Representation is super important! But not all representation is created equal, so for all my rants about wanting more Jewish representation, here is one (apropos of someone reminding me that Mortal Instruments exists) asking you to please not do certain things when you write your token Jewish character.
(Is tokenism great? No, but sometimes it’s necessary! I’m not asking all the non-Jewish writers out there to write all-Jewish stories, and everyone wants diverse and evenly-distributed casts, which means you’re going to often have your token Jewish / insert-minority-here character, or even twofer token minorities, and that’s okay, so long as it’s done right!)
So let’s say you’re writing fantasy, and your token Jewish character is also going to be a token insert-fantasy-creature-here character. Some Dos and Don’ts:
Don’t:
make your token Jewish character the token vampire (this leans into really gross and racist anti-Semitic blood libel) (looking at you, the mortal instruments)
make your token Jewish character the token goblin/leprechaun/other gold-loving magical creature (this leans into gross racist anti-Semitic stereotypes about Jews and money)
make your token Jewish character the token Fae in a changeling story (this also leans into the gross racist blood libel, by way of “stealing away a baby”)
make your token Jewish character the token tiefling/faun/other horned magical creature (this leans into weird racist anti-Semitic beliefs about Jews and horns)
make your token Jewish character the token Roman or Greek demigod (because ancient Rome and ancient Greece oppressed us, and their beliefs are diametrically opposed to Jewish beliefs, and Rome in particular destroyed our Temple, razed our land, and exiled and subjugated our people) (hahahahaha *cries in Still Furious At Riordan*)
This isn’t fantasy-specific, but also don’t make your token Jew the only/main villain. (Can a Jewish character be a villain? Fair enough, anyone can! But if it’s the only Jewish character in the work, then you need to reflect on your latent or not-so-latent anti-Semitism. Same for if the villain is heavily Jewish-coded.)
Do:
make your token Jewish character the token werewolf (both are hyperaware of the phases of the moon, plus we have some fun Midrashim [exegetical stories] about Benjamin being a werewolf)
make your token Jewish character the token golem (the golem is a proudly Jewish magical creature/construct, originating in the story of the Golem of Prague, which was created by a rabbi to protect the city’s Jewish community - in fact, if you have a golem, it should have its Jewish roots explicitly acknowledged)
make your token Jewish character the token mermaid (Rashi, one of the most famous/popular Jewish Biblical commentators, believed that mermaids were real! they’re a Jewish thing now, I’m making it a thing!)
make your token Jewish character any other magical creature I guess, just please examine the representation to make sure you are not portraying stereotypes or feeding into negative libels or false beliefs about Jewish people
Acknowledge the character’s Jewish identity as an important part of them, not just their magical identity
(These are just examples, you don’t literally have to make your Jewish character a werewolf/golem/mermaid, but if you do, I want to read it)
I’m not saying a Jewish character can never be portrayed as any of the creatures on the Don’t list - but if it’s not being written by a Jewish writer, then you’d better make damn sure that (a) you’re examining your own biases and not leaning into stereotypes and blood libels, (b) the Jewish vampire or whatever isn’t the only Jewish character in the work, but rather there are other Jewish characters who are not obligated to drink blood, and (c) the tension in this identity should be acknowledged in the text “Oh I’m a vampire but blood is normally forbidden for Jewish consumption, what do” etc.
Dunno if you post anons, I wanted to say that I loved your post on fantasy representation! I only wanted to add for non-Jewish writers to please PLEASE research the Golem story without twisting it’s meaning. I once read a book that described the golem in the legend as the ‘vengeful tool of Jewish shrewdness’. Which is gross and extremely antisemetic. But like even without the hate, I see a lot of people interpret: ‘ah yes, god complex, creature created to destroy. Got it.’ And I just wish people will understand how it’s quite different from Frankenstein and the way it’s ingrained in Jewish culture.
Thank you for this!
And I absolutely second your point about Golems - they are, at their core, created to protect. The Golem of Prague wasn’t vengeful, it wasn’t destructive, it didn’t go out and murder anti-Semites - it just stopped the pogroms from happening in Prague by being a very large and very strong force standing between the Jewish community and those who had come to attack them. It was put to rest when they no longer needed it, not because of any problems it
Any representation of golems that isn’t about protecting the vulnerable is at best not actually a golem, and at (more likely) worst, deeply anti-Semitic and problematic.
I’m making a new post for this rather than clogging up the post this commented on with another reblog, because @matt-in-the-hat asks a good question!
