#how to write synagogues

[rahabs]

Anyway I think I'm going to start a few series of edits + historical write-ups about ancient Israel... I need to continue working my way through all the books I hoarded from the synagogue.

[writingwithcolor]

Is a Jewish Necromancer using soul energy taboo?

WWC Follower Asks:

My character is Ashkenazi Jewish and living in modern America (raised in New York, moved to the Pacific North West). He has magical talent, which presents itself in auto writing (speaking with spirits using himself as a conduit), and necromancy/death magic. I understand the Torah forbids it, and the Talmud acknowledges its existence, and read a previous answer you did regarding it. I intended to add this aspect to my character because prior to writing this magical talent, as the plot unfolded while I wrote, the character was already established as Jewish and I did not wish to erase that from him. His personal arc/story itself has a strong point of residual hauntings and healing from the past, which was how the mediumship came to exist. At this point, I am writing it as he is learning his talent, and he intends to do as little harm to the dead as possible (he will not be reanimating people). In addition, necromancy can also work in this world as a form of animancy (using the soul) to do magic. My character is against taking that energy from others (as is it is common for necromancers to take the energy of the deceased by force), and instead will tap into himself, or utilize it if it is willingly donated by another person. It possible to make this work? Are there any severe taboos involved with the idea of using soul/life energy to fuel magic that I have missed in my research? What’s your personal threshold for this idea?

One very culturally Jewish way to handle it would be if he has to bulk up and eat a lot of nourishing Bubbe ("eat eat!!") style meals when he's gonna talk to the spirits or sheydim or whatever bc he's using his own life essence to fuel the connection like "if i want to do this i need to eat 2 helpings of brisket first".

That leans heavily into emphasizing that he is drawing on his own energy, maybe he has to eat enough food for himself and the dead person too, and not sapping the strength of another (an antisemitic trope)

-Shira

I absolutely LOVE the idea of him eating for the dead person, and I think it’s Jewish by vibes even if not drawing on something specific from text (that I know of). I definitely would be wary of any magic where the other souls are diminished by working with him even if he doesn’t do it intentionally, but it sounds like you’re already on that.

I wonder also if he might take upon himself the responsibility to recite Kaddish for the deceased people he works with, to make up for disturbing them--especially if rather than recite the prayer on his own, he attends a synagogue service or gathers a minyan (prayer quorum of 10 adult Jews) to recite the prayer “Correctly,” since, some very sweet Tumblr lore aside, Kaddish is one of those prayers not traditionally recited without a minyan.

-Meir

[ilookattextile]

I got a job at a Ukrainian museum.

On the first day someone asks me if I have any Ukrainian heritage. I say I had ancestors from Odesa, but they were Jewish, so they weren’t considered Ukrainian, and they wouldn’t have considered themselves Ukrainian. My job is every day I go through boxes of Ukrainian textiles and I write a physical description, take measurements, take photographs, and upload everything into the database. I look up “Jewish” in the database and there is no result. 

Some objects have no context at all, some come with handwritten notes or related documents. I look at thick hand-spun, hand-woven linen heavy with embroidery. Embroidery they say can take a year or more. I think of someone dressed for a wedding in their best clothes they made with their own hands. Some shirts were donated with photographs of the original owners dressed in them, for a dance at the Ukrainian Labour Temple, in 1935. I handle the pieces carefully, looking at how they fit the men in the photos, and how they look almost a hundred years later packed in acid-free tissue. One of the men died a few years later, in the war. He was younger than I am now. The military archive has more photographs of him with his mother, his father, his fiancé. I take care in writing the catalogue entry, breathing in the history, getting tearful. 

I imagine people dressed in their best shirts at Easter, going around town in their best shirts burning the houses of Jews, in their best shirts, killing Jews. A shirt with dense embroidery all over the sleeves and chest has a note that says it is from Husiatyn. I look it up and find that it was largely a Jewish town, and Ukrainians lived in the outskirts. There is a fortress synagogue from the Renaissance period, now abandoned. 

When my partner Aaron visits I take him to an event at the museum where a man shows his collection of over fifty musical instruments from Ukraine, and he plays each one. Children are seated on the floor at the front. We’re standing in a corner, the room full of Ukrainians, very aware that we look like Jews, but not sure if anyone recognizes what that looks like anymore. Aaron gets emotional over a song played on the bandura. 

A note with a dress says it came from the Buchach region. I find a story of Jewish life in Buchach in the early twentieth century, preparing to flee as the Nazis take over. I cry over this.

I’m cataloguing a set of commemorative ribbons that were placed on the grave of a Ukrainian Nationalist leader, Yevhen Konovalets, after he was assassinated. The ribbons were collected and stored by another Nationalist, Andriy Melnyk, who took over leadership after Konovalets’ death. The ribbons are painted or embroidered with messages honouring the dead politician. I start to recognize the word for “leader”, the Cyrillic letters which make up the name of the colonel, the letters “OYH” which stand for Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN in English). The OUN played a big part in the Lviv pogroms in 1941, I learn. The Wikipedia article has a black and white image of a woman in her underwear, running in terror from a man and a young boy carrying a stick of wood. The woman’s face is dark, her nose may be bleeding. Her underwear is torn, her breast exposed. I’m measuring, photographing, recording the stains and loose threads in the banners that honour men who would have done this to me. 

Every day I can’t stop looking at my phone, looking up the news from Gaza, tapping through Instagram stories that show what the news won’t. Half my family won’t talk to the other half, after I share an article by a scholar of Holocaust and genocide studies, who says Israel is committing a genocide. My dad makes a comment that compares Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto. This gets him in trouble. My aunt says I must have learned this antisemitism at university, but there is no excuse for my dad. 

This morning I see images from Israeli attacks in the West Bank, where they are not at war. There are naked bodies on the dusty ground. I’m not sure if they are alive. This is what I think of when I see the image from the Lviv pogrom. If what it means for Jews to be safe from oppression is to become the oppressor, I don’t want safety. I don’t want to speak about Jews as if we are one People, because I have so little in common with those in green uniforms and tanks. I am called a self-hating Jew but I think I am a self-reflecting Jew.

I don’t know how to articulate how it feels to be handling objects which remind me of Jewish traumas I inherited only from history classes and books. Textiles hold evidence of the bodies that made them and used them. I measure the waist of a skirt and notice that it is the same as my waist size. I think of clothing and textiles that were looted from Jewish homes during pogroms. I think of clothing and textiles that were looted from Palestinian homes during the ongoing Nakba. Clothes hold the shape of the body that once dressed in them. Sometimes there are tears, mends, stains. I am rummaging through personal belongings in my nitrile gloves. 

I am hands-on learning about the violence caused by Ukrainian Nationalism while more than nine thousand Palestinians have been killed by the State of Israel in three weeks, not to mention all those who have been killed in the last seventy-five years of occupation, in the name of the Jewish Nation, the Jewish People — me? If we (and I am hesitant to say “we”) learned anything from the centuries of being killed, it was how to kill. This should not have been the lesson learned. Zionism wants us to feel constantly like the victims, like we need to defend ourself, like violence is necessary, inevitable. I need community that believes in freedom for all, not just our own People. I need the half of my family who believes in this necessary “self-defence” to remember our history, and not just the one that ends happily ever after with the creation of the State of Israel. Genocide should not be this controversial. We should not be okay with this. 

