Writing Jewish characters, and what to avoid
Do you have any advice for writing a Jewish character? Maybe a list of things to absolutely avoid doing?
Before I launch into the list of things to avoid, I want to say that the reason I love this blog so much is that theyâre always responding to âhow to write an X characterâ posts with âmake sure theyâre well-rounded outside of just that.â In other words, write a Jewish character so distinct that you could have two Jewish characters and theyâd be different enough from each other that the reader could tell them apart.
Iâm not saying you have to have two Jewish characters, just that if you have two Jewish lesbians in the same story, for example, then you canât fall back on âJewishâ or âlesbianâ as a way of defining the character and have to start building an actual personality. The book Iâm writing now has three Jewish lesbians, plus a bisexual woman, and they have different interests, histories, outlooks, and roles in their world.
Read things by Jews. Try to stay away from anyone who seems to be too self-hating or âantisemisogynistâ, i.e. that thing where Jewish men criticize Jewish women, which is dangerous because their intra-community misogyny gets picked up by the Gentile (non-Jewish) world and taken seriously because âoh, itâs their own people, so they must know.â No, itâs [some] men oppressing women, just as everywhere else.
Not all Jews are white or white-passing Ashkenazim. Thatâs something Gentiles often forget. So donât think your Jewish characters have to look like me (or me with black hair.)
Some of us are atheists and still identify as Jews because of the way we often think of it as a tribe. Some of us feminize all the God nouns and verbs for feminist reasons. Some of us are very traditional and wear long skirts and sleeves. Some of us go to temple every week but have never, ever kept kosher (Hi. Nice to meet you.)
Here are all the stereotypes about us and, in a few cases, how Iâd suggest getting around them if you find yourself written into a corner.
-Please donât write us being either needlessly cheap (in other words, the character can afford to do X, but just doesnât out of irrational stinginess) or cheap in a way that directly hurts others (in other words, not giving low-paid service employees a cost of living raise.) If for some reason your plot HAS to go there, it would help take away some of the anti-Semitic implications of rehashing these tropes if there are lots of other Jewish characters who arenât acting like this or are acting in direct opposition to this. For example, if your greedy business owner wonât pay his employees above minimum wage, have the workers standing up to him and/or maybe a more generous owner from a competing business be Jewish as well. This is a character you would hurt us to write unless there are plenty of examples to the contrary showing that you donât mean weâre all like this. This is the specific lie used to hurt us the most, in the past 150 years.
Note: broke college kids or struggling working-class people being cheap is different. Can you see why?
-Please donât write us being the human version of the Volturi from Twilight. There is no secret Jewish conspiracy through which we control the media, banks, and politics. I used to joke that Jews donât control the media because if we did, Iâd have a book deal. I now have three book deals, so I need a new joke, but trust me, Iâm in charge of nothing. Even my cat doesnât obey me. She listens to my spouse, but not me. I think she thinks my spouse is the Mama Cat and Iâm one of her littermates.
-Please donât write a Jewish woman whose sexuality seems to be directly affected by the amount of money her partner is either making or buying her presents with. Iâm not really sure thereâs a way to fix this. Itâs worse if she herself is already financially comfortable; Iâm not really talking about a struggling single mom with three kids and a low-paid service job whoâs turned on because a guy in an expensive suit offered to pay for her kidâs violin lessons. Iâm talking about that caricature of a rich woman whoâs used to good things that she didnât earn herself, who requires more good things that she didnât earn herself.
-Anything in which we are lizards or dragons is gonna have to be done delicately. I did it (spoiler, oops?) but thatâs something that probably takes insider finesse. I mean, my dragon is definitely and unequivocally one of the good guys. A bad Jewish dragon would be playing into some of the most bizarre stereotypes Iâve ever encountered. (Google David Icke; I havenât the stomach.)
-If youâre writing something with gore or fantasy violence, try to stay away from anything that evokes blood libel, the medieval myth that we use the blood of Christian kids to make ceremonial food. Vampires are also something that needs to be done with finesse because of the way âbloodsuckingâ can also be a metaphor for the stuff in the first bullet point, profiting financially off the hardship of others. (Side note: Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter frames the white slave-owners in the American South as literal vampires who fed on their human captives. I thought this was a BRILLIANT metaphor because, well, itâs practically not even a metaphor.)
Some other less spectacularly awful stereotypes that youâd be doing us a favor to stay away from: our men being wimpy mamaâs boys, our women being frigid after marriage, our women being tremendous nags, any gender but especially women being exceptionally whiny, and reducing the entire religion and culture down to ânot eating porkâ and âhaving a different winter holiday.â
If you must write a weak-willed man who dotes on his mother and lets her boss him around, please write at least two other Jewish male characters who arenât like this, so that he doesnât wind up representing all our men. If you must write a Jewish woman with a low sex drive, please make it clear sheâs asexual or demisexual or something â or having a medical issue â and write her as a fully realized character and recognize that men are never, EVER âowedâ sex anyway.
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