The pop culture hysteria is getting ridiculous. The movie 300, based on a graphic novel treatment of the sacrifice of the Spartans in the battle of Thermopylae, has become a political palimpsest with everyone trying to find support for their agenda in it—but get serious, it’s a comic book on the big screen. Similarly, a few have tried to see omens in the death of comic book hero Captain America recently. Again, it’s a comic book — superheroes die all the time, and they bounce back like Jesus or get replaced by someone else willing to look ridiculous in public wearing garish Spandex. For the most obvious example of a hyperbolic search for Meaning and Significance in the death of fictitious characters, though, we have to turn to the religious — they’ve got so much practice at it, after all. Ladies and gentlemen, behold Rabbi Marc Gellman, whose thesis is that the Spartans and Captain America died for God.