Tomorrow I will go to work and keep cataloguing banners that honour the leader of an organization which led pogroms. I will keep checking the news, crying into my phone, coordinating with organizers about our next actions, grappling with how we can be a tiny part in ending this genocide that the world won’t acknowledge, out of guilt over the ones it ignored long ago. 

[dcdreamblog]

In honor of whatever Jewish holiday is close when you get to answering this (currently Passover), what's the deal with that Monolith guy?

This is only going to work once and it's still getting your position reset to the bottom of the answer list because it is CHEATING. I don't know the Jewish holidays but I DO know that Passover is one of, if not the most important one and considering how...well let's just say how things have been going for my Jewish friends out there on the wide interwebs I feel its important to let people know where I stand. Like the blog says, we support Jews here. Also if I do this no one is allowed to judge me for how many Yiddish words I drop into every piece I write. ANYWAY.

(A painting of the Monolith, showing it standing literal watch over Brooklyn. Not to scale) "The Monolith" is a Golem. Which...umm... Look, I'm not a Jewish mythological scholar. Jewish mysticism is a whole kettle of fish and the worst part about trying to make heads or tails of it is that a big chunk of the information offered online is from people who AREN'T Jewish trying to sell you a 12 week course on the Kabbalah to make your dick bigger or something. Assume I am taking this information directly from as trustworthy sources as I POSSIBLY can and if I say something horribly untoward then I ask that the righteous bricks through my window be limited to one. If you want to learn some Jewish history, look up Sam Aronow on Youtube and thank me later. To avoid another false start. The Monolith is a Golem, a creature formed usually out of clay and animated by Jewish mysticism to serve as guardian and protector for a local Jewish community. The most famous one is in Prague, the Golem known as the monolith was animated at some point in the mid 30s. Theories abound as to whom or why but during the weeks leading directly up to the Monolith's appearance the Brooklyn Jewish community had come under a rash of attacks from local bootleggers and mafiosos leaving many dead and multiple businesses up in flames when the community was in the depth of the Great Depression.

The Monolith was only originally active for a very short time before its prerogative to track down and halt those who would put Brooklyn's Jews and risks lead to it unleashing violent attacks on what were purported to be small time or nonviolent offenders. It vanishes from the historical record close to a year before the Crimson Avenger and the Sandman make the scene. Stories abound that just like the golems of other cities it is sealed away awaiting a time in which it is needed to defend the Jews of Brooklyn once again. It only reappears in the modern day where it is reported to have fought a demon underneath an old church near its old neighborhood, as well as teaming up with Batman to halt a series of arsonist attacks on Brooklyn's Muslims from an Islamophobic bigot calling himself The Incinerator. It also battles a creature of animated iron that people also call a Golem but I have no citation on that and helps break up a trafficking ring. It shows up for a very short time during the so called 'Battle for Bludhaven' after the dropping of Chemo decimated many of the city's lower income neighborhoods including its Jewish quarter. There it clashed with the government goon squad Freedom's Ring and assisted the modern Freedom Fighters in making sure the disaster didn't continue to spread helping to salvage the city as it still exists to this day. (Whether this is a good act depends on one's opinion on Bludhaven/s) Since then? Its most often cited around the NYCAT (New York Citizen's Assistance Team) Center in Brooklyn, a mutual assistance network for Brooklyn's lower class or homeless citizens. As is shocking to truly no one the last year or so of sightings have been it standing guard against or breaking up hamasnik mobs around synagogues, Jewish cultural centers and Hebrew schools because people DEEPLY suck. It's a hero that means a lot of things to a lot of people. Finding sources on it it was hard to not stumble into antisemetic corners who basically called it the second coming of Mongul just for existing because it will stand there for 30 minutes getting belted with bottles and only start shoving when the bottles start getting aimed at somebody else. This has been the pattern placed upon openly Jewish superheroes for the past year or more, where their every action is vilified because protecting Jewish communities is what they've always done. To that I respond the same I would respond to anyone who was complaining about an 'ethnic' superhero of any other kind: What the hell are you doing that a superhero whose purpose is to defeat threats to Jewish communities has suddenly become a problem for you? Why have you joined the same cohort as a literal demon and a terrorist lighting mosques on fire?

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Bowen McCurdy and Jordan Morris’s “Youth Group”

NEXT SATURDAY (July 20), I'm appearing in CHICAGO at Exile in Bookville.

Youth Group is Bowen McCurdy and Jordan Morris's new and delightful graphic novel from Firstsecond. It's a charming tale of 1990s ennui, cringe Sunday School – and demon hunting.

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250789235/youthgroup

Kay is a bitter, cynical teenager who's doing her best to help her mother cope with an ugly divorce that has seen her dad check out on his former family. Mom is going back to church, and she talks Kay into coming along with her to attend the church youth group.

This is set in the 1990s, and the word "cringe" hasn't yet entered our lexicon as an adjective, but boy is the youth group cringe. The pastor is a guitar-strumming bearded dad who demonstrates how down he is with the kids by singing top 40 songs rewritten with evangelical lyrics (think Weird Al meets the 700 Club). Kay gamely struggles through a session and even makes a friend or two, and agrees to keep attending in deference to her mother's pleas.

But this is no ordinary youth group. Kay's ultra-boring suburban hometown is actually infested with demons who routinely possess the townspeople, and that baseline of demonic activity has suddenly gone critical, with a new wave of possessions. Suddenly, the possessed are everywhere – even Kay's shitty dad ends up with a demon inside of him.

That's when Kay discovers that the youth group and its corny pastor are also demon hunters par excellence. Their rec-rooms sport secret cubbies filled with holy weapons, and the words of exorcism come as readily to them as any embarrassing rewritten devotional pop song. Kay's discovery of this secret world convinces her that youth group isn't so bad after all, and soon she is initiated into its mysteries, including the existence of rival demon-hunting kids from the local synagogue, Catholic church, and Wiccan coven.

As the nature of the new demonic incursion becomes clearer, it falls on Kay and her pals to overcome these sectarian divisions over the protests of their guitar-strumming, magic-wielding leader. That takes on a special urgency when Kay learns why the demons are interested in her, personally, and a handful of other kids in town who all share a secret trait.

I confess that as someone who lived through the 1990s as a young man, there is something disorienting about experiencing the decade of my young adulthood through the kind of retro lens I associate with the 1950s or 1960s. But while the experience is disorienting, it's not unpleasant. McCurdy's artwork and Morris's snappy dialog conjure up that bygone decade in a way that is simultaneously affectionate and critical, exposing the hollowness of its performative ennui and the brave face that performance represented even as the world was being swept up in corporate gigantism.

McCurdy and Morris are really onto something here, implicitly asking us why the 1990s gave us Buffy and Sabrina (and The Coven, etc etc) – what was it about that decade in which Reaganomics and globalism consolidated the gains of the 1980s, where the climate emergency took on its undeniable urgency, where media monopolies mastered the art of commodifying counterculture faster than it could mutate into new forms?

