#Toby Ziegler is Jewish

[writer-at-the-table]

Listen, I don't know if Aaron Sorkin knew enough Talmud for "You accidentally slept with a prostitute...I don't understand. Did you trip over something?" to have been a deliberate reference to "If a man fell from a roof and while falling was inserted into a woman due to the force of the fall"

But *Toby Ziegler* 100% definitely knows enough Talmud to assume that from a Watsonian or in-universe perspective, it pretty much has to be.

[gnnosis]

on brothers

[ jewish literacy, rabbi joseph telushkin / the bear 2x06 + 2x10 / east of eden, john steinbeck / succession 3x09 / “brothers,” kevin atwater / the west wing 6x16 / prison break 5x04 / greywaren, maggie stiefvater / boy (2010) / “he ain’t heavy, he’s my brother,” the hollies ]

[doyouknowthisjewishcharacter]

Do you know this Jewish character?

[fmluder24]

The X Files Loves Dead Jews (Part 7/7): Fox and the Ferengi: On Reclamation

All other meta on the topic can be found here.

At the end of the book People Love Dead Jews, Dara Horn pivots from a book that has lingered on the worst suffering of Jewish history and people’s shameless exploitation of it and concludes with a celebration of living Jews in the form of doing Talmud study. 

Faced with a canon that is stuffed full of tropes around dead Jews, how can we, especially as Jews, find a way to still engage with the show? This meta segment will look at one way in which some fans chose to do so. Some fans chose to take a caricature around whom these dead Jew tropes swirl and make him into a living embodiment of Jewish joy.

Randomfoggytiger wrote a meta on Jewish Fox Mulder that, as you can probably tell at this point, I really didn’t care for. It basically went over a pretty basic interpretation of Jewish laws around who counts as a Jew and then gathered evidence for and against the head canon, although RFT stated after she wasn’t trying to prove or disprove anything. A lot of what she brought up frankly shouldn’t count IMO. Scully’s hallucination of his funeral in “Field Trip,” or the funeral she planned in S8, really don’t say anything about his own self-conception. There was also a detour into the autopsy he arranged for Teena in S7, which really has nothing to do with whether or not he is Jewish, as sometimes burial customs are not followed for a variety of reasons, especially by assimilated Jews. The only things I will concede is that yeah, his dad has a Christian funeral, and yeah, he cries in a church at the end of “Conduit.” These don’t matter to me because they have no bearing on how I think about his Jewishness.

The crux of the issue is that RFT and a lot of non-Jewish (but some Jewish people, we’re not a monolith) fans think of the head canon as being something that begs the question of whether or not Mulder is literally Jewish in terms of heritage or observance. The thing is, in canon, he is honestly not intended to be Jewish. He is, however, intended to be to quote my last meta, “rich, elite, cheap, self-hating, nebbish, Holocaust victim, Cabal-born, Nazi-hunted, antisemite-targeted, ‘true’ God-hated and ‘true’ God-hating [and] Yiddish-knowing.” That is to say, they shoveled a lot of (mostly negative) tropes around how Jews are written into Mulder, mostly in ways that characterize him as a victim or as all-powerful to flesh out his Jesusness. He isn’t Jewish per se, but he is The Jew metaphorically as he exists in the culturally Christian imagination. If they were writing a Jewish character, they would write exactly the same character, just with a circumcision or an IBS joke or two.

When I at least talk about Jewish Fox Mulder, I’m not talking about Jewishness in the way that I would talk about the Jewishness of Toby Ziegler from The West Wing or Rebecca Bunch from Crazy Ex Girlfriend. I’m talking about Jewishness the way I would talk about, and do talk about, the Jewishness of the Ferengi. 

What are the Ferengi?

The Ferengi are a Star Trek species of money-loving, legalistic, yarmulke-wearing, big-nosed, big-eared, short, sexist goblins that show up in several of the Star Trek series. Some people “debate” whether or not they are supposed to be a Jewish caricature, but I don’t take such debates seriously. They are. 