I was referring to the character of Lavinia Asimov in Rick Riordan’s Trials of Apollo series, but she’s just got a “Star of David” necklace and a weird (and implicitly anti-Semitic on the part of the author) comment about the rabbi at her Bat Mitzvah - she’s never explicitly called Jewish anywhere in canon, and as “Jewish representation,” her portrayal is a disgrace. So who was Jewish in Rick Riordan’s stuff, indeed?
One More Jewish Representation in the Riordanverse Rant
I just finished reading the last Trials of Apollo book, The Tower of Nero, by Rick Riordan, and I’m... disappointed.
Very minor spoiler warning: this will contain spoilers for one unimportant simile, the identity of the villain (which is already common knowledge if you a. read the first book in the series and/or b. looked at the title of the book), and the absence of a minor character.
But for background, I read The Tower of Nero for two reasons: because I wanted to see how the engaging story ended, yes, but also because after the painful disappointment that was the previous book, I was hoping for some sort of redemption.
I’m not going to rehash my previous complaints on The Tyrant’s Tomb, though they still stand and I’m still angry about them, because you can click the above links to see. But I was hoping that The Tower of Nero would let us see Lavinia again and would give more nuance to her alleged Jewishness, in any of the many ways I imagined in my previous two rants on the topic.
She was absent, though, and instead I found something else. There was one allusion to Judaism in the book - one which was irrelevant, offensive, and altogether unnecessary.
In one scene a little more than a quarter of the way through the book, our heroes are facing monsters (as they do) with glowing blue eyes, which the narrator unaccountably describes as being “like a string of angry Hanukkah lights.”
Now, there’s a lot to unpack here, but I’ll do my best.
First of all, this is offensive because it betrays not only a complete lack of knowledge/understanding about Judaism, but also a lack of interest in doing the barest fact-checking to justify including it.
The only “Hanukkah lights” are the lights of the Chanukiyah - i.e., fire. They don’t come on strings, and they certainly aren’t blue.
So the only way to actually make sense of this simile is to recognize that he is describing a string of blue Christmas lights, and to understand that Riordan is assuming Chanukah to be nothing more than “[Jewish] Christmas with a blue-and-white colour palette to replace red-and-green.” This in itself is a gross and offensive assumption/stereotype!
And while the Jewish-terminology-gaffes in The Tyrant’s Tomb could be ascribed to the narrator Apollo’s lack of knowledge, he’s supposed to be a Greek god - so Chanukah, celebrating our victory against the Greeks and their attempt to force us to worship their gods, would be the Jewish holiday Apollo would be most likely to know about (and arguably would be more within his frame of reference than Christmas, the story of which would have involved him, personally, considerably less). Thus, the fault of ignorance here is undeniably the author’s.
But it’s not only offensive because it’s ignorant. It’s also offensive because this extremely unnecessary and even inaccurate reference to Judaism - again, the only reference to Judaism in the book and arguably in the entire series, in the entire narrative universe (see my qualifying comments from my Tyrant’s Tomb rants on why nothing in Lavinia’s appearances constitute actual, undeniable, references to Judaism) - appears as a description of something evil, thus associating Judaism, in the reader’s mind, with the “bad guys.”
And not just any bad guys, either! The monsters being pointlessly associated with Judaism are explicitly connected with / controlled by (a) an evil Roman emperor (if you don’t know how deeply Rome has harmed the Jewish People and how offended I am by being associated with the ancient Roman empire in any way, see a. the destruction of the Second Temple and exile of the Jewish People at the hands of Rome in 70 CE, b. the Arch of Titus, and/or c. my previous rants on how Lavinia’s depiction makes no mention of this tension in her identities) and (b) an evil Roman empire who the narration specifically mentions, more than once, had a habit of murdering Christians - thus indirectly associating Judaism with that emperor and his habit, and reinforcing ancient blood libels.
And to cap it all off, I can’t help anticipating that Riordan is patting himself on the back somewhere for this “inclusion,” even though it would be infinitely less offensive if he had never made any attempt to make any mention of Judaism.
I don’t actually have anything new to add since my last rant about representation in media and in Rick Riordan’s The Tyrant’s Tomb in particular, but I’m still just. So, so, so angry about his travesty of “Jewish” “representation” that was Lavinia Asimov.
A Magen David can be called a Magen David, and a Magen David on a necklace does not make someone Jewish.
You know what could make a fictional character Jewish? Using the actual word Jewish. PITY HE NEVER DID THAT.