Morris's writing really shines here. If you enjoyed Bubble, his earlier outing based on the post-apocalyptic comedy podcast of the same name, you will love this one:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/21/podcasting-as-a-visual-medium/#huntr

Morris is also half of Jordan, Jesse Go!, the long-running podcast where he and Jesse Thorn do a weekly ha-ha-only-serious goofball schtick that never fails to smuggle in really clever and insightful ideas amidst the poop jokes.

https://maximumfun.org/podcasts/jordan-jesse-go/

John Hodgman calls nostalgia a "toxic impulse." Church Group deftly avoids nostalgia's trap, managing to be a period piece without falling prey to the Happy Days pathology of ignoring the many flaws and problems of its era. And of course, it's a hoot and a blast.

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/16/blight/#the-dream-of-the-nineties

[astra-the-dragon]

Sharing here a post by Contrapoints that I found on reddit. Link after the images so you can get text. My own thoughts at the bottom, beneath the cut.

link:

my personal thoughts below.

I am a Progressive who has been advocating for Palestine for years, and volunteered for the Harris campaign. Grew up in a conservative pocket of New Jersey, and even as a child I found the hypocrisy among my peers shocking. I was protesting Netanyahu's government for a long time before oct. 7th even happened.

I am also a Jewish Israeli. I've lived in Tel Aviv-Yafo for the last four years. I have been the direct and indirect target of antisemitic attacks for my entire life, including on tumblr. The events of oct. 7th, and the agony, and the bloodlust, were more powerful than you foreigners can imagine. There were weeks when the sky was grey with smoke rising from the bombing of Gaza, and I felt so powerless and alone.

I turned to my peers and friends on the left, and was faced with ultimatums that boiled down to: Swear you hate your homeland, Renounce your heritage, or you're a Nazi.

I turned to my peers and friends on jumblr, and while there were no ultimatums, a truly distressing number of my people shared or made posts that dehumanized Palestinians/Arabs, or denied the genocide, etc.

Nobody seems to like the idea that "human rights means everyone including the people you hate".

I have silently blocked many, many people. I chose to almost entirely retreat from leftist spaces; I won't leave jumblr because I will always be a Jew and I have hope I can repair things from the inside.

Watching my own communities tear themselves apart in fear and paranoia over the last almost-two-years has been heartbreaking. Seeing an outsider face the conflict with nuance and equanimity is a breath of fresh air.

Yes, there are obvious Bad Guys (the IDF and Hamas), but so many innocents are being attacked in the crossfire. We have all seen the images of the carnage in Gaza. Do you even know how many terror attacks there have been against synagogues in the last two weeks? I bet you don't.

Foreigners have limited power in this; but most importantly, you have power over yourself. Your words: how do you talk about Jewish politicians and organizations? Your actions: do you center Palestinian and Jewish voices or assume you know what they want? Your choices: Are you still boycotting Israel, or did you conveniently forget?

My call to action for outsiders is simple: stop pretending you know better than the people who are directly affected. know when to shut your mouth, or acknowledge that your time would be better spent elsewhere.

purity policing will kill us all. rage is not a sustainable fuel for positive change. stop wasting your time on those things and instead reach out to people near you who are suffering. can you shelter a Latine person or give them a job? can you support a local candidate in primarying out a corporate liberal?

wish I had a snappy closing line, but I don't. I used all my spoons to write this, so.

[alpaca-clouds]

Worldbuild Differently: Unthink Religion

This week I want to talk a bit about one thing I see in both fantasy and scifi worldbuilding: Certain things about our world that we live in right now are assumed to be natural, and hence just adapted in the fantasy world. With just one tiny problem: They are not natural, and there were more than enough societies historically that avoided those pitfalls.

Tell me, if you have heard this one before: You have this fantasy world with so many differnet gods that are venerated. So what do you do to venerate those gods? Easy! You go into those big temple structures with the stained glass in their windows, that for some reason also use incense in their rituals. DUH!

Or: Please, writers, please just think one moment on why the fuck you always just want to write Christianity. Because literally no other religion than Christianity has buildings like that! And that has to do a lot with medieval and early post-medieval culture. I am not even asking you to look into very distant cultures. Just... Look of mosques and synagogues differ from churches. And then maybe look at Roman and Greek temples. That is all I am asking.

Let's make one thing clear: No matter what kind of world you are building, there is gonna be religion. It does not matter if you are writing medieval fantasy, stoneage fantasy, or some sort of science fiction. I know that a lot of atheists hate the idea that a scifi world has religion, but... Look, human brains are wired to believe in the paranormal. That is simply how we are. And even those atheists, that believe themselves super rational, do believe in some weird stuff that is about as scientific as any religions. (Evolutionary Psychology would be such an example.)

What the people will believe in will differ from their circumstance and the world they life in, but there is gonna be religion of some sort. Because we do need some higher power to blame, we need the rituals of it, and we need the community aspect of it.

Ironically I personally am still very much convinced that IRL even in a world like the Forgotten Realms, people would still make up new gods they would pray to, even with a whole pantheon of very, very real gods that exist. (Which is really sad, that this gets so rarely explored.)

However, how this worship looks like is very different. Yes, the Abrahamitic religions in general do at least have in common that they semi-regularily meet in some sort of big building to pray to their god together. Though how much the people are expected to go into that temple to pray is actually quite different between those religions and the subgroups of those religions.

Other religions do not have this though. Some do not have those really big buildings, and often enough only a select few are even allowed into the big buildings - or those might only be accessible during some holidays.

Instead a lot of polytheistic religions make a big deal of having smaller shrines dedicated to some of the gods. Often folks will have their own little shrine at home where they will pray daily. Alternatively there are some religions where there might be a tiny shrine outside that people will go to to pray to.

Funnily enough that is also something I have realized Americans often don't quite get: Yeah, this was a thing in Christianity, too. In Europe you will still find those tiny shrines to certain saints (because technically speaking Christianity still works as a polytheistic religion, only that we have only one god, but a lot of saints that take over the portfolios of the polytheistic gods). I am disabled, and even in the area I can reach on foot I know of two hidden shrines. One of them is to Mary, and one... I am honestly not sure, as the masonry is too withered to say who was venerated there. Usually those shrines are bieng kept in a somewhat okay condition by old people, but yeah...

Of course, while with historically inspired fantasy settings make this easy (even though people still hate their research), things get a bit harder with science fiction.

Again, the atheist idea is often: "When we develop further scientifically, we will no longer need religion!" But I am sorry, folks. This is not how the human brain works. We see weird coincidences and will go: "What paranormal power was responsible for it?" We can now talk about why the human brain has developed this way. We are evolved to find patterns, and we are evolved (because social animal and such) to try and understand the will others have - so far that we will read will in nature. It is simply how our brains work.

So, what will scifi cultures believe in? I don't know. Depends on your worldbuilding. Maybe they believe in the ghost in the machine, maybe there si some other religions there. You can actually go very wild with it. But you need to unthink the normativity of Christianity to do that. And that is... what I see too little off.

[jewish-joy]

I have been… biting my tongue from saying things. 

Partially because I’m not “really Jewish” (on the way to it via conversion), and because I didn’t want this blog to be political. 

But I realize I want this page to be a safe space. If anyone takes issue with what I’m about to say, I don’t want them on this page. 

