I’ve written this one MC in a fantasy novel (the kind of fantasy that requires squinting at the history, deep lore/Tolkien-esc stuff) as Jewish coded and based his religion on Judaism, but according to other posts I’ve read I’m worried it would just come across as another caricature, when I want to make a character that is relatable to Jewish people. In the posts I was looking at it just said to make them explicitly Jewish, and I get the idea of a fantasy book saying “oh we’re celebrating 1/2
2/2 nol where we decorate a tree! Wink wink nudge nudge” and how that could become “oh we’re celebrating (I’ll be honest I don’t know how to fantasy-ify Hanukkah) where we light these candles!”, but I’m not sure if that’s what the post was recommending. Could you clear this up to me? (Also if that is a good method of representation, some tips on how to fantasy-ify?)
How literal should secondary-world fantasy Jewish representation get?
This post gives some general suggestions for ways to mention Jewish stuff casually in fantasy as well as examples from my own books: Explicit Jewish representation in secondary-world fantasy
If a character was
worshipping a single god amidst other peoples that have multiple gods, or
omitting pork, shellfish, and rabbit from their diet on purpose while not being vegetarian, or
having a once-a-week candle lighting ritual followed by a much-needed rest, or
having little verbal blessings for daily activities
Some readers would pick up on that and say oh hey, Jewish rep.
But then other people will come along and argue (usually people not in the marginalized group with language like “stop reading into things!”) unless unmistakable words like Shabbat or mitzvah or bracha are being thrown around, so it’s a gradient, I guess.
Incidentally I know that was only an example but the high holidays (new year’s, Sukkot, etc.) are more important than Chanukah, which is still fun but only gets attention because of its proximity to Christmas. Just throwing that in there because a lot of gentiles probably don’t know.
--Shira
Shira has given some great examples of ways to code characters here, and in the post she linked to. There are quite a few differing opinions on Jewish-coding characters, as opposed to being more explicit. For me, characters doing Jewish-coded things would probably be enough to feel like these were fictionalized Jewish characters, and to get pretty excited about it. The trouble is often in the reactions of people who aren't Jewish, when we read those coded signals and happily say "I love these Jewish characters."
The number of times I've seen people react with joy to Jewish-coded (or other coded) characters, only to be soundly berated by folks not in that group... is not small. I understand not wanting to bring the real world into your fiction entirely, but that can also unfortunately have a negative impact on some of your readers. I wouldn't say you have to make things explicit, but I encourage you to add an absolute plethora of coded instances, covering many different aspects of life, to give your future Jewish readers half a chance to see themselves, without being shouted down by others. Or, more realistically, to give us an abundance of things to point to in the text when people do try to shout us down for having the nerve to imagine ourselves.
-- Dierdra