#zoey’s extraordinary glitch

[livs-extraordinary-blog]

[psalm40speakstome]

Max realizing that Zoey is singing “I’m Yours” to him is one of the cutest things I’ve seen in ages.

[team-zoey-has-two-hands]

writing max richman as jewish: a beginner’s guide

hey y’all! as a jewish person, i haven’t really seen much content in this small but still growing fandom we have that depicts max as jewish other than an offhand mention, and while that’s also essentially what we have in canon, i thought it would be nice for goyim (non jewish individuals) to know how to write him in accordance to judaism.

let’s begin!

a bit about denominations

there are multiple branches of judaism, just like christianity. the most notable branches include:

orthodox (traditional judaism, these are your people going by the old law and believe that old laws hold true and don’t change)

reform judaism (your people that believe that judaism Has to change and evolve with the times)

there are other branches such as conservative and reconstructionist that are kind of in the middle of these two, but reform and orthodox are definitely the largest and they’re essentially the furthest to each ‘side’ of judaism (conservative errs a bit more to the orthodox side, and reconstructionist to the reform side).

the creator of the show, austin winsberg, grew up a reform jew, so one could assume that max, too, is reform.

one more thing about denominations: messianic judaism is NOT a form of judaism. messianic judaism is both a way to forcibly convert jews to christianity and for goys to appropriate our culture by slapping jesus on our culture and holidays with little care or kindness. do NOT have max as a messianic jew, and remember that they are NOT actual jews.

a bit about holidays

hanukkah (also spelled chanukah) is not, contrary to popular belief by goyim, the largest and most important jewish holiday. basically, it is not jewish christmas, nothing is jewish christmas. hanukkah is actually a rather small holiday in the grand scheme of things. do NOT, however, make max celebrate christmas, no matter how small hanukkah actually is. he and zoey can have joint hanukkah & christmas celebrations if they want, but under no circumstances does he celebrate christmas.

the largest and most important jewish holidays are the high holidays, rosh hashanah and yom kippur . rosh hashanah is the jewish new year (judaism has a different calendar, at the time of writing this in july 2020 it’s 5780, but jewish people use the secular calendar. the jewish calendar is used mostly for ceremonial purposes, such as determining holidays, torah portions, and the like). yom kippur is the holiest day of the year, and it’s when jewish people atone for their sins in the old year and start fresh for the new year.

the high holidays fall usually in september, and last three days. most jewish people, even those who don’t usually go to temple, will go to temple for these holidays. a thing you’ll see jewish people doing on these holidays is tashlikh, where we symbolically cast away our sins by throwing bread crumbs or rice into a body of water, which is a thing max could mention doing. another thing is that yom kippur is a day with a 25 hour fast, usually spent almost entirely in temple (yes, the entire day). after the fast, there’s a huge feast.

every saturday is shabbat, which is technically jewish sabbath, but it takes place from sundown friday to sundown Saturday. while christians can use electricity and even work on the sabbath, there are a whole list of things that you are not supposed to do on shabbat that qualify as working (called the 39 melachot), including using electricity and cooking. however, some modern jews have made allowances for using cars to get to shabbat services, since many people do not live within walking distance of a temple.

max says that he goes to temple, but we can probably assume that he’s not the most hardcore practicing jew, and you do not have to say that he’s not doing anything on saturday because of shabbat. many jews do not observe shabbat due to practical reasons, because we live in a secular world, where once it was very easy to practice shabbat, it is not now. many events in america are scheduled on saturday for christians who go to church on sunday, so keep that in mind.

another jewish holiday, passover, has a tradition of a ritual feast, called a seder, max could specifically invite zoey to his family’s seder. for more info on seders & other jewish holidays you’d like me to talk on, send me an ask!

a word on stereotypes

there is no law saying that you cannot portray a jewish character as a stereotype. but that doesn’t mean you won’t hurt people by doing that, especially if it’s a particularly harmful stereotype.