Something that may surprise outsiders to the Jewish world is that there is a contingent of Jewish Trekkies who love the Ferengi, especially the more nuanced, fleshed-out versions that we see in Deep Space Nine. That series, which had a lot of Jews on the writing team, explicitly blends in Jewish ethics into the Ferengi to soften their edges a little. (The Ferengi follow pikuach nefesh, or the teaching that you can break Jewish, or in this case Ferengi, law to save a life.) In my weekly Talmud study group where we are reviewing Pirkei Avot (The Ethics of Our Fathers) line by line, it’s pretty common for us to get off track drawing comparisons to the canonical 286 Rules of Acquisition that are the basis for Ferengi society. This is done with joy.

When some of us look at the Ferengi, rather than feeling anger over how Star Trek sees us, we decide to embrace them. Everything bad you can say about them is something people have said about us Jews for millennia. We can love them anyway, just like we can love ourselves despite such hate. In fact, maybe we can even love them because of the ways in which they are stereotypical. Cuz hey, some of us do love money, and do have big noses, and meet stereotypes, and I love us anyway. 

Similarly, I can love Fox Mulder despite and at the end because of, the ways in which he is a walking caricature. Yeah, he is rich but cheap and has a big nose that he kinda hates and yeah, people target him in public with antisemitism, and yeah, he’s a bit of an effeminate pervert, and yeah, he’s got major, seemingly mutual, beef with the Christian God. What about it? Everything you can hate about him (and everything the writers seem to have hated about Duchovny, frankly) is something people hate about Jews, to the point of trying to kill us. To love him is to love ourselves. 

Unlike the Ferengi in DS9, Mulder gets all the bad parts of a Jew and none of the joy. So a lot of us write head canons and fics and make jokes that make him into a literal Jewish guy who is an atheist sure (like 62% of American Jews), but likes Jewish food and Jewish traditions and lives Jewish values. We can give him the good parts of being a Jew (and I promise you, my reader, there are many), through the power of fic. Some people take this instinct in a slightly different direction and make Scully a convert to Judaism, and while I don’t personally HC it, it is an equally valid way to fix CC’s mistake.

In addition to the desire to give him Jewish joy, we can see American Jewish history and identity struggles in him. Many Jewish Philes and I have talked about this and here’s a quote from my mutual @onehandkilling on why the head canon speaks to them:

jewish mulder speaks to me because i recognize a lot of my familys story in him. my grandfather is jewish but my dad and therefore my siblings amd i were raised catholic. we have all been affected by antisemitism, and since i converted back i have even experienced some from within my assimilated family. mulder looks to me how i felt before i embraced my judaism, and how many ppl from assimilated families (from any culture) exprience the bad parts of marginalization and none of the joy of the culture your family tried to abandon

This theme around assimilation and how it only gets you so far is something a lot of people feel drawn to with Mulder. I wrote my fic “Won’t Fight Alone” about the paradox of trying to pass for a non-Jew after reading the book Leaving the Fold: Conversion and Radical Assimilation in Modern Jewish History by Todd M. Endelman to explore exactly this. 

In addition to being a fuck you to reclaim stereotypes and to seeing Jewish American identity in his family assimilating and going so far as to try to fit in with a bunch of Nazis, only to have their son experience non-stop antisemitism, there is also an embrace of Jewish values. One of these values is his tenacity in the face of opposition. To quote from a Jewcy article that takes Mulder’s Judaism to be obvious, while stating out loud it doesn’t matter if he was literally Protestant or not:

“It’s worth noting that most of the moments that make Mulder’s Judaism (partial or not) explicit are adversarial in nature, emerging from other characters defining Mulder by attacking him. Considering that Mulder’s entire character is based on his antagonistic relationships with the government and those attempting to dissuade him from his quest for the truth, there’s something that connects Mulder even more to Judaism than whatever religious rituals he happens to participate in.”

He is stiff-necked, which is to say stubborn in the face of extreme adversity. This adversarial nature extends to how he thinks of God in the show. He resists his Nazi father God stand in, CSM. He struggles with the Christian God as Scully understands him. He confronts The Writer in “Post-Modern Prometheus” and demands a happy ending from him. This is all related to the modern Jewish value of wrestling with God. In the Torah, Jacob wrestles with a creature that is sometimes referred to as a man, and sometimes  God, but normally understood to be an angel. He holds on until he gets a blessing from the mysterious figure who says ”Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with beings divine and human, and have prevailed.” Mulder similarly is stubborn as hell in the face of creatures stronger than him and consistently earns their blessings. 