You know what else could make a character Jewish? Actual Jewish content in their life. Two goddamn words, would that be so hard? “Tikkun Olam” fits in perfectly with Lavinia’s entire outlook - both in terms of her own level of Jewish religious observance and in terms of her personal activisim - and using them would have made her believably Jewish.
Sadly, having a Bat Mitzvah party also does not make someone Jewish (as I learned in some articles a few years back about some very appropriative practices gaining traction, oh well). Having a Bat Mitzvah party is also not an event that you bring a date to, because you are 12 or at most 13 years old.
Guess what: rabbis are not by definition homophobic, and Riordan’s implication in that line was extremely unfortunate, especially when we consider that it was the only line with any actual Judaism-related words in the book.
Oh, and I do find it offensive that the “Jewish” character is a legionnaire in an offshoot of the army that destroyed our Temple, razed our homeland, subjugated our people, and subjected us to a lasting exile - and there is no mention made of this tension in the entire book.
I hope I don’t sound like I have a chip on my shoulder, I’m just so angry that someone who has already proved himself so competent and effective at representation of people of other religions, cultures, and minority demographics in his work waited over 20 books and then gave us this - this jew-baiting instead of proper representation.
To end this on a less-angry note: my asks are always open and I am always always always excited to talk about Judaism so please feel free to ask me any questions about anything, whether for your own knowledge or to facilitate your own writing of Jewish representation in your works. I will literally not be offended by any question with the possible exception of if you are asking with the intention of giving offense (and even then, it’s a toss-up).
It’s still too early to go to sleep and I have nothing better to productively do, so: time for me to rant angrily about representation.
IMPORTANT WARNING: this will include some (probably minor?) spoilers for The Tyrant’s Tomb by Rick Riordan. Since I’m pretending it’s a review of that book even though it is really just my angry thoughts about representation that were prompted by it. There will also be (definitely minor) spoilers about a character in Rick Riordan’s Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard series.
Edit: this rant is long, in addition to the spoilers, so please (but actually, please) read it after the cut.
Okay. First of all: I enjoyed The Tyrant’s Tomb. I’ve been loving the Trials of Apollo series, and this is no exception, and I’m excited for the next book. But.
I have ranted, a lot, about representation before, because I so rarely see Jewish characters in books not written exclusively by and for Jews, and even rarer do I see observant Jewish characters in any media not created exclusively by and for Orthodox Jews. And obviously, I want to feel reflected in at least some of the mainstream media I consume.
The important preface to this rant is a quick review, though I have discussed this, too, before, of the intense pleasure and pain brought on by reading the character of Samirah al-Abbas in Rick Riordan’s Magnus Chase books. Samirah was almost, almost, almost the Holy Grail of “observant religious character” that I had described, almost to a T, of what I am constantly seeking in media: she was a major character, whose religion was a major part of her life in tangible ways throughout the books - from wearing her hijab, to observing modesty in her interactions with her fiance, to performing heroics while fasting for Ramadan - and yet who was characterized well enough that her religion, while inextricably an important part of her life, wasn’t her entire character, either. It was beautiful; it was magnificently done.
And it broke my heart. Because God knows observant Muslim people have deserved Samirah for so long; but her existence on these pages only drove home to me that what I was looking for was possible and yet, impossibly, I still didn’t have it. Samirah was fantastic, but she still wasn’t the representation that I was looking for: I wanted, and still want, those traits, but for a Jewish character, in whom I can see something of myself. I want Samirah, but I want that for me, too.
Flip ahead a couple years (and a few more representation in media rants) to me picking up and reading The Tyrant’s Tomb. I’d pre-ordered it in the summer, while ordering a few books as a birthday present to my sister, and promptly forgotten about it, so when it arrived, it was like a delightful gift from Past Me.
I started reading, and I was so, so excited when the character of Lavinia was introduced, right near the beginning of the book. Right away, Riordan telegraphed that she was both Jewish and queer, with the Magen David necklace and her interest in a female dryad. I was primed and ready to both love her and see myself in her.
And then I was let down.
Now, before I dig deep into the many ways in which Lavinia was a complete and utter disappointment, I want to offer an important caveat, referring to my preface about Samirah. I don’t want to give the impression that I’m castigating Riordan for trying, when so many other mainstream writers don’t. At least he made her canonically Jewish on-page, rather than hiding behind a Jewish-sounding last name and then declaring it to be the truth off-page (looking at you, Rowling and Anthony Goldstein). At least there is a Jewish character in his books (looking at... almost every other mainstream YA fantasy series I’ve ever read not written by Jews).
