Jack Perez makes clothes for Jewish soldiers. In a way, Mel Gibson is to blame.
In 2011, a few years after spouting that “Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world” during a DUI arrest, the filmmaker announced that he was making a biopic of one of our most celebrated warriors, Judah Maccabee.
“That never materialized,” Perez, 36, said from Washington, where he is an Army specialist based in Fort Lewis. But the project got him thinking: “Why should this guy who’s now in headlines for antisemitism get to tell what is essentially one of our coolest stories?”
Since then, Perez, a “recovering journalist” from California, has been taking back the Hasmonean narrative. He wrote a screenplay called “Maccabeus” and soon began adapting it into a graphic novel with artist Mark Strauss. Along the way Perez became a military man himself and developed his latest endeavor: Maccabee Apparel, a merchandise line for veterans and their supporters that made use of so