I joined the college jewish community very shortly after 10/7 and was immediately welcomed in. There was no separation between me and the girl who had gone to orthodox shul all her life and was the head of the state youth group. I was told explicitly  “you are one of us. And together, we are mourning. We have lost our people and so have you.” 

Still I felt no authority to speak on things as insidious as antisemitism until recently. But how many times do you have to experience an antisemitic incident until you get to stand up? 

Six. The answer is six. 

Since explicitly aligning myself with Jewishness, I have lost friends who told me I have “dual loyalties” in so many words. I’ve been ostracized in events because we were singled out . I’ve been followed back to my dorm room from events by people hurling genocide accusations at me- white girls wearing keffiyahs who don't know anything about the Nakba when I try to connect with them about how awful it was.

My face was used in a local “fight jew hate” campaign” where I’m in a group of people with clearly middle eastern descent. But what circulated around my campus was my blonde hair and blue eyes, with people using laughing emojis.

“This is who we’re supposed to be defending!? Bitch please! ���🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣” 

(Which is perfectly ironic because they singled out the person who wasn't ethnically Jewish and focused on her. )

Campus security and the disciplinary office knows me quite well from all the reports I've filed whether for me or other people.

I leave campus for breaks. Even though I’m returning to my highly Catholic conservative family, I breathe a sigh of relief. I don't have to look over my shoulder constantly or check myself in the surroundings I'm in. I already feel the dread about returning in January.

What hurts is the blindness- the lack of nuance- that is being given. Every single Jewish person at my school is not a self described zionist, other than that they acknowledge Jewish indignity to the land, and that there was a reason for the creation of Israel- not even justification in the current state or the matter it came about.

But they- and we- shouldn't have to prove ourselves. We shouldn't be debating if we should fundraise for Gazans (we are) in case someone accuses us of "lying about our intentions" or if we'd be pointed out as "the good jews!" They shouldn't have to have a tab open on their computer for Israeli passports, even though they desperately don't want to leave the United States. I shouldn't have to wonder whenever I'm at a synagogue "If I get killed here in a terrorist attack before being immersed in the mikvah, will I get a Catholic or Jewish funeral?"

But that never mattered. Our voices never did. Unless the antisemitism came from a high school dropout neo-nazi with a shaved head and swastika jacket, it's never going to matter.

I will never forget- even as I advocate for Palestinians, call for a ceasefire, and donate. Or any other cause where I'll be marching besides these activists I can never call well meaning.

I could go on and on about it. But I won't be able to write it out in this post.

All I know is when the counsel of rabbis ask me if I'm ready to be apart of an unpopular group, I'm going to have to fight myself from laughing at the question

[mylight-png]

I refuse to be told to "move on" from October 7th. I simply refuse.

You know the thing about trauma? You don't really get the choice to move on. You may be living in the future, but at least a part of your mind is trapped in that horrible moment. Sometimes that part of you can never escape.

Right now, as I'm writing this, I am sitting at my desk in my room. But right now, as I am writing this a part, huge part, of me is still in that airport. That part of me is still staring at my phone, trying to catch its breath but failing. That part of me is still watching in shock as the death count rises, the videos of Hamas's atrocities are broadcasted everywhere I see, the celebration of my people being massacred is burning my eyes. My ears are hearing the wailing sirens from when I was last in Israel. My hands are still feeling the shaking of the walls as the Iron Dome intercepts attempts upon the lives of my family and me. My heart is hurting for each life lost and each family left broken.

My body is here, in January 10th. My mind is not. My mind, and the mind of nearly every Jew is still stuck in October 7th.

Do not think we chose this. If I could choose indifference, if I could choose apathy, if I could choose ignorance, I wouldn't feel so constantly triggered and in pain.

But nobody gets to choose trauma.

This wasn't a unique trauma, a first-time event. Pogroms are nothing new to us, genocides and attempts at such against us aren't anything new, hateful libel and lies are near-constants.

That's part of what made October 7th so much worse.

I grew up hearing about how my great-grandfather lost his entire family to the Holocaust, how my ancestors survived pogroms, how my parents faced systemic antisemitism in the USSR.

We all grew up hearing our parents and grandparents tell us about antisemitism.

And do not think we were ignorant of it. I was well aware that the world is not even close to shedding its deeply ingrained antisemitism.

I was aware of it when I wrote a speech about discussion of modern antisemitism and being told it was "well-written but controversial". I was aware of it when my teacher said I was responding "emotionally, not academically" to an author claiming antisemitism and the Holocaust weren't "that bad".

I was aware of it when a synagogue near me got shot up, a synagogue I've been to. I was aware of it because I had no other choice.

But it had always felt like it was "winding down" from what my parents had told me. Yes what my teacher did was bad but at least he didn't explicitly single me out for being a Jew and intentionally fail me. Yes the feedback for my speech was hurtful but it wasn't like I was being violently censored. Yes the shooting was awful but it wasn't a full-blown pogrom.

I'm not saying my logic was correct. Far from it. But that's how it felt before October 7th.

When October 7th happened I saw that nothing was "winding down" as I had previously thought. People were still just as keen to gleefully cheer on the killing of Jews as they had been. The world is just as slow to act when Jews are being forcibly held and tortured and killed. Blood libel and ideas of the "doctor's plot" are alive and well.

Oct 7th triggered old trauma, Oct 7th was traumatic in its own right, and for most of us, Oct 7th proved that antisemitism isn't going anywhere. It isn't winding down or getting better.

And that kind of pain? That kind of trauma? That sticks with you.

You wouldn't tell any other person to get over their trauma. So what makes it ok to say it to traumatized Jews as we are still processing the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust?

That behavior is horrible and inexcusable.

Trauma is trauma, you don't get to decide who does or doesn't have the right to be traumatized. You don't get to decide how people discuss their trauma.

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

By David de Bruijn

Many are shocked, wondering how this could happen in the Netherlands.

To me, their bafflement is what’s shocking.

I grew up in The Hague, where real and abundant antisemitism, from epithets in the street to physical threats to the community’s safety, was part of our daily life. As a young boy, I vividly recall how The Hague's football hooligans—viciously opposed to Ajax, Amsterdam’s “Jewish” team—walked the streets under a banner reading “We’re hunting for Jews.” (Indeed, for my entire life, football stadiums in my home country have been filled with lurid chants like “Hamas, Hamas, all the Jews on gas!” and “My dad was in the commandos, my mom was in the SS, we like to burn Jews, because Jews burn the best.”)  

In high school, second- or third-generation Moroccan kids would point and hiss “Psst, psst, that’s a Jew, that’s a Jew!” as they passed by on their bikes. 

But most impactful were the myriad security measures our community had to undertake. Seen from the front, The Hague synagogue is not recognizable, two thick green doors presenting a closed facade to the street. Behind these doors are glass doors that open only once additional permission is given. All the windows are made of bulletproof glass. A permanent police post guards the synagogue. In Amsterdam, the Jewish primary school has even more dystopian levels of protection, hidden behind several layers of metal spikes and fencing. From the outside, the view of the school is entirely closed off. (Even as I write this, I feel uncomfortably conscious of not revealing any sensitive security details.)

Self-protection was a constant—and to me, natural—part of Jewish life. Leading youngsters to a summer camp in northern Friesland meant bringing a dedicated security team and, when possible, keeping quiet the fact that it was Jewish children gathering here. 