He is committed to social justice, in a way that is admittedly white*-savior-esque and copaganda. He has a soft spot for the down trodden and the little guy and regularly sticks up for victims of color in the face of a much more apathetic Scully, to be frank. He feels deeply for other people in their suffering, which is another modern American Jewish value that is rooted in our tradition. From Exodus 23:9, ”You shall not oppress a stranger, for you know the feelings of the stranger, having yourselves been strangers in the land of Egypt.”

Mulder is a mensch at the end of the day, despite his flaws. He is honest, compassionate, nerdy, and fundamentally wants a better world for all the downtrodden in the world. What is more Jewish than that?

Jewish Fox Mulder is at the end of the day a way to see living Jewish identity, culture, humor, resiliency and values in a show that prefers us dead. Prefers using our corpses as puppets for cheap sci-fi shlock to convey ultimate victimhood and ultimate power simultaneously. But we can bring those corpses back to life in the world of the show, like Mulder, by giving Mulder a living Jewish identity. And what better Jew trick is there than that?

If you made it this far, thank you so much for reading!

[thebreakfastgenie]

Toby Ziegler for the character ask :)

How I feel about this character

Toby is one of the most complex characters I've ever seen. Some people would call him cynical but I think that's a mistake, I think that's how he looks on the surface, but isn't true underneath. I think he's the most idealistic character on the show, but he's constantly disappointed because the world and his fellow humans don't live up to his expectations. He never stops believing they can be better, and they're never as good as he believes they can be, and it makes him depressed. He's one of the best Jewish characters I've ever seen.

All the people I ship romantically with this character

Andi

Poet Laureate Tabitha (more just a short term fling they both remember fondly)

My non-romantic OTP for this character

Toby and Josh is number one in my heart always and forever. Also Toby and Sam and Toby and CJ.

My unpopular opinion about this character

I think this is the opposite of unpopular but he would never betray Bartlet and he's OOC in season 7. He's also OOC in season 5, he would not be a deadbeat dad. Beyond that, Toby/CJ is an absolute no-go for me.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

Not having Josh be the one who drops everything when he finds out Toby's brother died is the worst writing decision ever but that's as much about Josh as it is about Toby so let's see... I would have liked to see Toby and Andi work out a non-traditional co-parenting plan that worked for them and was happy and angst-free. I think they should have lived in one house in different rooms personally but I'm open to anything. I think it would be a great thing to show and a way to learn a lot about Toby.

[nicejewishcharactershowdown]

and your contestants for NJCS 2024 are...

Pick your favorites and start your campaigning, because the showdown starts in two weeks!

Check below the 'read more' for a competitor list, and remember: the 'Nice' in Nice Jewish Character is about the quality of the representation, not their personality!

Disclaimer: It's really hard to find a positive, joy filled Jewish space on the internet right now. In order to preserve that peace, anyone engaging in this tournament in bad faith or with malicious intent will be blocked.

Nice Jewish Character Showdown 2024 Round One Contestants, in alphabetical order, are:

Alec Hardison

Barney Guttman

Betty Boop

Bugs Bunny

Columbo

Coraline Jones

Davey Jacobs

Dina

Ella of Frell

Fox Mulder

Grace Adler

Grover

Han Solo

James Wilson

Lambchop

Lexi Howard

Libby Stein-Torres

Natasha Vulvokov

Otacon

Paris Geller

Percy Jackson

Philip J. Fry

Professor Hershel Layton

Richie Lipschitz

Seymour Krelborn

Sharpay Evans

Sid

Sidney Prescott

The Baudelaires

Toby Ziegler

Willow Rosenberg

Yasmin

[malkaleh]

20 Questions For Fic Writers

Tagged by @redxluna <3333.

1). How many works do you have on AO3? 152

2).What's your total AO3 word count? 157, 005

3).What are your top five fics by kudos?

Undertow (co-written) - Criminal Minds

It’s Not Because Of You (It’s Because Of Me) - Ted Lasso

Five Times Out Of Many David Rossi Realised He Was Happily Doomed - Criminal Minds

To Dwell In Enchantment - Criminal Minds

If I Could Go Back (co-written) - Criminal Minds

4). What fandoms do you write for?

