#for instance: where are they from? what kind of jew are they (reform or orthodox etc etc) | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

springstarfangirl · 1 year ago

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Hiya! I'm trying to write a Jewish character, can I have some help please? I really want to make her good positive representation

Sure thing! Though do keep in mind that I am only one girl from one stream of a religion that has itself a history of over three millennia, so I can only speak for what I know, that being Orthodox Judaism.

(also this is getting quite long, but I don't know what I expected- the rest is going under the cut.)

So one thing to keep in mind is that Judaism is more than just a religion. It's also a culture, and even just being raised around it- even if your character is secular (doesn't perform the commandments) or atheist/agnostic (doesn't believe God exists/doesn't know if God exists)- it will very much affect your character's mindset and possibly show up in their life in other ways.

In fact, the reason why I separated secular from atheist/agnostic is part of that- Judaism, due to putting more emphasis on the doing than the believing, doesn't really care if you actually believe in God. There are people who very much perform Judaism as a cultural ritual more than as a religion, and they are just as valid as the people who believe that God is there in every corner.

Okay, so what kind of cultural mentalities can you add?

For instance, the idea of proselytizing is forbidden in Judaism. So the way charity differs from tzedaka can be huge. Tzedaka comes from the root word tzedek, justice, and is seen as a way to help someone who's down on their luck to get back on their feet. Not an opportunity to convince them to join your religion. *stares angrily at American charity orgs*

This has a massive effect on how Jewish people see the world. Giving to and helping other people makes us happy, and that in itself is reward enough.

On the more cultural aspect, the menorahs you always see on TV shows? Inaccurate. Those are specific to one holiday, Chanukkah, which is not only a rather minor holiday but is also sometimes viewed as the "Jewish Christmas" when it really isn't. Instead, what any Jewish household would really have is books, and lots of them. The way we view the Tanach is very different from how a lot of Christians view the Bible- it's rarely literal- and so often you'll find a lot of books about Jewish law hanging around. Also, prayer books and candlesticks. Adult Jewish men are supposed to pray three times a day, so someone is bound to leave their prayer book lying around. And the candlesticks are from the "ceremony" (I say, struggling to find a better word) where we welcome Shabbat on Friday just before sunset. A lot of families keep them out all week.

Food is also massively important. Do your research on what's kosher and what's not (though if your character is Reform this may not apply as much- again, I speak from my own experience only) and try to stick to that. That might involve a Jewish character avoiding eating outside the house unless it's a packaged item (which they might check for kashrut symbols), or whispering a blessing before they eat. Kosher meat and cheese are both very hard to find outside of places with a lot of Jews, so they might be vegetarian.

I can't think of anything else right now, so I'll tag @unbidden-yidden because as a convert, they have much more experience with the mindset distinctions between Christianity and Judaism.

Jumblr, feel free to throw all your additions at this post- I need all the help I can get.

I hope this helped at least a little!

#writing advice #writing judaism #jumblr #writing #jewish culture

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writingwithcolor · 4 years ago

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hey! do you have any advice for a gentile writer on how to handle bar/bat mitzvah ceremonies, and are there ever instances where the child doesn't want to have a ceremony (and how might a parent react to that)?

Writing a reluctant b'nei mitzvah

Hi! For how to handle it, I'd see if you can find a Jewish friend in your writing community to walk you through what it was like for them if they had one, or see if you can watch some videos on YouTube if anyone has posted theirs.

If you're talking about basic structure of the event:

The Reform ceremony

The Reform ceremony will include things like

having to learn a Torah portion

chant it in Hebrew

and then expand on it a little in your native spoken language ("Here's why I think this Torah portion is relevant to today's climate change crisis" or whatever)

as well as speeches from your parents and maybe other relatives about how freakin proud they are of you.

And maybe the temple board president gives you a kiddush cup on behalf of the board.

Afterwards there's usually a reception.

If the reception has dancing, at some point the kid of honor may get raised into the air while seated on a chair by a bunch of the other guests while they're dancing. (This also happens to the couple at weddings. Fun fact I did not know this wasn't "all big weddings" until I was an adult.)

