DC Comics gave Hal Jordan's Green Lantern a Hanukkah special that celebrates Hal's Jewish heritage in a way rarely seen in superhero comics. In the Green Lantern: The Animated Series spinoff comic, Jordan supports a group of rebels fighting to reclaim their home while his power ring’s charge drops to dangerously low levels. The story, which is overtly inspired by the Maccabean Rebellion, is not only a rare Hanukkah-focused superhero adventure, it is also a much-needed example of tasteful Jewish representation in genre fiction.
Green Lantern: The Animated Series #8 by Ivan Cohen and Luciano Vecchio, is full of references to the Maccabean Rebellion. With his ring’s energy depleting (and being separated from a power battery for eight days) Hal Jordan helps the Hammer Tribe’s de facto leader, Mk'Abee, overthrow the oppressive Lizardriders and reclaim their homeland. Meanwhile, aboard the Interceptor, Kilowog explains the story behind the Earth holiday Hanukkah to Razer and Aya while preparing impromptu latkes with potato-like tubers (having learned the recipe from Jordan), noting the similarities between Hal Jordan’s predicament and that of the Maccabees upon reclaiming the Second Temple in ancient Judea (modern-day Israel).
DC Reminds Everyone That Hal Jordan Is Jewish
Hal Jordan manages to preserve his ring’s power for eight days by limiting its use to only life support and universal translation until Kilowog shows up on the eighth day to provide a life-saving recharge. Hal Jordan’s adventure is a rare and sorely-needed instance of tasteful and overt Jewish representation in comics. Moreover, it canonized Hal Jordan as one of DC’s most prominent Jewish superheroes years before the mainstream continuity confirmed his ethnic and religious background.
A post-Flashpoint tie-in comic to Justice League: The Darkseid War reveals that while Hal Jordan’s father was of European ethnicity and religiously Catholic, his mother was ethnically and religiously Jewish. That story was published in 2016 and Hal Jordan’s Jewish identity is rarely mentioned in the main DC Universe, yet his Green Lantern: The Animated Series Hanukkah story was released in 2012 and puts Hal Jordan’s Jewish identity and culture front and center. This sort of tasteful Jewish representation is incredibly rare in mainstream entertainment, even as it has become more diverse in recent years.
Despite many of the “big two” publishers’ most famous characters being created by Jewish writers and artists, Jewish superheroes are quite rare, and modern superhero comics and their adaptations often fail to tastefully depict or even include Jews. Green Lantern’s Hannukah-focused issue tells a Jewish story with a Jewish protagonist that is both accessible to any reader and refreshingly free of tired old tropes and stereotypes. Genre fiction in general and superhero comics in particular need more unambiguous and joyful examples of Jewish representation, and Hal Jordan’s Hannukah special in Green Lantern is precisely the sort of story that comics need more of.