Popeye was created in 1929 by Elzie Crisler Segar, a cartoonist from Chester, Illinois. While some sources claim Segar had Jewish roots, others claim differently, and it's impossible to know for sure. Segar, though, based the character on a real person, Frank "Rocky" Fiegel. Fiegel was a Polish immigrant sailor and local hero who was likely Jewish himself.
From the Burning Bush to Brooklyn. Popeye might have been born on the page, but he became a phenomenon on the screen, thanks to Fleischer Studios, run by brothers Max and Dave Fleischer. Max and Dave were born to recent Jewish immigrants from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and grew up in Brownsville, Brooklyn. Together, the brothers built one of the great early animation studios, pioneering the rotoscope technique and briefly out-popularizing Mickey Mouse himself with their Popeye shorts.
The Studio Behind the Sailor. The Fleischers didn't just produce the cartoons, they seasoned them with real Yiddishkeit personality. Keep an eye out for the 1938 short "Bulldozing the Bull," where Popeye flattens a charging bull, and it comes down as a chopped meat stand complete with a sign written in Hebrew, reading "kosher." It's a blink-and-you-miss-it gag, but it's real, it's on film, and it's basically the exact same joke as the kosher spinach can on this very design. Then there's Wimpy, Popeye's hamburger-mooching sidekick, forever offering to "gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today," a classic schnorrer archetype straight out of Yiddish storytelling tradition. And there are more winks like that scattered throughout the cartoons if you know where to look.
Jewish Lines and Lyrics. Ask anyone to hum the Popeye theme and they'll get it right immediately, "I'm Popeye the Sailor Man." That earworm was written by Sammy Lerner, a Jewish immigrant from Romania, reportedly in under two hours. While his music catalog was vast, this song is the one that stuck to the ribs of pop culture forever.
Popeye's most famous line, "I am what I am," first appeared in Segar's Thimble Theatre comic strip. Shortly thereafter, the Fleischer brothers turned it into its own cartoon short in 1933, titled "I Yam What I Yam." That famous line just so happens to closely mirror G-d's own words to Moses at the Burning Bush in Exodus 3:14, Ekyeh-Asher-Ekyeh. We won't pretend to know if Segar meant it, but it's at least a fun cosmic coincidence.
The Real S.S. Exodus. The tattoo on Popeye's arm in this design reads "S.S. Exodus 3:14," and it's doing double duty. Beyond the Torah verse, it's a direct nod to the S.S. Exodus 1947, a ship that carried over four thousand five hundred Jewish Holocaust survivors from France toward British Mandate Palestine. British forces intercepted the ship, several passengers were killed, and the survivors were ultimately sent back to displaced persons camps in Germany. The international outrage that followed helped tip public opinion toward the United Nations partition vote later that year, a pivotal step toward the formation of the State of Israel in 1948.
So next time someone tells you Popeye is just a cartoon sailor with a spinach habit, you can let them know he's actually a fun piece of Jewish American pop culture history. Now you're wearing it.
Go Deeper
The following articles further detail the topics above.
"The Secret Jewish History of Popeye the Sailor Man" - Forward
"The Jewish Worlds of Max and Dave Fleischer" - B'nai B'rith International
"Exodus 1947: The Ship that Launched a Nation" - World Jewish Congress
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