Violent, antisemitic assaults have become increasingly regular occurrences. In May, a student at the University of Amsterdam, a young man, was assaulted by a protester in a keffiyeh, struck in the head with a wooden plank. In August, a statue of Anne Frank was defaced—for the second time—with anti-Israel graffiti. Today, walking around with a kippah in the Netherlands is an act that requires bravery.

As the situation worsened over the years—motivating some, including me, to move, others to adjust, and so many to worry—one of the most painful aspects was the way the Jewish community was gaslit. Dutch society repeatedly told its post-Holocaust Jewish remnant—and itself—that “never again” was not merely a concrete promise, but a core concept of modern Dutch morality. However, the dominant culture of the country’s immigrant communities has proven manifestly hostile to that worldview—and to Jews. 

For the North Africans living in Holland, the dominant Jewish story of the twentieth century is not Auschwitz, it is Israel, which in their distorted conception is an illegitimate, one-directional criminal enterprise directed at an innocent population. Nor—and this is crucial—is this merely an attitude about a conflict. They believe it is the crime of the twentieth century, conferring ultimate guilt on the Jewish people. “Palestine” is a phrase felt to carry the gravity of “Holocaust,” grotesquely inverting the perception of the Jewish experience.

For Holland’s Jewry, this reality has been palpable for decades. Yet nothing—no politician, no policy—has altered this reality. In the aftermath of every single violent attack—as will most likely be the case now—the political answer has been a room-temperature broth of subsidies, youth centers, dialogue forums, visits to Islamic pensioners clubs, and interfaith dialogue.

So it did not surprise me when international media outlets, like The Associated Press and The New York Times, covered this widespread attack as if it was the unfortunate, but perhaps expected, result of the Israeli fans’ conduct before and during the match, such as reportedly taunting Ajax fans with inappropriate slogans. Further, the AP wrote, the attack followed a Palestinian flag being “torn down from a building in Amsterdam on Wednesday,” and the rioters were angry because “authorities banned a pro-Palestinian demonstration near the stadium.” The Times originally pinned the attack on differences over sport and on taunts, as “violence tied to a match between Dutch and Israeli teams,” and reported that “the tensions in the hours leading up to the violence” was in part caused by “one man [being heard] saying in Hebrew, ‘The people of Israel live,’ while others shout[ed] anti-Palestinian chants using expletives.” (The Times has apparently stealth-edited its reporting numerous times since publication.)

In other words, if all you read were the initial reports, you might think that the Israelis started it, or at least had it coming.

What the reporters and media fail to understand is that this was an attack on Israeli football fans, but not one carried out by football hooligans. The Ajax team is itself Jewish friendly—fans of Amsterdam’s Ajax are affectionately (and sometimes not-so affectionately) referred to as “super Jews,” and Ajax is understood as the “Jewish team,” so it would make little sense that Ajax supporters would attack Jews or Israelis for their ethnicity—even if they are fans of an opposing team. 

No, this was straightforward: According to the accounts of witnesses and victims, it was an attack by immigrant, Muslim communities against Israelis and Jews.

[city-of-ladies]

"Among these divorcées were a few individuals of unusual wealth and independence. Preeminent among them, based on the number of references to her in Genizah documents, is the late eleventh—early twelfth-century businesswoman Karima (“the dear one”), known as Wuhsha (“object of yearning”) al-Dallala (“the broker”). Her name appears so often because of her extensive business transactions, including loans, and because her descendants were identifed by their connection to her.

Born in Alexandria, the daughter of Ammar, a banker, Wuhsha married and gave birth to a daughter before her marriage ended in divorce. Although she never remarried, she lived with a man named Hassun and the couple had a son. Wuhsha may have chosen not to marry her companion in order to deny him access to her wealth. In her very ex-tensive will she cancelled a considerable debt Hassun owed her but made clear that he was not to receive anything else from her estate. Wuhsha’s unusual personal choices did not pass unnoticed or uncensored in Cairo’s Jewish community; on one Yom Kippur the president of the Iraqi synagogue even expelled her from the congregation.

Wuhsha’s extensive will, written in Arabic, outlined elaborate funeral arrangements. Her largest bequest was to her son and included funds to provide him with a private tutor; she also left considerable sums of money to her surviving brother and to one of her two sisters, as well as generous legacies to the needy, the cemetery, and to all four Cairo synagogues, including the synagogue that had publicly humiliated her. Perhaps she saw this gift as a way of having the last word, since she knew that her money would not be refused.

Given her unconventional personal life and her significant business endeavors, it is not surprising that Wuhsha was well known in her community. Documents refer not only to her daughter, son, and grand-daughter in terms of their relationship to her, but even individuals in court cases long after her death are described as “Al-Wuhsha’s sister’s son” and “Al-Wuhsha’s relative.”

However, it is difficult to know how exceptional she was as a businesswoman. Goitein notes that she happened to live at a time from which a larger num- ber of documents have survived than from any other period of the “classical Genizah.” Moreover, he points out that Wuhsha had many business dealings with other women, “and by no means only in small matters.” Part of her gold, as stated in her will, was deposited with “Lady Choice”; in another document, Wuhsha releases a “Lady Beauty” from all obligations she may have incurred for making transactions on Wuhsha’s behalf. Thus, it is evident that some of Wuhsha’s female contemporaries were also involved in business transactions at a high level and it is not impossible that there were other Jewish women in the medieval Muslim world who attained or approached her degree of success and autonomy, even though they have not left significant traces in the Genizah writings."

Baskin Judith R., "Independent Jewish Women in Medieval Egypt: Enterprise and Ambiguity", in: Francesconi Frederica, Mirvis Stanley, Smollett Brian M. (eds.), From Catalonia to the Caribbean: The Sephardic Orbit from Medieval to Modern Times

[utilitycaster]

Imo (as someone who didn't watch the finale, so I'm happy to be wrong), one of the bigger problems with the ending that isn't being discussed is that religions don't work like that. I'm not talking about cosmology or divinity, which people have already spoken on plenty, but the people who actually believe the beliefs.

There are people who believe their god was in some way mortal (Buddhists, some Christians), but they still practice the belief. I'm Jewish, and if it was definitively proven that God isn't real, I would still be a practicing Jew. The gods of Exandria becoming mortal would definitely cause schisms and theological debates, but the gods as concepts would continue to hold power regardless of their mortality or continued existence. Vasselheim would change, but it wouldn't be rocked to its knees.

Obviously, the cast has their own biases and thoughts on religion. That's understandable, but in a campaign and world that is increasingly about How Religion Amd Gods Shape Things, why is religion treated only as a plot point and not a dynamic of understanding the world, yaknow?

This is a hard question to answer since I think to truly give a good answer I'd need a thesis statement and several weeks of writing, but in short, as myself a practicing Jew and philosophically somewhere between weak and apathetic agnosticism I agree that Exandria as a setting did a good job of exploring individual faith/devotion to divinity, and a very bad job of exploring the concept of religion on an anthropological level.

