,” now a popular genre of literature and film, was coined by Gernsback.
The JewCE! exhibit, which runs through March 23, 2025, originated at New York’s Center for Jewish History, and includes items from its partner organizations the American Jewish Historical Society, American Sephardi Federation, Leo Baeck Institute, Yeshiva University Museum and YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. While the Capital Jewish Museum is a new kid on the block in the Jewish museum and archive world, the local curatorial team — Lauren Hoffman and Sarah Levitt — uncovered some Washington-area connections and stories to tell from the comics universe.
Comic Cons
The section on fandom highlights the deep and enduring community of local comic book collectors who have devised their own gatherings, which have built a subculture of lovers of comics that attracts people from all walks of life. The region has long held comics conventions, many affiliated with the now-defunct student group the University of Maryland Comic Art Society. In the 1970s and 1980s, these gatherings were solely focused on sharing and collecting comics across genres, particularly hard-to-find underground publications. Today, these “cons” have evolved into large-scale commercial gatherings where participants cosplay — dress up as their favorite superheroes, comic book or manga characters.
Retired telecom executive and homebuilder Warren Bernard remembers his parents buying him Dell funny animals comics as a young child in New York. At seven, when he got his tonsils out, he received his first “Superman” comic book. “That’s what led me down the road to perdition with superheroes,” the Bethesda resident and avid comic collector said ruefully.
Bernard’s comic collection is extensive and covers numerous genres. A number of his collected graphic items — from Sunday newspaper funny pages, to hardbound collector’s books like 1927’s “The Golden Medina,” a 1943 “Superman” comic book and an early pair of 1954 “Mad” satiric comic magazines — have been loaned to the exhibit. Among them, he shared “Funny Aminals” [sic], one of the earliest renderings of Art Spiegelman’s characters that would later populate his groundbreaking serial comic and graphic novel “Maus,” a tale of a Holocaust survivors’ experiences as told to his son.
He began collecting comic books, primarily superheroes, as a child. After moving with his family to the D.C. area as a teen, Bernard attended University of Maryland, College Park, where he became an avid member of the campus’s Comic Art Society. He said, “We talked about comics and smoked weed; talked about underground comics, smoked some more weed … that’s just the way it was back then.”
These days, Bernard continues his involvement with collecting and now disseminating his knowledge of the popularity and importance of comics as both historical and socio-political artifacts of American and Jewish-American history. His collection of 150 items of American sports cartoonist Willard Mullin’s work is now held by Columbia University’s Butler Library. As a comics-focused writer and historian, he has contributed to more than a dozen books, conducted extensive research on comic-related topics and published numerous articles and has lectured on the subject at the Library of Congress.
JewCE! delves into the Jewish immigrant and assimilation experience primarily, but not entirely, in the U.S., covering a broad swath of comic and American history in pen-and-ink and four-color printing and ephemera. For young — and older — creatives, there are also stations to draw, write and tell visitors’ own comic stories or even dress up in wigs and capes for a quick cosplay moment and selfie.
Bernard noted that he sees his own family’s immigrant stories reflected in many of the comic authors and artists he has collected and lent to the museum. “I look at the birth names of all of these comic creators … and I see how they anglicized them. They all went through this: Bob Kane [co-creator of Batman] was Robert Conn; Jack Kirby [creator of Captain America] was Jacob Kurtzberg; Stan Lee [co-creator of iconic characters like Spider-Man, the X-Men, Thor, the Hulk, Black Widow and Black Panther] was Stanley Lieber …. My dad went through it. The transformation was there, in the work they were doing, and definitely in who they were.”
The immigrant generations of Jews reinvented themselves, becoming Americans in both mundane and heroic transformations in their new homeland. “JewCE! The Jewish Comic Experience” follows that inspirational transformation as Jews became American and infused their social, cultural and political ethos into the comic book industry creating a pop culture phenomenon that continues to hold sway over imaginations of children and adults around
the world.
“JewCE! The Jewish Comics Experience” runs through March 23, 2025, at the Lillian and Albert Small Capital Jewish Museum, 575 3rd St., NW, Washington, D.C.
Tuesdays – Sundays 11 a.m. – 6 p.m., first Wednesday of each month the museum closes at 8 p.m.
$10 general admission, children under 12 and members are free.
Family Day: Comics & Community happens on Nov. 11 from 9:30 a.m. – 1 p.m. featuring a comics workshop and the secret origin story of Batman. Registration required.
Lisa Traiger is Washington Jewish Week’s arts correspondent.
