fbpx
[additional-authors]
February 13, 2016

Is Deadpool Jewish?  Could the foul-mouthed, sarcastic superhero of Tim Miller’s new flick,“Deadpool” — be a member of the Tribe?

A Journal reader wrote in to say that in “Deadpool’s” final after-credits scene, there’s a mezuzah on the anti-hero’s doorpost.  Could this be intentional?  Or is it just an accident of set design?  The superhero’s comic book co-creator Rob Liefeld is the son of a Baptist minister, so no clues there.

But perhaps you could call the film’s Deadpool at least Jewish-adjacent.  Ryan Reynolds, who plays the anti-hero, appeared on film last year as a Jewish superhero in his own right.   In the 2015 drama “Woman in Gold,” he portrayed the mild-mannered Jewish attorney E. Randol Schoenberg, who in real life helped Los Angeles Holocaust survivor Maria Altmann recover Gustav Klimt paintings that had been stolen from her family by the Third Reich.

“I’ve played superheroes who are less powerful than Randy Schoenberg,” Reynolds – once proclaimed People magazine’s “sexiest man alive” — told me in an interview last year.  “A character who can fly around the Earth or stop a speeding train is part of a fantastic and unrealistic world. But a guy who can apply every cell in his body to an almost unattainable [real-world] objective and achieve it like Randy did — that’s a true superpower. … Randy is a person who feels greatly, but at the same time, he’s a warrior — a quieter warrior, but that’s exactly what he is.”

Here’s a link to my story on Reynolds and “Woman in Gold.” 

Did you enjoy this article?
You'll love our roundtable.

Editor's Picks

Latest Articles

More news and opinions than at a
Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.

More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.

More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.