Dear Mark Ruffalo: The Hulk’s Jewish Creators Built Him to Protect Everyone
There is a particular kind of irony that stops you in your tracks.
Mark Ruffalo, the actor, the activist, the man who has spent over a decade portraying Bruce Banner, plays a character dreamed up to protect the vulnerable. A character born from alienation, persecution, and the courage to stand against destructive force. A character, as it happens, created by two Jewish men drawing on one of the oldest Jewish myths of protection in existence. Yet this is where we find ourselves.
Mr. Ruffalo, I am not writing this to attack you. I am writing this because I believe you are better than the role you are currently playing, and because the legacy you inherited deserves better too.
The Hulk Was Born Jewish
Most people know the basics. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created the Hulk in 1962. Bruce Banner, a brilliant scientist, was transformed by gamma radiation into a creature of almost limitless power, misunderstood, persecuted, perpetually on the run. The character debuted in The Incredible Hulk #1 in May of that year and has been a cornerstone of popular culture ever since.
What fewer people know is where the idea truly came from. Stan Lee, born Stanley Martin Lieber, the son of Romanian-Jewish immigrants raised in Manhattan, did not just draw on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde or Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein when he conceived the Hulk. He drew on something far older and far more personal. Lee himself compared the Hulk to the Golem of Jewish mythology: the ancient protector, fashioned from clay and brought to life by a rabbi to defend the Jewish people from persecution. The parallel is not incidental. It is the soul of the character.
Lee didn’t just make superheroes more human; he made them more Jewish. His characters didn’t live in fictional Metropolis or Gotham City. They lived in New York, the city with the largest Jewish population in the world. His stories carried the flavor of Yiddish theater: melodrama laced with cynicism, resilience threaded through suffering, the dignity of those the world had tried to crush.
Jack Kirby, his collaborator and co-creator, brought his own fuel to the character. Together, these two Jewish creators built a hero whose story is grounded in the experience of the persecuted. The Hulk takes the blows the world delivers and still stands up. Mark Ruffalo, you stepped into that role. You have played him with care and depth for years. On screen, you seemed to understand what he stands for. That is why what has happened off screen is so troubling.
What You Said And Why It Matters
Recently, you have called Israel’s actions in Gaza “a genocide built on an apartheid system of oppression.” You labeled Larry Ellison, the Oracle co-founder whose son is seeking to acquire Paramount, a “classic oligarch,” framing a corporate media transaction through the lens of Israel and Jewish businessmen. You signed a pledge, along with more than a thousand Hollywood figures, to boycott Israeli film institutions. And in a September 2025 podcast appearance, you called for the “boycott, divestment, sanctions, and prosecution” of Israel. Paramount’s response was measured but firm. Words like “genocide” and “apartheid,” applied to a corporate transaction, the studio noted, “aren’t just wrong, they cheapen the very real suffering those words are meant to describe.” Paramount is right.
The Conflation Is the Problem
Let me be clear about what I am saying, and what I am not.
You are entitled to oppose the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger. Corporate consolidation of media is a legitimate concern, and reasonable people debate it vigorously. You are entitled to have views on American foreign policy, on tech companies’ contracts, on the conduct of any government, including Israel’s. But no one with a platform of millions is entitled to conflate a business dispute with accusations of genocide, or to link Jewish business leaders, the Jewish state, and the word “apartheid” as if they are one and the same. That conflation is not criticism. It is a pattern. And patterns have consequences.
Words like yours do not stay in Hollywood. They travel. They show up as graffiti on synagogue walls, as harassment on campuses, as physical violence in the streets. The data bears this out starkly: Jews are the single most targeted religious group for hate crimes in the United States, and in New York City, the very city Stan Lee called home, the city his characters called home, Jews are the most targeted group overall, across every category of hate crime. This is not a footnote. It is the world your words land in.
I know this because I felt it myself, standing at the entrance to my granddaughter’s preschool program, instinctively scanning the door for a security guard before I walked in. That is not a thought I remember having a decade ago. It is a thought millions of Jewish families now have every day.
