Russell Crowe To Play Foreskin Man

Foreskin Man

Gal Beckerman June 10, 2011

The big studios seem to be running out of superheros for the summer movie season. They must be scraping the bottom of the barrel if the best they can do now is Thor and the Green Lantern.

I have a solution: A brand new superhero, minted just last week, and a big, big Hollywood star who seems hyped to play him.

We’ve recently been introduced to the comic book “Foreskin Man,” the quite blatantly, Medieval-style anti-Semitic creation of one Matthew Hess, a key figure behind the ballot initiative to ban circumcision in San Francisco. The comic’s hero fights off the dark, Shylock-looking character known as “Mohel Monster” who brandishes his knife and looks to cut up Jewish babies’ penises. Foreskin Man is a waspy, blond haired hunk in a yellow cape whose real identity is the mild, mannered bachelor Miles Hastwick.

Russell Crowe is apparently auditioning for the part via Twitter. After one of his followers informed Crowe that he was expecting a son and hoping to circumcise him, the Australian star known as much for his acting as for throwing telephones at people in hotel lobbies, responded: “Circumcision is barbaric and stupid. Who are you to correct nature? Is it real that GOD requires a donation of foreskin?”

Crowe went on to call another follower that defended the ritual practice a “moron,” and extolled the virtues of his own foreskin: “It’s cold here in Ireland, it’s like a turtle neck, but for my penis.”

It’s a done deal then. The only question is: Who will play the arch enemy of Foreskin Man, “Monster Mohel”? I vote for Pacino!

Gal Beckerman was a staff writer and then the Forward’s opinion editor until 2014. He was previously an assistant editor at the Columbia Journalism Review where he wrote essays and media criticism. His book reviews have appeared in The New York Times Book Review and Bookforum. His first book, “When They Come for Us, We’ll Be Gone: The Epic Struggle to Save Soviet Jewry,” won the 2010 National Jewish Book Award and the 2012 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, as well as being named a best book of the year by The New Yorker and The Washington Post. Follow Gal on Twitter at @galbeckerman

The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Forward. Discover more perspectives in Opinion. To contact Opinion authors, email [email protected].

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

The coming year promises to be filled with more complex and historic developments. We are entering an era where independent, fact-based Jewish journalism will be more important than ever. We need to be ready for whatever 2025 will bring, and with your help, we can be.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO