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equating Judaism to Christianity & thinking you're an ally by calling out "anti-semitism" when stories featuring explicit erasure are getting the blowback they deserve.
It shows such a fundamental lack of understanding of what Judaism actually is, it's honestly laughable.
It shows such a fundamental lack of understanding of what Judaism actually is, it's honestly laughable.
for one, being Jewish is not simply a religion. Christianity has an emphasis on the idea "anyone" can be Christian due to the proselytizing core of the religion. it's a fundamental, inextricable aspect of Christianity that Judaism (for good or ill) does not share.
within the community, Judaism is something you are considered born into, and conversion is relatively rare, and even then mostly only w/in reform Judaism. https://www.jewishboston.com/read/ask-a-rabbi-will-i-be-accepted-in-the-jewish-world-as-a-convert-to-judaism/
outside the community, the genetic/racial aspect of Judaism was also seen as immutable. You were Jewish whether you practiced or not, whether you were religious or not. the nazis didn't care if you observed, whether you observed the shabbos or not. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-nuremberg-race-laws
the current & US-centric view of Judaism (and I'm using that term vs. "modern", because much of the world streets Jews as a race rather than a religion) I see being used in these discussions, reflects the successful co-opting of the Christian Right of Judaism for its own aims.
"Judeo-Christian" values is thrown around in conversations in the US, as if Judaism and Christianity reflect similar beliefs. They don't. For one, Christianity is both religious & cultural, but it's not considered racial; it functionally CAN'T be, as its core goal is conversion.
For the Christian Right in the US, and specifically the evangelicals, they support Jews and the concept of Israel only in how it serves their end times narrative. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/donald-trump-christians-fundamentalists-end-times-rapture-1083131/
They don't support Jews because they share a kinship w/ them. They don't even support them to "convert" them -- they support them because it's part of the Ikea instruction manual for the end of the world. Jews + Israel = Apocalypse.
All that is to say -- seeing comment after comment on The Fic That Shall Not Be Named snidely saying "I don't see the same feedback over fic with Christian concepts" fundamentally don't understand that making characters Jewish isn't simply replacing their cultural practices.
(not that there's anything "simple" in that, but let's use the simplistic framing of the forcibly uninformed for a mo') Making characters Jewish is not just cultural erasure, but a racial erasure too. Because Judaism is NOT just a set of religious traditions.
There's also this assumption that baseline Judaism is Ashkenazi -- with little to no understanding of non Eastern European Jewish communities including the Sephardic, Mizrahi, Ethiopian, Kaifeng Jewish communities.
which is to say, to bring it back to what was meant to be my original point: it shows a basic lack of understanding of what it means to be Jewish, if you think there's no difference between characters being Jewish and characters being Christian.
that's not to say it's not possible to explore what it means to be Jewish in MDZS/CQL fic -- I've seen it done with respect and care and understanding.
but in the two stories that have received this kind of response, both the creators & the stories themselves reflect both a lack of understanding of the core text, AND an explicit contempt at being asked to learn.
and to be blunt. I tried to reach out to the OP in private, from the perspective of a fellow Jew in this fandom, to offer feedback and perspective, and their response was just as ugly and cruel in private as they were in public.
They were never interested in empathy, and on a fundamental level, those uninterested in empathy often have very little to say worth reading.