At the moment it’s mainly TROP and Tortall (with a side order of West Wing and a little bit of Grishaverse) but I have written for a lot of fandoms - I think the main big ones in the past have been Criminal Minds, Tudors and Band of Brothers.

5). Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I do my absolute best! (I adore you all people who leave lovely comments) Do not always manage to because Brain but I want to at least say thank you if I can.

6). What’s the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Hope Deferred Maketh Something probably (the Toby Ziegler/Jason Gideon in a diner in New York City post apocalypse though even there I am like no there’s very much still life and hope just…not for these two)

7). What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Would have been the OT3 verse.

8). Do you get hate on fics?

Got a lengthy hate comment that was essentially ‘this is ahistorical dreck and also you have an idealogical agenda’ that got me to lose all joy in and delete the Tudors OT3 verse/writing Tudors fic. I get it very rarely but uh, yeah. That one was awful.

9). Do you write smut?

I did. Then Trauma Bullshit Brain and now by and large I don’t (sometimes if like, the tiny fictional people/fictional versions of fictional depictions of real people insist upon it then yes and then I deal with the Brain afterwards).

10). Do you write crossovers?

YES. I love multiverses what can I say *g* (I mean I’m probably more of an AU than a crossover person but)

11). Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Nope.

12). Have you ever had a fic translated?

I’m not actually sure!

13). Have you ever cowritten a fic before?

YES. Fantastic experiences.

14). What’s your all-time favorite ship?

These aren’t actually ones I really read or write fic for but my ultimate favourites OTPs of my heart are:

Beren/Luthien

Eowyn/Faramir

Poe/Finn/Rey

Kaz/Inej

Nikolai/Zoya

Jon/Thayet

15). What’s the WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

I wanted to finish the OT3 verse. I did. But uh, yeah.

16). What are your writing strengths?

World building stuff/AUs. Maybe like, imagery stuff?

17). What are your writing weaknesses?

DIALOGUE.

18). Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in a fic?

I tend to really think that if I’m going to do it I want to get an actual translation from a native speaker (and for TROP fic re elvish and khazad etc I haven’t really put it in because my brain is like ‘no like which dialect are they speaking right now, I need to make sure I know this properly and I haven’t relearned any of them enough yet)

19). First fandom you wrote for?

On AO3 I think the very first fic there is for Kushiels Legacy. The very first fanfic I wrote in general that was posted online was for a British Police Procedural and it was Extremely Angst.

20). Favorite fic you’ve ever written?

Such A Time As This aka the Jewish Anne Boleyn Esther Retelling.

[twwpress]

Weekly Press Briefing #60: August 13th - 19th

Welcome back to the Weekly Press Briefing, where we bring you highlights from The West Wing fandom each week, including new fics, ongoing challenges, and more! This briefing covers all things posted from August 13 - August 19, 2023! Did we miss something? Let us know; you can find our contact info at the bottom of this briefing! 

Challenges/Prompts:

The following is a roundup of open challenges/prompts. Do you have a challenge or event you’d like us to promote? Be sure to get in touch with us! Contact info is at the bottom of this briefing.

@callixton is hosting The West Wing Pride Week (@twwpride here on tumblr) September 17 - 23. More details here! 

Photos/Videos:

Here’s what was posted from August 13 - 19. 

Bradley Whitford posted a promo for Peter Pan Goes Wrong at the Ahmanson Theatre in LA, where he is joining the cast from August 9 - 27. 

Josh Malina posted a change of venue for The West Wing picket event on August 22 so it can occur along with the AFL-CIO Day of Solidarity. 

Josh Malina posted a video of himself trolling his Alexa. 

Marlee Matlin posted a video of herself outside of the building where she was diagnosed as Deaf at 18 months. 

Marlee Matlin posted a video and a silly photo of herself getting her hair done in Chicago. 

Mary McCormack posted a video in which she gently roasts her daughter Margaret for what she is packing to bring to college in Connecticut. 

Peter James Smith posted about The West Wing picket event change of venue, a reading he was in, and photos from the picket. 