I do think the fact that most of the people with whom I can have a conversation about this are either fellow non-Christians existing in a Christian dominated society; left-leaning Catholics from a rigorous intellectual tradition in the Protestant-dominated US; or people who left a more conservative Christian sect for a more progressive one and in doing so interrogated the nature of religion and faith is telling. I think if you were raised strictly Christian and either swore off religion entirely (the ex-Evangelicals who never unlearned lack of empathy/self-centeredness and simply applied it in a different direction) or were raised Christian but not particularly religious and live in a culturally Christian society in which that is the norm and thus you never had to see yourself as a person with an identity and a practice outside said norm, you are far more likely fail to adequately notice this as a problem with Exandrian worldbuilding.

Something that struck me as I thought about this (on my solo walks to and from synagogue today, no less) is that I am someone who for various reasons, academic, religious, and otherwise, has spent a lot of time thinking about the role of ritual in daily life. And the thing is, "ritual" has in many cases been coopted into a thing you do very much for yourself, often with a capitalist slant - self-care as consumption as ritual. (If you look up companies named Ritual, it's zero proof spirits and vitamins/supplements and takeout). It is individualist and is intended to soothe one's self.

Ritual is far more than that. Ritual is a sign of community. It is a means of remembrance. It is a reminder to look outside of yourself. We light candles on Friday night not for ourselves - indeed, we are prohibited from using them as a light source - but to welcome someone of something else. We blow the shofar to wake ourselves and our community up to what we can can change and do better.

Jester and Caduceus are in my opinion the strongest practitioners of ritual across campaigns, but both are from very small groups of practitioners. We meet many clerics and adherents, but their stories or their experiences with religion as part of daily life are largely untold.

And this is just about ritual, which is in many cases neutral or even positive, but as discussed there is no real hegemony - Vasselheim holds respect and serves as a vault for divine secrets, but outside of that has little political sway. Caduceus and Fjord do not answer to Hierophant Ophera. We also see very little of those theological questions or debates - one must imagine they occur, but it, like the world of ritual or religious service, feels oddly empty. There are temples, and there are keepers of those temples, but the temples always feel like they pop into existence for the PCs and vanish when they're not present. I remember during Campaign 2 there was a great discussion of how D&D offers a concept of religion without the need for faith in the unseen - the gods exist definitively - and it just feels like that's never been reflected meaningfully in the world of Exandria, and that wasn't really a problem with Campaigns 1 or 2 and it very much was with the concepts C3 attempted to tackle.

[vaspider]

I want to learn more about Jewish culture and history after a recent Ancestry test confirmed my family are Ashkenazi Jews, but the process is daunting with the state of misinformation and antisemitism in the USA. How can I start if going to a synagogue and asking is just not an option? (Comments and info in tags are welcome)

A few places to start. :)

I have tried to provide a basic, broad selection of sites across a number of different strains of thought within the Jewish world. None of these links are an endorsement of a particular site, publication on that site, or point of view on that site. We're Jews: we disagree strenuously about deeply essential things & are still one people.

I really hate that I have to say these things, but every time I post about Judaism at all, someone comes through like they think they're Encyclopedia Brown or some shit, trying to sniff out what I 'really mean' by what I post. What I mean is that these are basic resources. :)

[spottheantisemitism]

Filler Essay: DC Legends of Tomorrow is Antisemitic

A lot of Science fiction tv shows that deal with conspiracy theories or alternate history are antisemitic, usually adding a Jew to the cast will compensate for that but only if the writers actually know how to write it

In Warehouse 13, a x-files style artifact of the week show where the premise is the government is hiding cool but dangerous tech created accidentally or deliberately by history's greatest minds has the dangers to fall into antisemitic conpiracy but it never does, partially because of the Jewish writers and actors. The man in the chair to our generic brand Mulder and Scully is a Jewish man whose checkered past and clear intergenerational trauma are potrayed sympathetically and his knowledge of Jewish folklore actually comes in handy once or twice. There's even the hannukah episode where the other characters force him to talk to his family. It's great. While having a VERY similar tone and premise, Legends of Tomorrow isn’t like that.

so ummm Legends of Tommorow doesn't do that with it's token Jew character. Despite having him state multiple times that Martin Stein is a Jew and have his wedding flashback be in a synagogue and have him wear a Hannukah sweater through the the writers JUST DON'T GET that a Jewish man traveling back in time is in pretty big danger even when the time period isn't Nazi Germany. One episode has Stein be confused about why a sundown town would be dangerous and has his black teammate, Jefferson Jackson whom he has to stay close to in order to have powers, has to explain to him. A man named Martin Stein would be in as much danger in a sundown town as a his black teammate

The show also starts with Martin drugging Jackson and dragging him onto the Time Machine since Jefferson didn’t want to travel because a) he had a life and a hero career and a girlfriend in the present and b) he wasn’t keen on traveling to periods where he would be in danger or wouldn’t have legal rights. Since Jackson and Martin share a powerset, Stein does the most unethical thing possible and drags Jefferson into this against his will. Some “unsavory jew preys upon the youth” trope straight out of 19th century pulps and 20th century propaganda.

I promised nazi earths but I will admit I dropped the show before I got to those myself but apparently there is: Stein falling in love with a woman who turns out to be a nazi spy, a nazi earth that’s actually good because they’re keeping back aliens that far worse, and one where the protocols are real. Adding insult to injury Stein eventually dies after succumbing to the wounds from being shot by a nazi on one of the many nazi earths because apparently that’s shocking and ironic and not cheap. That would be like if some white writer did a shitty remake of Octavia Butler’s Kindred and had the time traveling black protagonist die in the slavery era for “extra irony”.

Lastly is all the “antagonists try to burn Stein and/or Jackson alive” plots. Since the shared powerset of firestorm is well fire, they can easily survive upon merging and the drama becomes for one to get within merging range of the bonfire/furnace ect where the other is being burned. It’s still pretty disturbing to watch. I’m not the kind of writer who says “don’t do fucked up thing”, I’m the kind of writer who says “acknowledge the thing was fucked up and might have messed up the characters”. Which they don’t.

I will now hand over the mic to @aleph-sharp who requested this topic and watched the entire show

[mc-cookies]

Golems and Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy

I did a writeup about how a character based on the Jewish folkloric golem might work in Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy! It includes a short essay about the thematic implications of the golem, and a set of custom rules for living dolls made of unfired clay.

If you don't know what Eureka is, it's the first tabletop RPG by @anim-ttrpgs, an up-and-coming indie studio making carefully designed and rigorously playtested tabletop games outside of the D&D 5e ecosystem. Eureka is a system for stories where amateur investigators look into intricate and (sometimes deadly) mysteries, trying to get to the bottom of whatever conspiracy is at hand. It also has robust rules for a variety of supernatural phenomena that may or may not exist, letting players explore the thematic and logistical implications of people who are vampires, man-eating alien shapeshifters, supernaturally animated dolls, or a variety of other strange creatures. It's one of the best RPGs I've ever played or read, so if you're interested in finely crafted tabletop games, mystery and detective stories, social commentary on the rights of "unsavory" marginalized people, or just supernatural creatures that eat people, I'd recommend checking it out.

My writing under the cut!

(I wouldn't normally post my own long-form writing here, but I felt good about this and also couldn't pass up an opportunity to talk about Eureka. This isn't very polished, so ignore any typos or awkward wording, but feel free to check it out and give your own thoughts. Enjoy!)