if your jewish character is dirty rich and horribly greedy with money and has no redeeming traits, that is not okay. that doesn’t mean that your jewish character cannot be rich. the DIFFERENCE is that you need to not portray things in a harmful way. so that greedy jew could be rich, but it would mean a lot, if you are a goy writing a jew, not making the character greedy. if your character HAS to be greedy and HAS to be jewish, something is wrong.

you can give max a jewish mother as a goy if you don’t go too over the top with it (take pointers from jewish writers, im glad to help you with this, myself), but please don’t give him a JAP sister if you can help it. also, don’t describe any family members as having hooked noses or droopy eyes or, god forbid, horns, and don’t have them constantly saying mazel tov.

something you CAN do: go ahead and use oy vey, if you’d like. you may also say oy vey gevalt, which is an oy vey telling of impending doom, and oy vey ist mir, which is just the non-shortened version of oy vey. it is also a YIDDISH saying, not hebrew, please keep that in mind.

religious texts

the torah is NOT the same thing as the bible. the torah itself only includes the Old Testament, but the torah is not the only bit of religious text.

the jewish bible is known as the tanakh, and it has three parts: the pentateuch (torah), the prophets (nevi'im) and the writings (ketuvim). the torah is the most important piece, however, and torah portions are read at temple every saturday from a priceless torah scroll, usually very old and always very very sacred. the other most important piece of jewish religious texts is the talmud, which is basically a bunch of books interpreting and explaining the tanakh. we love our religious texts so much, that we even have a whole holiday celebrating our religious texts where we take the torah scrolls out of a special case and parade them around with pride.

in conclusion:

if you have Any questions, any questions at all on how to write max (or any other character) as jewish, feel free to dm me or shoot me an ask! i would love to answer your questions, and no question is stupid. this is just the beginner’s guide, judaism is very complex and very rich and honestly amazing, and i do love to talk about it.

[vendimeyers]

Remember that lady that asked Zoey if she was okay just before Zoey burst into singing Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” instead of actually answering the question?

Well I just think about that lady a lot.

[talesofafangirlwithadvr]

You always know an episode is good when it’s over but you want to start it from the beginning all over again.

[team-zoey-has-two-handss]

anyway leif donnelly is jewish i don't make the rules

[hereidinathoreauwrites]

Zoey’s whole fear of confronting her father’s death speaks to me in a way I cant quite describe...but I feel it deep in my soul.

[thetwinsinlaw]

[sy5starplaty]

What I Watched in 2021 ~ Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist "Zoey's Extraordinary Glitch" (S01E08) Original Air Date: 29 March 2020

I honestly don't know how much longer I can go on singing out loud like this. Isn't the whole point of your powers to help people face things they don't want to face? Maybe everything that happened today is the universe telling you you need to stop avoiding it and go face your father. You've got this.

[lovelylittlelonelyliv]

this is probably one of my favorite posts I’ve ever made and i laugh every time i see it

zoey to zoey in 1x08 

[psalm40speakstome]

Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist. Episode Eight.

Okay people good at lip reading what does Max says when she spins his chair during “I’m Yours”

[team-zoey-has-two-hands]

max didn't know that zoey knew about his feelings for her, and either way, he is Not entitled to a response. he ambushed her with his romantic feelings, and based on zoey's character... i don't think she'd really like a big public spectacle on her behalf, especially one she doesn't know about beforehand. and shouldn't he have known that??

even if he thought she would like it, even though she knew he had feelings for her... he is an entitled bitch. dude, you ambushed her... you are not entitled to an immediate response. and then he gets butthurt when she doesn't know what to do like... what the fuck did you think was gonna happen? she's not gonna drop her panties right then and there. and she's kinda like... allowed to have feelings for other men??? he acts like he owns her and that's not healthy.

[shipppphappens]

Max & Zoey

Zoey´s extraordinary Glitch (Part 3/3)

[clairefrser]

♪ Zoey’s Extraordinary Gif Meme ♪ - [7/10] Songs - Jane Levy 1x08

CRAZY

[livs-extraordinary-blog]

no i definitely cried... a lot

Did anyone else almost cry when Abigail and her dorm mates sang Fight Song?

[noonevincesme]

I feel like we don’t talk about “Crazy” enough,, bc that was such an amazing performance