This year my temple had its first Zoom bar mitzvah, and the reception involved trivia with one of his moms as the MC. (And they had someone driving around dropping off lunch for all the reception guests, which I thought was an amazing gesture!)

As far as a kid not wanting a b'nei mitzvah ceremony (there's your gender neutral term btw)

I’m sure that does happen, especially considering the public speaking component and the existence of anxiety or other neurodivergence as a special circumstance. However, I’m not sure I, personally, would trust an outsider to write about the complex reasons someone in a marginalized group may not want to participate in one of that group’s events. However, one thing that's gonna be true when you ask three Jewish people a question you're gonna get.... at LEAST three answers, so read on!

-- Shira

Ceremony research

In terms of researching the ceremony, it depends a lot on denomination.

For Orthodox families, I recommend you look at Chabad.org. Chabad are a Chasidic sect that do a lot of outreach to help people connect to their Judaism in as many ways as possible - they definitely helped me find my own rhythm when I first left home. I've had a quick check and there is a ton of information on their website for kids preparing for their bar/bat mitzvah - but they will nudge you towards the more 'religious' (in their eyes) way of doing things.

For information on Reform ceremonies, I will defer to Shira :)

Now, as for a character who doesn't want their bar/bat mitzvah to take place

Shira thinks no, and if you want to accept that answer that is a totally valid choice and may well be the easier option. I think it can be done (the old two Jews, three opinions), mostly because of the feelings I remember having around my own bat mitzvah. I will say that if the central conflict of the story revolves around the ceremony, that would be a case of taking up a space where we can talk about our own traditions. If it's a subplot, that's a step in the right direction.

I would also not recommend, outside of an #OwnVoices piece, a character not wanting the ceremony for reasons like:

They don't think it's cool

They don't think it's important

They don't like Judaism the way they've been taught it

However, I think it could work if it's a reason like

They have social anxiety or another kind of brain chemicals where attention/people/noise/worrying about whether anyone likes them enough to come to their party etc are not things they just love to deal with

They are worried about whether their parents can afford it

They have suffered a trauma or loss and can't stand the thought of celebrating right now

It's becoming an autonomy war between them and their relatives, who all want something different for the big day

The reason I'm saying this could work is because the bar/bat mitzvah ceremony and preparations are part and parcel of growing up for us, and are just as steeped in messiness and big feelings as anything else preteens go through. For example, leading up to my bat mitzvah, I sometimes had thoughts about wishing it wasn't happening. This was mostly because my parents felt the pressure for it to turn out a certain way, and that lead to the atmosphere at home being more tense than usual, which my anxiety and general hormones couldn't handle. However, even at not-quite-twelve I knew that this was a very ungrateful and problematic thought to be having, since many Jewish girls who lived through persecution didn't get the chance to have this rite of passage. It was something I thought grouchily while trying on ANOTHER hideous dress, but never voiced.

Today, some fifteen years later, I am very grateful I had a bat mitzvah but would not say I enjoyed it, for the same reasons that part of me wanted it called off.

Remember that kids going through this process are usually aged between 11-13. So they have big, complex feelings, hopefully some empathy and values, but often not much knowledge of the wider world or empathy for people whose perspectives are too different from theirs to be on their emotional map just yet. They're also desperate for autonomy. I would personally expect to see this messiness in a character approaching their ceremony, which is why I think misgivings about the whole thing can be a plausible element.

Thirteen the Musical does a good job of exploring contradictory emotions in the build-up to a bar mitzvah. (He does want his ceremony to happen, but starts out with some immature ideas about what he wants it to be like and why.)

Finally, you asked about parental reactions if these feelings do end up being voiced.

If being Jewish means a lot to this family, the bar/bat mitzvah is probably the most important day of the child's life so far, and something their parent(s) put a ton of work into.

The initial reaction would almost certainly be

shock

followed by disappointment

Assuming you're going for a healthy parent-child relationship, they would then hopefully work through those feelings and listen to what has got their child so upset (since they would have to be pretty upset to want the whole thing cancelled).

As a Jewish reader, I would feel annoyed if they did end up calling it off - hopefully instead they can work through the problems together and figure out what would make it an awesome day. For example, I was recently (pre-Covid) at the bat mitzvah ceremony of a neurodivergent girl, who sang a Jewish song instead of sharing a thought on the Torah portion. Her mum then spoke about the process that had gone into making the ceremony accessible and appropriate for her daughter.