On the Word “Genocide” Itself
Adjudicating a charge as serious as genocide is too weighty to be dealt with in an op-ed, much less one that discusses the origins of a superhero. But since that is where we are, the charge cannot go unaddressed.
The word “genocide” was coined in the ashes of the Holocaust, created specifically to describe the intentional, systematic annihilation of a people and a civilization. It was born from the memory of Auschwitz, of the Warsaw Ghetto, of the deliberate murder of six million Jews simply for being Jewish.
It is reasonable to question whether Israel has been too harsh in its military conduct. Certain statements made by Israeli leaders in the immediate aftermath of the October 7 massacre reflected the shock and anguish of that unprecedented moment and could have been expressed more carefully.
But to say that the tragedies and violence common to all wars, however painful, however contested, rise to the level of Auschwitz and the Warsaw Ghetto is not criticism. It is a sweeping rewrite of both the past and the present. It strips the word of the weight it was created to carry. And when that word is hurled loosely at Jewish leaders, Jewish institutions, and the Jewish state, it does not remain an abstraction. It becomes permission, permission that lands on synagogue doors, on college campuses, and in the streets where Jews are attacked.
What the Hulk Was Actually Built to Do
Bruce Banner’s tragedy, the one that makes the character endure across generations, is that his rage, however righteous, causes destruction he never intends. He smashes indiscriminately. Bystanders are caught in the wreckage. The very people he means to protect sometimes end up in harm’s way. That is the character’s warning, not just his origin story.
A platform of millions, deployed with the same righteous certainty and the same disregard for precision, works the same way. But when the words are wrong, the collateral damage is real. At his best, the Hulk protects everyone. He does not choose based on politics or nationality. He stands between the vulnerable and whatever threatens them, no matter who they are. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby built a hero in the tradition of the Golem: a protector for all humanity, including the Jewish future. That was the inheritance they left.
A Direct Challenge
Mark, you have said in interviews that you love Jewish people. You have Jewish colleagues, Jewish friends, Jewish co-stars whose company you have spoken of with warmth. But love is not only what we feel. It is what we do with our platform, our influence, and our words when the stakes are real. Right now, Jewish families are calculating risk before entering their own communal spaces. Jewish children are growing up with security guards at their school doors as an unremarkable feature of daily life. Jewish grandparents are glancing toward exits at preschool performances. You were handed the legacy of two Jewish men who imagined a protector for the persecuted. You have the platform, the visibility, and, I believe, the heart to honor that legacy.
So here is my challenge to you, offered sincerely and without malice: Sign the Jewish Future Promise.
Stand publicly for the Jewish future, as Bruce Banner’s creators intended, for everyone, without exception. Use your extraordinary reach not to boycott the Jewish state, but to invest in the next generation of Jewish life. Demonstrate that loving the Jewish people is not just something you say in interviews, but something you are willing to put your name behind.
The Jewish Future Promise asks individuals to commit to dedicating a meaningful portion of their charitable giving to Jewish causes and the Jewish people, not out of tribalism, but out of the recognition that a thriving Jewish future benefits all of humanity. In its own way, this is a Hulk-like idea: strength used to help others, power used to protect.
Back to the Origin
The Golem, in the ancient legend, was built from clay and brought to life with a word. Its purpose was singular: to protect. When its work was done, it rested. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby gave that myth a new form for the twentieth century: a protector born of trauma, powered by pain, capable of great good when guided well. They gave him to all of us.
Mr. Ruffalo, you can still choose what to do with that legacy. The inheritance remains. The choice is yours. The children of the Jewish future are still here. They are still singing. They are still showing up. We welcome you to show up for us too. Mr. Ruffalo, you can still choose what to do with that legacy. The inheritance remains. The choice is yours. Mr. Ruffalo, the children of the Jewish future are still here. They are still singing. They are still showing up. We welcome you to show up for us too. You can do so here: https://jewishfuturepromise.org/sign-the-promise/.