Thoughts on golems in Eureka (Essay – Rules below!)

Contrary to how the word is usually used in English-language fantasy media, a golem in its original context is not just a generic term for any supernaturally animated artificial creature. (If it were, then it would be more or less synonymous with Eureka’s use of the term “living doll” to begin with!) Rather, it refers to a specific creature in Jewish folklore: a facsimile of the human form made out of clay, animated by various words of power placed in or on its body, acting as a source of protection and power for the impoverished and oppressed communities which created it. It is a servant which exists to meet a need of its community, animated by the power of God as channeled through the expertise of a meticulous member of the Jewish community. (Arguably the most notable difference from the genre fiction definition is this inherently Jewish perspective. The creation of a golem is a closed-practice, specifically Jewish tradition, and also, the tradition of Jewish mysticism implies high degrees of specialized knowledge – some written down in studied texts, and others discovered by training under a mentor or interacting with other Jewish leaders. In this way, the golem implies a degree of studiousness and community engagement on the part of its creator, both of which are heavily emphasized values in Jewish spheres.)

My analysis of the thematic role played by the golem is probably best represented in the best-known folkloric golem, the golem of Prague. In this story, a 16th century rabbi of the Prague synagogue creates a humanoid form from clay with the purpose of protecting the ghetto (in this context, the dedicated Jewish quarter of the city) from pogroms and other antisemitic attacks, animating it into a golem by inscribing holy words on its head or placing a scroll of those words in its mouth. Things go wrong in ways which vary from telling to telling, with a common version of the story stating that the golem becomes too dangerous and destructive, and the rabbi removes the inscription of the holy name to render the golem dormant (although rather than destroying his creation, he preserves it in the synagogue’s attic to be reanimated if it’s ever needed). In a fun bit of wordplay, some tellings describe the holy inscription as being the Hebrew word “emet” (“truth”), which is only one letter away from the word “met” (“dead”), with the idea that the rabbi deactivates the golem by erasing a single letter. More traditional interpretations would describe a formula consisting of various divine epithets, either instead of or alongside the previous method. In the Jewish mystical tradition, names of God are thought to be emanations of God’s own glory, and invoking their power in specific ways is seen as a way of causing things beyond the bounds of normal reality.

A few thematic points jump out at me about the golem, both from the story of the Prague golem and from the broader characteristics of the golem. One is the fact that a golem is implicitly lacking in personal identity. Golems are almost never named, and they have very little agency in their own stories – in almost every version of the golem of Prague, for instance, it is deactivated because it has gained too much autonomy. It fights the wrong people, uses too much force defending its community, or even just falls in love, and so it is too dangerous to keep around. Even the terminology being used implies this lack of identity, as it etymologically derives from a Biblical Hebrew term, used only once in the Tanakh, which describes the unfinished form of a human before God breathes life into them. A golem is not perceived as a fully formed individual, but rather as an extension of its creator, built by someone else’s will and discarded whenever it isn’t needed. To me, this has a high degree of relevance to the themes associated with Eureka’s living dolls, who often also grapple with defining their own identity and purpose in the absence of their original context. Their unique struggles evoke concepts of alienation and depersonalization, and I think a golem without a master would have to deal with all of the same issues on that front as they navigate life as a newly independent person.

Golems as a whole, and especially the story of the Prague ghetto, also raise another problem that can create thematic conflict for a character: in their attempts to defend vulnerable people in their community, they can end up making situations more dangerous, rather than helping to defuse them. When the golem of Prague rampages, in many tellings, it doesn’t fully stem the tide of antisemitic antagonism. Instead, it destroys more of the ghetto and allows the gentile population to create a post-hoc justification for their hatred of the Jewish community. In the context of Eureka, I think that this can be a powerful metaphor for how the fear of oppression can lead people to become paranoid, closed off, and destructive to themselves and others. A golem whose purpose is to protect and serve the people around them might want to do just that, but if they find themselves in a situation where superhuman strength and stamina can’t solve a problem, they may be in way over their depth, and they might accidentally harm other people when they try to navigate that. (My use of the phrase “protect and serve” here is no accident – one of many inspirations for this thematic element is people who call for increased police presence in their neighborhoods, even when those communities are more harmed by over-policing than they are by crime. Being afraid and wanting to support their community spurs them to action, but it also blinds them to approaches that don’t use force.) For example, one golem character I’ve come up with has had to flee her home and change her name because she saw someone being harassed, didn’t know her own strength, and intervened in the first way she could think of: violently. She was lucky not to be arrested.

To get a little bit more specific, this theme is most specifically inspired by my own experiences in discussions among members of the Jewish community, as the scars from millennia of marginalization, expulsion, and murder don’t fade quickly. Paranoia is a veritable norm even within our households and places of worship. In our homes, many of us keep passports readily available if there’s a need to escape or show identification, and during any prayer service at a synagogue, there will likely be armed security guards standing at the door. Many of us laugh about it, but there’s a degree of genuine fear that we can’t shake. Often, that fear is harmless, but it can get exhausting to live with, to say little of how it affects other people or how it can be weaponized by bad actors. One look at how the Israeli government seeks to justify its violence in propaganda makes clear that the generational trauma of Jewish communities can be exploited and warped as a means to justify some pretty awful things. The figure of the golem is, in a sense our communal power fantasy – it’s comforting to think that with a bit of ingenuity and some elbow grease we can design our own hero to protect us and help us thrive – but even that fantasy is not free of the reality that, like a superhero, a golem’s innate abilities just aren’t always enough to save everyone. (Indeed, this tension is part of what inspired the Jewish creators of Superman: he has superhuman abilities that he uses to protect vulnerable people, but not every problem can be solved by punching it, and with all his strength he has to be very careful not to destroy everything he loves. This has been noticed by a lot of people, and I’m far from the first to bring it up, but in particular I’d say this observation is borrowed from the excellent video essay “The Golem and the Jewish Superhero” by Jacob Geller on YouTube.) A golem being fleshed out as a character can really lean into that tension.

One more theme I want to bring up is not something I’ve come to any particular conclusions about – it’s really just a few spare thoughts I’ve had rattling around, and an invitation to look into this concept more. It comes out of my research on the development of the word “golem” in Hebrew and Yiddish, as the term has developed beyond just the connotation of a humanoid clay form. It can be a pejorative term like “fool”, but more interesting to me is its use in reference to embryos and pupas. This made me consider the transitory nature of the golem as a representative of change, which I haven’t seen explored very much in any stories out there. Not only has the word gained those connotations, but also, looking at the characteristics of the golem as a creature gives some more fuel to that fire. The fact that it’s generally made out of specifically unfired clay gives it the sense of being unfinished. Its nature of being created in its adult form from the very beginning means that it can display a childish outlook as a seeming adult learning about the world outside of its creator’s life. The story of the golem of Prague even has an ending hook entirely centered around the idea of the golem being temporarily disabled but capable of being reanimated if need be. This idea of a golem as a character with a unique capacity to adapt and change hasn’t been explored very much, but I think it could be interesting to consider.