Donna Moss Daily: August 13 | August 14 | August 15 | August 16 | August 17 | August 18 | August 19

Daily Josh Lyman: August 13 | August 14 | August 15 | August 16 | August 17 | August 18 | August 19

No Context BWhit: August 13 | August 15 | August 16 | August 17 | August 18 | August 19

@twwarchive: August 13 | August 14 | August 15 | August 16 | August 17 | August 18 | August 19

Edits/Artwork:

#DONNAMOSS: holds the tag in her hand, trying not to show that it’s the first piece of jewelry anyone’s ever given her by @ainsleyhcyes [VIDEO EDIT] #HELENSANTOS: “Thought you liked it when I got loud?” by @kennysroys [VIDEO EDIT] #CJTOBY: and when the seasons change by @cjcreggswifey [VIDEO EDIT]

Editors’ Choice: 

This week, we’d like to share some of our favorite fics under 5000 words! Be sure to tell us any favorites of yours, too!

like love in a drunken sky by thotsandfeelings | Rated M | Josh Lyman/Donna Moss | Complete | “I’ve never liked rainy days.”

la banlieue by fiery_one_18 | Rated T | Zoey Bartlet/Charlie Young  | Complete | When all is said and done, Zoey still wants to go to France. She knows it sounds crazy, but she does. And how lucky is she that the only person who she feels comfortable getting drunk in front of and confessing that to promises to accompany her in ten years when they’ve both hopefully paid off some of their student loans? … Or, Zoey and Charlie make a pact under the influence of red wine and Elle Woods and stick to it

their voices still by altschmerzes | Rated T | Josh Lyman & Toby Ziegler (Gen Fic) | Complete | Toby takes Josh to synagogue, and together they say the Mourner's Kaddish for Leo. "Because that's what Jewish sons do when their fathers die. Even if that father happened to be a Catholic." (ktavnukkah, day 4, "mourning")

Doctor's Orders by ETraytin | Rated T | No Pairings Listed (Gen Fic) | Complete | A week after Opposition Research, Abbey Bartlet shows up at Santos for President HQ, looking for a certain troublemaker.

Big Trouble in Little China by fictorium | Rated T | C J Cregg/Kate Harper | Complete | It's been a long few days, and CJ could use a little comfort.

Stay tuned for this week's fic list, which we'll be reblogging onto this post right away!

[babka-enjoyer]

Toby Ziegler Jewish Head Canons:

Toby’s least favorite holiday is Sukkot

[lesbianmelkor]

toby ziegler going to temple first thing on saturday morning <3

[comepraisetheinfanta]

I declared Roy Kent to be a jock version of Toby Ziegler and my bb @andallthatmishigas has dubbed him “Sporty Spice Toby” which is 1000% CORRECT 😂

[writer-at-the-table]

One of the things I plan on paying closer attention to on this watch through of The West Wing is Josh and Toby's Judaism and the different ways their relationships to it are portrayed and inform their characters.

Neither of them are the usual Only Jewish at Christmas and for Very Special Episodes character type (hi, Willow Rosenberg, looking at you!).

They're written and portrayed as having very different relationships to Judaism, and coming from very different Jewish backgrounds (within American Ashkenazi Jewry, I mean), and their Jewishness affects their characters in different ways, but it's definitely a factor for both of them, and an important one. (Though you have to be looking for it, and know what you're looking at, more with Josh to see it. It's much more obvious with Toby).

[gallisonaf]

mistletoe

[doyouknowthisjewishcharacter]

Do you know this Jewish character?

[fmluder24]

The discourse is making it clear that I should reiterate— some people arrive at a literal Jewish Mulder conception where Mulder is Jewish in the way that, say, Toby Ziegler from WW is Jewish, which is to say a literal dude who literally grew up Jewish. For me, he isn’t Jewish like Toby; he’s Jewish like the Ferengi, although he isn’t quite that bad. A walking caricature, whose tropes we ignore at our peril. Cuz the tropes sure are there, for better or worse. So what do we do with this? Well, I could just give up on the show/fandom in light of such writing choices. And maybe someday I will. But for now, I will wrestle with it until it blesses me. I will take a caricature who suffers repeated acts of antisemitism and make him into a positive, joyful, nuanced Jewish character. And none of you can stop me. ❤️✡️

[nicejewishcharactershowdown]

REMINDER -- NICE in Nice Jewish Character Showdown is not an evaluation of personality, but in quality of representation! Who do you see yourself in more?