Key points
- Since her creation in 1992's Batman: The Animated Series, Harley Quinn has been thought to be Jewish.
- Confirmation that Harley Quinn was Jewish in DC canon first appeared in Gotham City Sirens #7.
- Harley Quinn's explicit celebration of Hanukkah came in 2016's DC Rebirth Holiday Special #1.
In “When We First Met,” we highlight the various characters, phrases, objects, or events that eventually became notable parts of comic book lore. Today, we take a look at when it was first made canon that Harley Quinn was Jewish.
Recently, it seems that Marvel has finally confirmed that Kitty Pryde was bisexual. However, Kitty's bisexuality has been so widely hinted at over the years that it almost seems strange to say it's “confirmed” now, but when it comes to representation, there really is a big difference between heavily implying something and outright declaring it. The former, while quite beautiful, always gives you room for denial, while the latter, of course, does not.
Which brings me to today's topic. My friend Morts asked me, “When was it canonized that Harley is Jewish. Not just implicit, but explicit.” It seems to have taken a surprisingly long time, Morts! Let's take a look!
When was it first said that Harley Quinn was Jewish?
As soon as Harley Quinn made her debut in the season one episode of Batman: The Animated Series by 1992, it was pretty clear that she was meant to be Jewish. Paul Dini and Bruce Timm created her, and her original voice actress, the late, great Arleen Sorkin, certainly played her as if she were Jewish, modeling her comedic style on old Jewish comedians of the Borscht Belt and, of course, heavily influenced by Sorkin herself, who was Jewish.
Likely influenced by Sorkin (it was Sorkin who influenced Dini's creation of Harley Quinn, who later recalled, “I was kind of stuck for a name. Harley Quinn kind of stuck because I was thinking about clowns and clown imagery and carnivals. I started a little drawing of her. It looked nothing like the character actually looks. In fact, it looked like a caricature of Arleen Sorkin, my good friend who plays Harley on the show and who I wanted to voice. I showed it to Bruce (Timm) and he said, 'She looks like a go-go girl from the '60s, and she looks like your friend.' Pretty quickly, he came up with the girl we have here for whom we're all eternally grateful.”), Dini decided that Harley Quinn was Jewish.
As Sorkin once joked, “At least we know the Joker isn't an anti-Semite!”
This aspect, however, was not explicitly addressed in the animated series.
In comics BASED on the cartoon, however, it appeared very early, when Dini and Ronnie Del Carmen wrote and drew the iconic short story, “The Harley and the Ivy” in 1994. The Batman Adventures – Holiday Special #1, and he stated very clearly and immediately that Harley is Jewish…
Similarly, in 1997, in the one-shot The Adventures of Batgirl #1 (by Dini and Rick Burchett), while Harley celebrates Christmas in this issue (which he often does)…
The issue also makes explicit reference to Hanukkah dedicated to Batgirl…
Of course, this was in CARTOON continuity. Harley Quinn didn’t enter official DC canon until just 25 years ago (which I actually wrote about last month), so that meant we had to go back to wondering when it was explicitly revealed that Harley was also Jewish in THIS continuity!
By 2007, Paul Dini had become the regular writer on Detective Comics, and in Police Comics #831 (by Dini, Don Kramer and Wayne Faucher), brought Harley Quinn back into action after the character had been in limbo for several years following the end of her ongoing solo series, which launched in 2000 (by Karl Kesel and Terry and Rachel Dodson) and ended before even reaching 40 issues.
In this issue, Harley is trying to get parole when she is broken out of prison by the new Scarface. Harley decides to try to bring down Scarface and calls Commissioner Gordon to tell him about Scarface's plan, and ends the call with a Yiddish phrase, “Ver derharget,” which means “to die”…
However, while this is a HUGE hint that Dini wanted Harley to be Jewish in the DC Universe, it's not exactly confirmation.
When was Harley Quinn's Jewish nature confirmed in DC canon?
A couple of years after reintroducing Harley as a hero to the DC Universe, Dini wrote the series, Sirens of Gotham Citywith Harley, Catwoman and Poison Ivy.
In the seventh issue of the series (with art by Jorge Lopez and Alvaro Lopez), Harley actually appears to confirm that she is Jewish when she goes to visit her mother for the holidays, but honestly, I think it's probably not entirely EXPLICIT yet…
The fact that her family was originally from Bensonhurst was almost certainly a clue that she was Jewish, but when you greet your mother with ALL the holiday greetings, how can that be interpreted as an explicit statement that Harley is Jewish?
Inside the house, it's clear that the family is celebrating both Christmas and Hanukkah, so how can we know for sure that Harley Quinn celebrated Hanukkah?
It wouldn't be until 2016 that we got confirmation that Harley does, in fact, celebrate Hanukkah, in DC Rebirth Holiday Special #1, where Dini and Elsa Charretier prove it…
Of course, this raises its own questions (in the popular HBO animated series Harley Quinn, she is explicitly Jewish, hence the main image, and her MOTHER is Jewish in that show), but this is the closest we've come in the comics to explicitly noting that Harley Quinn is Jewish. If you think that ISN'T enough, then we honestly haven't learned it yet.
Thanks for the suggestion, Morts! If anyone has a suggestion for a future When We First Met, hit me up at brianc@cbr.com! If you email me the suggestion, it has the added bonus of being searchable later, so I can give you credit if I take a while to write about it! Morts hasn't done it, but I know him well enough to remember him asking me about it pretty easily.