hi traincat, so this entire time i thought peter being jewish was a unanimous consensus… apparently today i realized that was not the case 😭😭

i saw a whole debate on whether hes christian or jewish and so obviously i thought i went to you and ask ur of ur opinion :)

him being from forest hills was a glaring sign i assumed, but then people started saying he wasnt given a clear religious denomination and now im like… confused??

I think the only thing Spider-Man fandom feels unanimous about is that Peter Parker was bit by a radioactive spider. And we can probably still find a few outliers. But no, no, this one is definitely not a unanimous conclusion -- a lot of people hate this idea. But I don't find that particularly surprising from the fandom that keeps coming up with reasons why hardline canonically Jewish characters like Magneto shouldn't be Jewish in movies.

So, I mean, first things first is that Peter is not hardline canonically Jewish, in that Marvel themselves, as a company, has not declared it canon. That doesn't stop a lot of creators from outright saying he's Jewish, and it doesn't have any bearing on the decades of heavy Jewish subtext. But it is a fact, and it has to be taken into consideration in the conversation. This is the same thing I talk about when I say Johnny isn't hardline canonically queer; Marvel the company says he isn't, no matter what individual creators have done. In longrunning canons where corporate makes the rules, we do have to have some kind of distinction for the sake of conversation. Doesn't mean we can't cover the grey areas. I can't say Peter is canonically-according-to-Marvel-the-company Jewish, because that's just not true, but I can say he is heavily implied to be Jewish, because of all those decades of subtext and dancing around the subject and Forest Hills and Yiddishisms and the way Peter conceptualizes his relationship with God and, again, all of the creators who have said he's Jewish and written him as Jewish.

The problem with the Jewish vs Protestant Peter argument is that Peter being Jewish informs his character in a way that him being Protestant does not. (I have seen people argue that he's Catholic, but that's so. lol. lmfao. listen my dad's family is Catholic and: no.) I've talked a little bit before about how "with great power comes great responsibility" is just a reframing of tikkun olam, healing the world, but it's more than that. It's in the way he doesn't recognize basic tenets of Christianity, the way in which he speaks directly to (and has a somewhat antagonistic relationship with) God, the way he interacts with the world and with his world, with New York. (I have also seen people argue that Peter is neither, because he's an atheist -- we have no proof he's an atheist, although I could see him being agnostic, but none of this matters because you can be Jewish and an atheist. Like I need people to realize that's a thing. Judaism and Christianity do not work on a 1:1 comparison but with different winter holidays.)

But there's a problem here wherein, even if people are open to the idea of Peter being Jewish, it requires readers to have enough passing familiarity with Jewishness and Jewish coding to recognize that subtext is there. To you and me, Forest Hills is a very clear "oh, he's Jewish" flashing alarm, but I wouldn't expect someone who isn't from New York, let alone from the USA, and isn't Jewish to recognize that. I wouldn't expect someone who isn't familiar to see those echoes of healing the world in "with great power, comes great responsibility." I wouldn't expect someone to grasp the finer details of Peter calling it Shavuos and not Shavuot when they don't even know what Shavuos is. I don't expect them to look at his parents and see at-the-time attitudes surrounding the Rosenberg trial. I don't expect people to see Jewishness where we don't say it directly, not understanding how Jewish it is by that very act of not saying it directly. And you can explain it to people, sure, but the problem with Peter's Jewish coding, and what makes it feel so especially authentic to me, is how it isn't said, how it lurks in the margins, even when it doesn't. (Take a shot of Manischewitz every time he says "oy." Red or purple?) He stepped on a glass at his wedding in Into the Spider-verse, but how much of that is because there are people who don't know what that means?

I will say he doesn't have a "clear religious denomination" if that is something you need said directly and with words right to your face. If you're comfortable reading between the lines -- I mean, come on. But I will also say he is never depicted as anything more hardline than a casual Christmas celebrator in terms of Christianity. So if we're going to split hairs here, then I guess we're all going to have to stand on our own sides of the religion gym and stare at each other in awkward silence. There is more evidence for him being Jewish than him being Christian. But since Christian is considered the default, it's assumed anyway. People have to choose what matters to them in readings of a character when a specific identity is implicit and not explicit. You can have all the evidence in the world and it still won't be good enough for everyone.

There are a few Peters I do consider hardline canonically Jewish, because they come from extenuating circumstances. Ultimate Peter, because Brian Michael Bendis wrote him the whole way through, and BMB is a very vocal Jewish Peter supporter. Noir Peter, because of his whole deal. And TASM!Peter, because Andrew Garfield didn't get a third movie so the least we can do is give him his Jewish bisexual Spider-Man headcanon. Thank you for your service, Andrew ITSV!Peter B. Parker was clearly envisioned as Jewish. And 616 Parker gets to hang there on the outside of the web, calling himself Jewish, speaking Yiddish, growing up in Forest Hills, but not, strictly, allowed to actually say he's Jewish. So we get to have this debate until Marvel admits some stuff.

Peter being a horndog is such an important part of his character to me that I can't not picture him as those looney tune wolves that would whistle and howl and have their tongues rolling out. Like that's what you'd see in his head during his horndog moments I think

The human embodiment of Pepe Le Pew and every supermodel living in New York is the cat.

Not the cousin thing PETER 😭 We need to kill Peter Parker…😭

I find it so funny how Peter is a true horndog in canon, but you have someone like Johnny who’d you’d think would be the same given his public image/lady flirting , but barely has sex in the comics. It’s always the one’s with big brown puppy eyes and a little anxiety…

It's so funny to me. I love his hot Reilly cousins. They were all living in Aunt May's house at one point and one of them briefly dated Harry.

He's the WORST about being a horndog, I'm so endeared by it constantly even if I think he should be hunted for sport. What do you mean he's called Felicia's breasts "the kittens." And webbed MJ to the ceiling sexually. Get out. Stop that. Spider-Man comics won't be fun again until they let him be irrevocably horny. The Spideytorch conclusion to this is that one day they're going to be trading bed post notches just for fun and Peter's going to start doing the math, like, on his fingers. Just adding things up. Looking at Johnny in horror because what do you mean he's the slut.