How does a powerless people empower itself?

When the world becomes oppressive and all paths to liberation seem cut off, groups often create fictional folk heroes to fight on their behalf. If these heroes cannot throw off an evil ruler in reality, at least they can provide a source of comfort and inspiration.

The Hebrew Hammer is one such hero. He follows in a long line of characters who have fought anti-Semitism and government discrimination to give the Jewish people freedom and power. One of the most famous of these heroes is the Golem of Prague.

In the 16th century, the Jews of Prague were subject to hatred and oppression. As the story goes, Rabbi Loew created a creature out of clay, the Golem, who would defend the Jewish community. Upon creating the Golem, Rabbi Loew exclaims, "Know you, clod of clay, that we have fashioned you from the dust of the earth that you may protect the people of Israel against its enemies and shelter it from the misery and suffering to which our nation is subjected."

The Golem story inspired the artists and writers who created the modern comic book industry, many of whom were Jews. In the 1930s and 1940s Jewish artists were often shut out of creative fields due to anti-Semitism. Men like Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster and Will Eisner turned to creating comic books and found a way of fighting back. Ari Kaplan, author of "How Jews Created the Comic Book Industry," reveals that Jewish artists often created hidden dual identities for their heroes to depict the reality of immigrant American Jews.

Siegel and Schuster created a modern-day Golem in Superman. Like the Golem, Superman defends the persecuted innocent – a metaphor for the Jewish people. Hulk creator Stan Lee said explicitly, "When you think about it, The Incredible Hulk is a Golem" – a superhero of sheer brute strength who takes on evildoers. Lee's X-Men are a group of persecuted outcasts who use mutant superpowers to become superheroes. In the 2000 movie version of the X-Men, the character Magneto is given a Holocaust backstory: He was separated from his parents in a Nazi concentration camp.

The Jewish people's aspiration for autonomy and empowerment took its most important turn in 1948 with the creation of the modern State of Israel. Following the ultimate tragedy of the Holocaust, the Jewish people – inspired by centuries of heroic tales -- created a nation in which they could govern and defend themselves. The courageous rescue of endangered Jews from Middle Eastern countries, Ethiopia and the former Soviet Union were fact, not fantasy.

By creating Hebrew Hammer, writer/director Jonathan Kesselman quite consciously creates a Jewish hero for a new generation and a new millennium. Just as the Maccabees overcame their own Hellenistic oppressors to regain their independence, so the Hebrew Hammer saves Chanukah, that fabled story of Jewish empowerment.

Growing up in an environment that was hostile to his Jewishness, Mordechai Jefferson Carver, the detective known as "The Hebrew Hammer," grows into a man who fights for his Jewish community. By asserting his masculinity, Hammer rejects his feelings of impotence. The film's characterization, story and the language are outrageous, but they do not detract from the central theme of the movie: A centuries-old Jewish desire to overcome hatred, oppression and powerlessness.