For more examples of how any accommodation possible will be made to avoid cancelling, check out the online bar mitzvahs that have been popping up throughout the pandemic.

I hope that helps, and thanks for reading this - apparently, I am more passionate about bar/bat mitzvahs than I realised...

--Shoshi

Shoshi, those are some great "Why I don't want to do this" reasons you came up with that AREN'T weird and antisemitic, and I agree they would be less of a red flag for me. To clarify, I think my resistance was basically that even those "good reasons" -- which I definitely agree with -- might be miswritten from the outside bc sooooo many people think that any culture with "a tradition" is automatically a burden on its teenagers, but like you said, we're proud of two of us three opinions etc. so there's enough wiggle room.

Judaism is not a marshmallow. There are a lot of rules that can sometimes be a hassle, there's social pressure because of how communal we are, and the outside world sees us through a lot of weird lenses. However, for those of us who like it here, all that is worth it because of the positives, for example in addition to rules we have awesome traditions, that very communality means community, and specifics that might be more personal like my own use of repetitive prayer as a mental health boost.

I fear that when those of us who write from the inside about the pain of the negatives don't also mention the positives -- which is by no means a requirement of someone expressing their pain -- it leads the outside world to believe there aren't positives. And then gentiles turn around and write Jewish characters who find their own Jewishness annoying, inconvenient, burdensome, etc.

I'm wandering from the question but basically if you are going to write the setup in the OP, this is the North Pole you have to be traveling away from.

-- Shira

There is such a tendency to write Jewish characters who are intended to be likable/relatable rejecting aspects of the culture, at least in part as a way to make them relatable to the broader public. I worry that without constant vigilance it would slip into that territory.

For instance, having anxiety and not wanting to do your portion in front of an entire shul is one thing, but if the hesitancy is also part of a broader desire to avoid engaging with the culture it is a problem (well, it's an OwnVoices deal anyway). I guess, for me I wonder why it is that this Jewish character has to be struggling with a Jewish celebration. Lots of us do, myself included, but I narrow my eyes a bit when folks outside the community feel such a pull to those particular narratives, and that's what makes it feel like unstable ground for someone who isn't Jewish.

--Dierdra

I got so into that b'nei mitzvah question haha, it spoke to me because it's such a turbulent time in life that I felt it could humanise the young Jewish character - IF handled well. I DEFINITELY agree though about the whole 'urgh why do I have a tradition?' character, which is very tired at this point. I'm honestly so sick of Orthodox Jewish characters only ever being portrayed in order to make our way of life look less than.

--Shoshi

#tooweirdtolivetoogaytodie #b'nei mitzvah #jumblr #bar mitzvah #bat mitzvah #Jewish #Othering #representation #asks

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mikhalsarah · 4 years ago

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RIP Open Orthodoxy, eaten alive by parasitic “Wokeness”...

There are already three streams of Judaism where women can be rabbis (Conservative/Masorti, Reform, and Reconstructionist), I should know, I belong to one of them. I’ve never entirely understood the Orthodox commitment to sidelining women in this day and age, but the simple fact is, people who are unhappy with Orthodox halakhah in this area have other places to pray, and the stubborn refusal to pray in any of “those places”, yet fighting tooth and nail to make their own shuls become just like them, smack of a weird sort of snobbish attachment to the word “orthodoxy”....even though the rest of Orthodox is but a hair’s breadth from considering them a treif liberal “fake” Judaism like the rest of us already.

As difficult, but possible, as the issue of female rabbis would be to bring about, (seeing as it is a rabbinic prohibition based largely on cultural attitudes no longer in play in western society), the issue of getting the Orthodox to accept gay couples is another matter. Again, not an insurmountable issue, Centrist Orthodox Rabbi Schmuley Boteach has written quite openly about the need to find a place in Orthodox shuls for gay and lesbian Jews. However Orthodox culture is never going to let them hold hands during service or kiddush, for the simple reason that public displays of sexual/romantic affection, even between heterosexual married couples, are frowned upon everywhere from the sanctuary to the grocery store, due to the strong feeling that sexuality should be put aside, or sublimated, when encountering certain kinds of holiness (engaging in prayer etc). Of course, that does not mean that in Judaism sex is the opposite of holiness in some way, or else it would be forbidden to have sex on Shabbat. Since marital sex is a mitzvah (commandment, meritorious act) on Shabbat, better to understand it as a different kind of holiness, one that is not compatible with some other mitzvot (like prayer) or with public life in general. Sexuality itself is a sort of holiness surrounded by taboos and necessitating the utmost privacy in Judaism, so this is ironically probably the hill Orthodoxy would die on, not figuring out how to tolerate the gays.

