#as i'm sure you can tell from the sheer number of sources i've linked

[make-friends-with-the-rats]

The Jacobs Family is Jewish full stop.

This is not a headcanon.

Bob Tzudiker and Noni White, the authors of the original newsies script Hard Promises, were very intentional in the naming of their characters. Many, if not all, of the newsie characters they created were named after or inspired by real newsboys from the 1899 strike. The entire project was heavily researched.

"I am a history buff and I also don’t trust secondary sources. After we decided to work on it (Newsies); it came from a single small paragraph in the New York Times we then started checking primary sources." -Noni White [source]

So when the Jacobs family was created, you better believe that their names were meant to be read as Jewish.

The Jacobs surname is Jewish.

"The Hebrew Yaakov and the Biblical Jacob are the sources for the surname Jacobs and its variants.  The Jewish surnames from Yaakov include Yakov, Jacob, Jacoby and Jacobowitz, as well as Jacobs."[source]

David, Sarah, and Esther are likewise all names that are Hebrew in origin. They are also the names of important figures in the Bible or Tanakh.

"The name Mayer is a Jewish Ashkenazic name that was originally derived from the Yiddish male given name Meyer. This personal name was in turn derived from the Hebrew name Meir, which means enlightener." [source]

I could not find anything for Les, likely because 'Les' is a shorted version of his real name.

The Jacobs family is further confirmed to be Jewish in the Newsies novelization:

page 11 of the Newsies novel by Jonathan Fast

The original Hard Promises script adds further confirmation. In the original scene where David buys his papers, Weasel calls David a Jewish racial slur. Later on, as David, Jack, and Les go back to the Jacobses, the script indicates that the Jacobs family lives off of Baker Street (possibly misspelt Baxter Street) in "Jewtown":

Hard Promises (Original Newsies Story)

Additionally, David Moscow (1992 David Jacobs) has a Jewish father [source] and both of Ben Fankhauser's (OBC Davey) parents are Jewish. [source]

The Jacobs family is and always has been Jewish.

On a related note, Esther Jacobs is confirmed to be Polish. This makes the Jacobs children canonically at least half-polish.

Hard Promises (Original Newsies Story)

In researching this, I also found that, In addition to the name Mayer being an Ashkenazic Jewish name, the surname Jacobs "was often given to Jewish people as a surname in Ashkenazi Jewish communities." [source]

Therefore, I think it's safe to say that Mayer Jacobs (and the Jacobs family by extension) is Ashkenazi Jewish in heritage.

Mayer being Ashkenazi Jewish also makes it likely that he too is Polish, as a vast majority of Ashkenazi Jews immigrated to Poland from Germany in the Medieval period. [source]

This would then make the Jacobs some of 2.5 million Ashkenazi Jews who came to the United States from from the Russian Empire (which at the time included Poland), the Kingdom of Romania, and Austria-Hungary between 1880 and 1924 and took up residence on the Lower East Side in Manhattan. [source]

The Jacobs are Jewish.

(If there was ever any doubt.)

___

inspired by this post

[sysciety]

This is the same anon, thank you for answering my question! It was very helpful. Maybe this was mentioned in one of the articles you cited (we have been reading them but progress is slow😅), but is there empirical evidence for the claim that dissociated parts are /always/ fused before a specific cutoff age unless there is trauma? We’re mostly confused by the specific age part, especially since what that specific age is is often reported differently. The idea of a specific cut-off age also seems unprovable (and unfalsifiable, at least while the response to people with DID claiming to have had the disorder formed after the cut-off is “you just don’t remember your earlier trauma or you’re lying”).

Thanks again!

I honestly think this has more to do with general brain development. 90% of your brain is developed by age 5 which is why early childhood experiences can have such a large impact on someone later on.

I'll say flat out that I'm not a neuroscientist and that I'm not an expert in childhood development. But I think the cut off range is more about the sheer amount of growth that you do at those early ages.

By 7-11 your brain is 95% developed, which is much less growth than that first time interval. By 5-8 is when a child's prefrontal cortex (critical thinking/decision making part of the brain) starts to become more active. It's not developed before then because your brain is trying to figure out basic functions just to like, live in general. When people say identity is integrated by 6-9 it's because it really does depend on when the integration starts to kick in.

You're gonna notice a lot of these are ranges and not specific numbers because brain development varies due to different factors (developmental disorders might mean something like a delay in speech, for example). I've seen some people say an identity should be formed at 6 and that 6-9 is to account for developmental disorders but I don't know the validity of that. I don't have a study for you to back this up so I can't tell you with certainty that 9 is the upper bound.

I will say as you get older you start developing non-dissociation coping mechanisms. In general being dissociation-prone increases the odds of a CDD so unless you've already been doing that I think the odds of developing one outside that range aren't high

The formation of CDDs is also a slow thing that I think ultimately depends on how that initial stage of integration is disrupted. Repetitive trauma doesn't even always cause CDDs it's a pretty complicated process.

So I guess to answer your question there isn't really a hard age cut off, but if there is no disruption then it will happen eventually. For some reason I was having a hard time finding if there is any concrete evidence but I did find this pamphlet on helping your child form an identity which might be helpful? Not sure if it's what you're looking for but I'll leave it here anyway: https://www.patterson-lakes-ps.vic.edu.au/uploaded_files/media/2.helping_your_child_to_have_a_strong_sense_of_identity_.pdf

(Also I know the sources from the last ask are pretty dense I totally get it if reading takes a while but I don't think it's mentioned in anything I linked if you were looking for it specifically)