SHUSHTAR

SHUSHTAR, also called Sustar, and by the Arabs Tustar, town situated in the southwest of Iran in the province of Khuzistān near the river Kārun. There is a reference to Shushtari in the Babylonian Talmud (Sanh. 94a), which clearly differentiates it from another city called Shush, the latter being situated to the northwest of Shushtar. The Talmud says "Shush-Tar" means "more than Shush." Neubauer claims that it is possible that the talmudic reference is to Shushan. Obermeyer thinks that Shush, meaning "beautiful," is short for Shushan, and Shushtar means "more beautiful." However, Shush was the ancient capital of the Elamites, and later one of the four capitals of the Achaemenians which most probably was populated by Jews. The city was later destroyed and afterwards rebuilt near its ruins. According to local tradition, the coffin of the prophet Daniel was found in Shushtar and later on was brought to Shush. It should be said that the common name "Shushan ha-Birah" in Jewish sources is Shush (Susa in Greek sources) and not hamadan , as wrongly interpreted. Shushtar entered Jewish history because of a very important and rich karaite family known as Tustaries. The head of the family, Esrail ben Ya'qub, and his three sons, Abul-Fazl, Yosef, and Sa'id, known as the Sahl family, became famous in Islamic history. Some members of the Tustari family founded important trade centers of textile in baghdad and in egypt . They most probably immigrated to cairo around 1020, where they became close political figures in the court of the fatimid sultans . The Muslim geographers of the 14th century write about the beauty and the prosperity of the city, but no one mentions the existence of the Jewish community there. The city is not mentioned in the Chronicle of Bābāi ben Lutf (17th century) nor in other known Jewish travelogues as a dwelling place of the Jews. But a 17th-century Armenian chronicler, Arakel, claims that Jews lived in Shushtar. Neumark reports that Jews had ceased to live in Shushtar some 30–40 years before his time (1884), which means about the middle of the 19th century. However, it is possible that some time before the 18th century, Shushtar was no longer a dwelling place for Jews, mainly because of persecutions. Curzon and Sykes both describe the character of the Shushtaris as "disagreeable and fanatical." -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Arakel of Tabriz, Livre d'Histoires: Collection d'Historiens Arméniens, transl. and ed. by M.I. Brosset, 1 (1874–76); G.N. Curzon, Persia and the Persian Question (1892), 2:363ff.; M. Gil, Tustaries, Family and Sect (1981); G. Le Strange, The Lands of the Eastern Caliphates (1905); A. Neubauer, La Géographie du Talmud (1888); J. Obermeyer, Die Landschaft Babylonien in Zeitalter des Talmud und des Gaonats (1929); E. Neumark, Massa be-Ereẓ ha-Kedem, ed. by Ya'ari (1947); P.M. Sykes, Ten Thousand Miles in Persia (1902), 252ff. (Amnon Netzer (2nd ed.) SHUSTER, JOE SHUSTER, JOE (1914–1992), U.S. cartoonist. Joseph Shuster was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, the son of Jewish immigrants from Rotterdam and Kiev. As a boy, he worked at the Toronto Star but liked to sketch as a hobby. The fantasy world of the newspaper's color comics had a strong impact on him. The family moved to Cleveland, Ohio, when he was 10, and at 18 he met jerry siegel , with whom he was to create Superman, the most famous and fabulous fictional superhero of the 20th century. When Superman first appeared, in 1938, its hero, mild-mannered Clark Kent, worked for The Daily Star, named by Shuster after his old employer in Toronto. When the comic strip received international distribution, the company permanently changed the newspaper's name to The Daily Planet. Superman's popularity helped establish comic books as a format and spawned a genre of costumed superheroes, from Spiderman to Wonder Woman to Captain Marvel. Superman became an industry unto himself. Faster than a speeding bullet, as he was described on the radio, the Man of Steel appeared in newspaper comics, animated cartoons, movie-theater serials, a television series, a Broadway musical, a novel, feature films, and a stream of franchised goods from lunch boxes and toys to bubble gum. In the 1970s alone, Superman sales exceeded $1 billion. Superman was reared as a normal American boy and grew up to become Clark Kent, but when danger loomed, he became the crusader for "Truth, Justice, and the American Way." He doffed his glasses, stripped to a blue bodysuit and red cape, and flew off, using X-ray vision and other powers to thwart the latest evil menace or global disaster. But Siegel and Shuster did not share in the money machine, having signed away their rights in 1938 for $130. After a series of bitter legal battles, both creators became destitute and even sold their old comic books as collectors' items worth thousands of dollars apiece. Shuster, partly blind and unemployed, lived in a very modest apartment in Queens, N.Y. Finally, Siegel and Shuster were granted $35,000 a year from the publisher of Superman, DC Comics, for the rest of their lives and were guaranteed that all comics, TV episodes, films, and other Superman references would state that the character was "created by Jerome Siegel and Joseph Shuster." (Stewart Kampel (2nd ed.)