I heartily agree that it’s time to stop being racist to the Palestinians. Strange though that a “Woke” rabbi still can’t bring himself to call them what they call themselves, and in typical Israeli/Zionist fashion emphasizes their Arab otheness, rather than their indigenousness...thus making it seem rather like a favour being granted to them out of the goodness of his Woke heart, rather than an acknowledgement of their intrinsic belongingness. (This kind of stuff is typical for Woke social justice, which consistently cares far more about virtue-signalling and screaming at “white people”, or whomever else is deemed an Oppressor in the situation, than listening and paying attention to those who are actually oppressed.)

I spent decades of my life as a vegetarian, years of that as a vegan. Even though for medical reasons I had to adopt a diet which relies on meat for sufficient protein, I still try to limit my meat consumption. I am very pleased that so many people are seeing the value of vegetarian and vegan diets, and that even regular omnivore folk are adopting “meatless Mondays” and so forth. I’d be even better pleased with governments helping to encourage it by working to make it less expensive if/where possible. I’d nod my head approvingly if rabbis suggested meat-eating be reserved for Shabbat, if one didn’t feel able to give it up entirely. However, even when I didn’t practice (Judaism) and was secular it would never have occurred to me to ban it wholesale. I’m just not Puritan enough for banning things, I prefer the Quakerly ways of “convincement”. The Woke, on the other hand, are full-bore Puritan, convert-the-heathen-masses.

This is perhaps the strangest part of entire essay. This newly minted “rabbi” is publicly expressing the desire to not just overhaul a big chunk of halakhah in order to make Judaism less restrictive and bring it further into line with the mores of the gentile world... a process that has been going on forever, whether excessively quickly (Reform) or excruciatingly slowly (Haredi)... but is calling to make Judaism more restrictive in other ways, by banning things permitted by halakhah which happens never or so infrequently that I can’t recall an instance offhand. And he’s willing to use secular governments to achieve it by force.

I recall hearing conservatives decades ago saying “Inside the heart of every liberal is a fascist screaming to get out” and laughing derisively at how they could think that. I laugh no more, though I contend that it is a particular species of illiberal liberal, known as the progressive activist, that is to blame rather than liberals in general. Still...there it is, and the regular liberals are generally no help opposing their own extremists because deep down they harbour that intrinsic liberal guilt that they are never doing enough or being enough to be truly authentic and useful. For authenticity and “real change” they look ever to the fringes, on the assumption that the more wildly opposed to society in general an ideology is, the better it is, if only they weren’t too cowardly and comfortable to join up and suffer like the “real” activists.

I have to add here, how nice it is despite not having set foot in any shul in over a year, to still have something of the religious Jewish mindset, which makes impressive demands on your time, money, and moral fastidiousness, but at the same time reminds you constantly that you’ll never be perfect and will never accomplish everything you want or that God asks of you and God already accepts that as a given. “It is not yours to complete the task (of repairing the world), but neither are you free to desist from it.” -Pirkei Avot 2:21. Despite the reputation Judaism has for being guilt-inducing, at least we are free from the overwhelming and psychologically destructive levels of guilt induced by secular liberalism, which now has decided, via Wokeness, that merely existing in a society that is imperfect is a damnable offense, even if it is, on balance, one of the least imperfect societies around. This is how Jews like me know that Wokeness is not just a new religion, it’s an offshoot of Christianity, where just being born damns you to a state of perpetual sin.

