I have a Jewish girl who becomes a host for an entity that regulates the physical world. She has a choice of killing the possessor (making her take its place as a regulator and essentially become a god) or have another entity suppress the possessor and hope it doesn't kill her quickly. She's not the only one who has to choose apotheosis v. death but she's the first to deal with it- would ascending to live be allowed, even if she doesn't believe herself to be a god?
Jewish character becomes possessed
The use of the word 'god' doesn't sit well with me, even if your character doesn't hold this about herself. I wouldn't especially want to see a Jewish character in a world where polytheism is objectively true, given how central monotheism is to our belief and how many people over the centuries have, you know, killed us for holding onto it. You also have a Jewish character potentially killing someone. You want to be very familiar with stereotypes to avoid before you go through with something like that, particularly blood libel and the string-pulling stereotype if she is in any way killing for power.
--Shoshi
The possesssing demon in our mythology is called a dybbuk. This sounds like your character gets possessed by a dybbuk and if she manages to get rid of it, she becomes a dybbuk herself and possesses someone else. That part works in a creepy horror way, with the caveat that I don't personally know if this chain reaction makes sense with existing dybbuk lore. I agree with Shoshi that these "entity that regulates the physical world" ideas coexisting with Jewish characters make me uncomfortable. What is the place of our God in a canon that has other god or godlike characters? (I don't see Thor in MCU as "a god", for example, just a really really powerful alien.)
This would be a very convenient story to leave us out of. Is she irreparably changed as a character if she's not Jewish?
--Shira This is a tricky one for me. It feels inappropriate to use the term "god" for a Jewish human being, even one with remarkable powers. I don't have an issue with a person who has those powers, or with fighting to save themselves, but any suggestion that she is actually a god is very uncomfortable, and I imagine it would be for her as well. There's an old joke that is often told by Jewish Atheists: there is only one God, and I don't believe in him. Even the most secular of us are monotheists, so for her this might be a critical distinction.
That being said, I also really enjoy books with multiple gods in them, and I (personally) don't want to be left out of those books. For me, some things being said about the ambiguity of whether these are truly gods (the character certainly doesn't think so, based on the question) or if they are simply possessing dybbuks, or people who were given gifts by God, or any number of other options. For me, that would pull it from an objective "polytheism is true" to "there are a lot of things and beings we don't understand (see dybbuk, ibbur, sheyd etc). That feels like enough of a distinction for me, but as you can see, it's somewhat divisive, so you will need to tread carefully no matter what you do.
-- Dierdra
