Age of Ultron, this year’s Avengers film sequel, has generated $1.4 billion worldwide at the box office so far, a number likely to be matched or exceeded by Dawn of Justice, next year’s eagerly anticipated Batman vs. Superman film. Not an unimpressive achievement for characters originally created by the children of poor Jewish immigrants.
Yet while the caped inventions of (mainly) American Jewish cartoonists have excited the imaginations of people around the world, Israeli Jews have never produced anything comparable. The Hebrew Superhero (original Hebrew title Hagibor-ha’al ha-ivri), a new documentary film by the directors Shaul Betser and Asaf Galay (whose previous film was reviewed in Mosaic by Ruth Wisse), asks why.
investigations and fantasies 