Ok so it came to my attention that two authors have decided to write fanfics in which Lans are Jewish in the canon universe of mdzs and I have a lot to say about that as a resident Jew.

Prepare yourselves for a rant;

As a Jewish person I absolutely love being represented properly in a media I like (and I mean the part in which a character even if not religious is still culturally Jewish, and not the jokes on the mom being overbearing or a mention once that they are Jewish and that's it)

And sometimes I see similarities in characters with Jewish culture and behavior, and I do headcanon them as Jewish or make an /au/ in which they are Jewish so I could feel a little more represented and connected to that character (much like me and quite a few see Spock as Jewish)

The moment in which it becomes wrong to make the characters as Jewish is when in the timeline of the canon universe it is incorrect for them to be jewish and when it erases another culture and religious experience from the canon itself.

Does it mean you can't make mdzs characters Jewish in a fic at all? Not exactly- you can make them Jewish in an au that could be either modern (since there are Jewish Chinese people and convertion does exist) or if you really want it ancinet you can make a different story

About them in a different setting like b'nei Israel setting or something since at the timeline mdzs is kinda is though we don't have exact time (for my knowledge) b'nei Israel lived in tribes in Israel

But never in a canon setting

Since I am neither Chinese or taoist I cannot speak for them why making taoist characters with taoist motives in their time is wrong I can do it by taking it from the Jewish perspective;

1. Jews do not practice magic, we do not preform miracles, if there is something that "seems" somewhat magical or miraculous like Moses slapping that rock and giving b'nei Israel water in the desert it is because god has comandad to do so and it is the miracle of god himself.

Another reason- Jews do not practice Judaism to become immortal, immorality is not something that we have as a concept and even Elijah the prophet went to heaven by carriage of flames to be with god and did not stay here to be immortal.

We practice Judaism to follow the law of God. We do not do it to be immortal and despite the tries to westernise our views like in Christianity or Islam we do not do so to avoid hell because there is no hell in Judaism :)

So making clearly taoist storyline a Jewish storyline is wrong for: 1. Erasing a culture and 2. Because it does not even follow our Jewish practices and culture.

If you do still wish to connect the characters to Judaism you can, but in /au/ not in the canon storyline.

And another little addition- it has come to my attention that in one of these fics the wall of rules in gusu is supposed to be the western wall?????????!!!

The disrespect of it all-

Not only it is a very very /very/
holy place to Jews since it is the only thing left from our holiest of holy- the Temple, the residence of god, and of course words cannot be carved there into stone

You also make the lan territory Jerusalem and gusu itself the holy Temple

Which is so disrespectful for Judaism, and even if I, a non religious Jew (yes Judaism is both ethnicity, culture and could separately be a religion too) am offended by it because it is disrespectful to everything that has to do to our culture and history.

If I made any mistake in this thread or offended anyone who's Chinese or taoist despite me trying to not involve your culture as much as I can please let me know so I could educate myself on the subject, thank you

I want to add this to the thread since it is a great addition from the POV of an ex religious Jew who academically studies Asian culture with Chinese and daoistic included: https://twitter.com/unfortunate_tg/status/1354045369773076480

This is another important thread on the subject https://twitter.com/sir_rates/status/1354167084347920385