This authenticity-of-the-extremists mindset blinds them to the fact that while the fringes are the birthplace of some excellent critiques and paradigm-changing ideas that have been of great benefit, those benefits most often only come when those ideas are tempered by counter-critiques and more pragmatic people who can tolerate the loss of ideological purity required to make them work in practice. Also invisible to the liberal mind are those historical moments when progressives have backed ideas that were...well, the term “clusterfucks” springs to mind.

Progressives less than a century ago were enamoured with ideas ranging from Eugenics to Italian Fascism (less so with Naziism, but even that had its adherents until the war and the atrocities of the camps coming home to roost). They backed Communism to such a degree that it took Kronstadt to shake most of them loose, and they still idolize Che Guevara, the gay-hating, probably racist, illiberal who put people to death without trial and “really liked killing” (his words) and can’t hear a word against Communist China (”That’s racist to the Chinese!”) or Islamic extremists (”That’s Islamophobic!), despite the fact that Communist China is “re-indoctrinating” the Muslim Uighers and using them as slave labour (in part for the profits and in part because keeping the men and women separated prevents them breeding more Muslim Uighers), and despite the fact that the Islamists throw gay men off roofs in public executions. When you do get a left-liberal to admit something on the Left has gone wrong at all, they immediately shift to rationalizing it as somehow really being the fault of conservatives all along...even in a case like Eugenics where religious and other conservatives were fighting it tooth and nail.

(NB: This is not an endorsement of conservatives, who have their own sets of problems but who, when they finally do change their mind on an issue, don’t try to rationalize their former wrongheadedness by claiming it was really the fault of left-liberals that they ever believed such things in the first place)

And that brings us back to Zionism and the Woke. The Woke cannot for the life of them admit that it was secular, and often quite far left, Jews that birthed Zionism directly out of the leftist “liberation” traditions of the day (albeit with a healthy side of pro-Western colonialism-admiring fervour for being “an outpost of the West” shining the light of rationality on the barbaric, backward, religiosity of the Middle East). They don’t want to see it. It disturbs their comfortably simple narrative, which prefers to maintain that it was the “whiteness” of the original Zionist Jews and their early followers that was the problem, not their politics.

But Zionism is merely the predictable result of what happens when you take an oppressed people and tell them that their oppression entitles them to do whatever they need to in order to end their oppression and that violence is not violence when perpetrated by the oppressed. That the world owes them, and their descendants, something in perpetuity for having oppressed them, some sort of special treatment, and that it must never withdraw that special dispensation because that itself would be oppressing them again. The fact that what the Jews would feel like they needed to do was ethnically-cleanse their former homeland of people who had once shared it with them (both Jews and Palestinians can be traced to a shared ancestry in the region going back about 50,000 years) and necessitating a whole new liberation movement to free them was an unintended consequence of th\e liberation movement, but a consequence nonetheless.

The Woke cannot admit that Zionism is, in large part, a direct consequence of the leftist liberation project, and Woke Jews (who are almost invariably “white”) can’t admit that the rest of the Woke movement hates them. They truly deserve each other.

Ah, well, at least this “woke” rabbi isn’t trying to qualify for the cognitive dissonance finals by being Woke and a Zionist at the same time like the current rabbi of my (rapidly sinking) former synagogue. We’ve had rabbis that horrified the congregation by being too right-wing (mostly on halakhic issues rather than politics), and we’ve had rabbis that horrified (the older portion of) the congregation by being too left-wing and running off to march in Selma. Thanks to this rabbi haranguing the congregation daily about LGBTQ issues to the point that even the LGBTQ Jews got tired of hearing him (our sexuality is NOT our whole fucking existence...no pun intended) and marching around the Sanctuary with the Israeli flag on Shabbat (an honour reserved for the Torah even by the most fervently Zionist among us, none of whom are yours truly) we now have the dubious distinction of being a congregation horrified by a rabbi being both too left-wing and too right-wing simultaneously.

Apropos of nothing, there is now a “For Sale” sign on the front lawn of my former synagogue and the membership at the Orthodox synagogue has grown with astonishing rapidity. We can extrapolate from this that in 4 years time, should the U.S. Republicans run any candidate remotely sane, they will sweep the election.

#judaism #woke #wokeism #zionism #sjw nonsense #sjws ruin everything #open orthodoxy #militant vegans #woke is a religion #puritan #vs #quaker

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