But the thing is, we raise our expectations of people based on what we know they are capable of. I’m a teacher; a level 3 “Meets Expectations” is going to look different for my academically-struggling student who is working really hard to improve, as opposed to my bookworm student who started the year off by turning in a long and erudite personal essay.
Most of those other mainstream YA fantasy writers, I don’t have any expectations of. Whereas Rick Riordan, the man who created Samirah al-Abbas: I know exactly what he is capable of. Which is why it hurts so much more that, when it comes to a Jewish character, he falls so strikingly short.
I’ll be fair: I wasn’t expecting a second, Jewish Samirah from him. That wouldn’t be reasonable. I would like that, someday, from someone, but that will have to be in someone else’s book; it wouldn’t make sense for Riordan to retread the exact same ground, and I understand that.
And Lavinia didn’t have to be observant - as I’ve recognized, he already has Samirah for that. But I was hoping, expecting, for her to be something more than Jewish In Name Only. (Strike that: she may have been Jewish on-page, but Riordan never even used the J word. He wrote around it. Why? I don’t know. Presumably not just to disappoint me.)
So what’s wrong with Lavinia? And how could he have done better with her?
Great news: I’ve got a bulleted list to help with that, starting with the simple and working our way up.
To start with: her last name. I’ve been going over and over this dozens of times, and I still can’t quite work out why, for his one Jewish character, Riordan decided to give her the last name of one of the most famous Jewish speculative fiction writers, and then (a) never once acknowledge this connection, and (b) acknowledge that she shares her name with a famous Jewish... fictional dancer. Why Asimov, if he wasn’t going to say anything at all about the Asimov?
Continuing with her name: her first name. I get that Riordan likes to give Romanesque names to the Roman demigods, but this overlooks the fact that the demigods are almost always named by their human parent; and while Sally Jackson had her reasons for naming her son after a Greek hero, most Jewish parents will give their child a Jewish name, if not the actual name of a recently-deceased relative. But okay. Fine. I wouldn’t want to mess with the thematic naming in the book; but how about a name that evokes the intersection of Roman and Jewish history: Salome, or Salome Alexandra, for instance?
Speaking of that intersection of Roman and Jewish: I’m still too relieved at finding a Jewish character, any Jewish character, in his books, to be offended that this Jewish character ends the book as a centurion in a Roman army, but - she should be. Lavinia should, at some point in the book, have expressed discomfort at the Roman side of her heritage, as it intersects with her Jewish culture and history. And it would have been so easy: throughout the book, Lavinia has problems with authority and with the structures of the Legion in particular. Just once, she could have defended that rebelliousness - honestly or not - with a reference to how the Roman legions once destroyed her people’s Temple, razed her homeland, and subjugated her people with an exile that is still, in many ways, ongoing to this day. Not in so many words, obviously; I’m not asking Riordan to write it the way I did. Just something like “Yeah, well, Roman Legions and Jews aren’t usually a good mix.” Or here’s another way she could have expressed her Roman discomfort: in that conversation about awkwardness. Instead of “You want awkward? Try telling your Rabbi that you’re taking a girl as your date to your Bat Mitzvah,” she could have said: “You want awkward? Try being a Jewish demigod.” “You want awkward? Try being a queer Jew in a Roman legion.”
SPEAKING OF THAT INSANE AND PERPLEXING COMMENT ABOUT RABBIS AND BAT MITZVAHS, I have so so so many problems with that line:
First of all, given the premise that Lavinia as written is very clearly not an observant Jew by any means or interpretation, and does not appear to have any Jewish community ties, it is strange to me that she speaks about having a rabbi. Typically, people who have a rabbi are either (a) observant people who go to this rabbi with religious questions, or (b) community-oriented people who see the rabbi of their community (or another chosen spiritual leader in their chosen community) as their rabbi. Lavinia appears to be neither, so why “try telling your rabbi that...” and not, say, “try telling the rabbi at your shul that...”?
Okay but forget whose rabbi this is: why is she telling the rabbi about her date? Why is that necessary? For those (like Rick Riordan??) unfamiliar with what a Bat Mitzvah is: A Bat Mitzvah is actually the term for a (female) person who has reached the age of religious responsibility in Judaism, and it happens automatically when a girl turns 12 (and for a boy - Bar Mitzvah - when he turns 13). But okay, I’ll stop being so pedantic, and agree that Riordan, and Lavinia, were obviously referring to the party that is commonly held to celebrate this milestone. But that’s all it is: a party celebrating a milestone. Although there is often a prayer service and/or a Torah reading, there is no ritual aspect to a Bat Mitzvah celebration. Other than, again, perhaps the prayer service / Torah reading, there is definitely nothing you would need to inform a rabbi of. You would definitely not be telling the rabbi about your guest list, unless the rabbi is your parent/guardian / the person paying for the party.
But never mind who she’s telling about her date: did you miss the part where I noted that a Bat Mitzvah is for a girl turning twelve. Speaking as somebody who has celebrated a Bat Mitzvah for myself, and who has attended many such celebrations as a guest, I can tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt: you do not invite a date to this event, whether you are a guest or the girl of honour. For one thing, you are twelve. Twelve is too young to be bringing dates! For another, you’re going to a party full of twelve-year-olds, where there will be maybe a prayer service and then a nice meal and then probably a bunch of twelve-year-olds bopping around to some obnoxiously loud music. I get Lavinia’s trying to let us know she was already very gay when she was twelve, but that does not explain bringing a date, female or otherwise, to her own Bat Mitzvah. Just ask the girl as a normal guest and then awkwardly ask her to dance, for heaven’s sake!
In conclusion, that entire sentence made no sense, and it really only accomplished two things: (a) it gave me the impression, rightly or wrongly, that Riordan knows absolutely nothing about Judaism; and (b) it strongly implied, unfairly, that rabbis in general are homophobic, which it why it was so awkward for Lavinia to tell her rabbi about her nonsensical date.
Throughout the book, Lavinia’s big crusade is ecological safety, protecting the nature spirits and the environment, and the homeless people living in the park who would be impacted by the Emperors’ attacks. It would have been so easy to infuse this important aspect of her personality with her Jewishness, by just letting her throw around the term “tikun olam” in that context. It would have absolutely fit with the culturally-not-religiously Jewish air he was clearly going for, and it would have made her seem 10,000% more authentically Jewish to me, with just, my God, two words added to the entire book.
You want another way to make her seem more realistically, three-dimensionally Jewish? How about, oh, I dunno, her one Jewish parent? (By the way: it has not slipped my attention that Lavinia’s one Jewish parent is her father, meaning that except by Reform definitions, she’s not, technically, Jewish at all; just canonically connected to Jewish culture. Are paternal Jews who consider themselves Jewish valid and Jewish? Of course. Am I nonetheless extremely disappointed that he’s managed to water down the Jewishness of his one Jewish character in 20+ books in this additional way? Absolutely.) Apollo showed great interest in asking her about her father, the famous Asimov... dancer (I’m sorry, I still can’t get over that he named her Asimov and did not make a single reference to Asimov; is Isaac Asimov the only Jew he’s ever heard of or something???). She could have alluded to his Jewishness. “Yeah, Sergei’s still mad that I stopped coming to our Asimov family Seders.”
Instead, other than the absurd-and-mildly-offensive rabbi-and-Bat-Mitzvah line, what is the only evidence we have that Lavinia even is of Jewish descent? Ah, yes. The thing that got me so excited in the first place, as - or so I thought - a hint of Jewishness to come: her Magen David necklace. Except of course, Riordan only ever calls it a “Star of David,” because - okay, that’s what Apollo would call it in his narration, and of course Lavinia never said a word about it, despite all the times she played with it. Never explained where she got it from, or why she wore it, or what made it so important to her. So it had no sentimental or cultural value conveyed to the reader. It was just a visual cue to tell us: “Jewish character.” It was as anemic and anodyne a way of making her Jewish as the Menorah-on-the-Mantelpiece trick that I’ve often complained about in TV shows that want to suddenly establish a character is Jewish - except worse, because at least with a Menorah on the mantel, we’ve got the implication that somebody lights it (if it’s a Chanukiyah) on Chanukah. This is just a star, on a necklace.
In conclusion: Lavinia could have been great. She could have been a queer Jewish demigod, passionate about nature and about tikun olam, complex and uncomfortable with her role as a Jewish person in the Legion despite her absolute commitment to helping her friends survive the attack and defeat their dangerous enemies.
Instead, she was a disappointment. She was characterized well, for what she was. But what she was was a girl with a necklace. A queer Roman demigod with a famous dancer father.
I started this rant expecting to call her Jewish in name only. But she wasn’t even that.
Perhaps it’s unfair of me to call Lavinia a disappointment, from how anemic her Jewishness was. The real disappointment in The Tyrant’s Tomb was Rick Riordan.