The last thing I’ll leave here is thoughts on character creation beyond themes. In this document, I’ve included a custom set of rules to play a living doll made of unfired clay, which is the traditional material for a golem. This isn’t playtested in any way, but since Eureka doesn’t try too hard to be balanced around physical attributes, I think it should probably work fine – it’s more thematic than anything. To make a golem, the doll’s purpose should be external in some way, pushing them to help and support other people in their community, especially the most disadvantaged of them. In terms of backstory, the details of a golem’s past can be left fairly foggy if you’d like, but the one thing that can’t be skipped is that they were intentionally created by a Jewish creator invoking Jewish traditions. It’s fine to make a living doll that was animated in some other way, but the character would not be a golem in that case. It’s similar to how Eureka vampires must have some association with Christianity, not because non-Christian undead monsters can’t exist, but because outside of that context, the specific vampire mythos lacks any meaning. (Honestly, also, if you don’t have background information about Jewish life and culture, I would recommend asking someone who does to help with your portrayal.) Finally, in terms of giving a golem a hook to investigate a mystery, it could of course be anything, but there’s one aspect in particular that I would consider: in some versions of the Prague golem’s story, it protected the ghetto by looking into cases where Jews were accused of murder and finding the true culprits, thus clearing the names of the accused. Which is to say, there’s genuine historical precedent for golems investigating mysteries, and it often happens as a means of helping people who are falsely accused of a crime. That’s not mandatory, but it could be fun to keep in mind. Have fun, and if anyone ends up playing a golem investigator using these guidelines, please let me know!

Wet Clay Living Doll – Rules

A living doll made from earthenware materials that have not been hardened by firing. This variant was originally designed to represent the golem of Jewish mythology, but it could also be used to portray, for example, an unfinished art project or a proof of concept for another piece. Depending on their construction and the flexibility of the clay they are made from, they may be treated as jointed or unjointed.

Wet clay living dolls weigh more than twice as much as an average person of their size would. They cannot swim or float, and will sink to the bottom of any body of water immediately.

These living dolls take half damage from all weapons while they have at least 1 point of Superficial HP remaining. Damage from falling is unaffected. Wet clay living dolls are immune to electrical damage.

When a wet clay living doll encounters fire or high heat (in excess of about 500 ºC), their outer layer of clay is fired and becomes hard and brittle. When this happens, this living doll should be mechanically treated as an unjointed living stone statue. If another character has access to tools to chip away the outer layer and a large supply of wet clay to replace it, they can reverse this process with a Full Success on a Technology roll. Regardless of the result, this process will take 1 Tick of time and cause 1 Superficial Damage to the living doll.

Wet clay living dolls are easier to repair. Do not apply the -3 Technology penalty when restoring Penetrative HP.

Wet clay living dolls generally possess superhuman strength, but when they are hurt, they may lose chunks of clay that would otherwise generate weight and power. They have a +5 Contextual Bonus to Athletics and Close Combat, but for each point of sustained Penetrative Damage, this bonus is reduced by 1 point.

Given 1 Tick of time, appropriate tools, and a supply of clay, a wet clay living doll can alter their physical appearance and proportions. They cannot precisely change specific details such as facial features, but can make themselves larger or smaller, change their perceived distribution of fat and muscle, and change the shape of their body enough to be recognizably different. When a wet clay living doll attempts to alter their body, roll Technology.

Full Success: The living doll successfully alters their body to exact specifications. They are able to completely alter their facial features and/or specify a new height and body type, and even on close scrutiny they will not appear out of the ordinary.

Partial Success: The living doll mostly succeeds in altering their body, but they get sloppy. They take 1 Superficial Damage, and close inspection reveals that parts of their skin have abnormal marks and blemishes, but they are still able to make the changes that they hoped for.

Failure: The living doll struggles with even the most basic alterations, doing a messy and imprecise job. They take 1 Superficial Damage, and cuts and blemishes are visible across their skin. They also don't convincingly make the correct changes to their bodies, doing either too much or too little to differentiate themselves from their previous form.

[fmluder24]

The X Files Loves Dead Jews (Part 1/4): Fetishization of Jewish Trauma in the Early Myth Arc

This multi-part meta, starting with an analysis of the “Anasazi”/“The Blessing Way”/“Paperclip” segment of the myth arc, is a look at the ways in which Jews and Jewishness are treated in TXF canon, and the ways in which we (or at least a version of us) are fundamental to the story as it is actually told in canon, and simultaneously made invisible by, frankly, bad writing and a fandom that missed a good deal of rich and difficult subtext.

The title is a reference to the book People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present by Dara Horn. The basic thesis of the book is the way in which Jews figure in discourse  and are exploited for political and rhetorical ends in pop culture and arguments about many topics, without anyone caring about living, breathing Jews, and how dehumanizing that is. Basically, this quote from the Wikipedia page just about sums it up. 

“Author Dara Horn recounts an inspiring event for the book was at a Nashville quiz bowl tournament in the 1990s. Horn shared a room with two Mississippians, who stayed up late watching Mister Rogers. The Southerners were utterly convinced that Rogers was speaking directly to them through their TV screens — just like they absolutely knew that Jesus loved them. They waited for Horn to concur. When she instead mumbled something about synagogue, they looked, stunned: "I thought Hitler said you all were dark." Reflecting on that experience, Horn would realize that what people knew about Jews is that people killed them.”

Jews are fundamental to TXF, but really only in the pervasiveness of negative tropes about us, and that people like to kill us. No living, breathing expression of Jewishness is firmly found within the show, although as this meta series will explain, there is an ambiguous one lying in plain sight. We will get to him in time. Much of what can be said about the poor writing around Jewishness in canon can be applied to how other marginalized communities are written of by a really ignorant writing team, and I will mention some of that throughout this series of metas, but will focus on the treatment of Jews overall. I’m not the best person to speak to the other components of racist lore, but I hope this project inspires people to write and read other meta on these themes.

For the purposes of this meta “early myth arc” refers to the pre-cancer arc phase of lore. As the show went on, it became more and more about sexual violence towards Scully in particular. Of course, at this point Scully’s abduction was a major part of the lore, but the way in which it would consume her character arc and the way in which the myth arc would center on her more and more tightly was yet to be revealed. This shift in TXF was to the detriment of both the myth arc and the character of Dana Scully. The topic of the horror of the medical rape(s) and how badly it was treated in canon is the subject of countless metas and internet articles, so this meta will focus on a different aspect of the myth arc that I don’t see discussed as frequently or in as much depth as the (white) feminist angle. 

Disclaimer: I have only watched the first 8 seasons and first movie of TXF. I have never heard a single good thing about the rest of the show or the second movie, so I will not watch it. This meta series only touches on events in the first 8 seasons.

Let’s get into a summary of this segment of the myth arc. If you don’t need a blow-by-blow replay, you can skip to the analysis section. 

Episode Summary

This is a jam packed series of episodes. I have 1200 words worth of notes, so I’m going to summarize the plot beats briefly so this meta can focus on the problems I am setting out to describe. They use Navajo throughout the episode, but my research says that community prefers Diné, so I will try to use that throughout. If that’s incorrect, my apologies!

Let’s start with “Anasazi.” We start with breakfast with a Diné family that we can guess is a grandfather (Albert Hosteen), father (I cannot find his name anywhere which is… interesting. If y’all know it sound off in the replies) and son (Eric Hosteen). Eric is going riding. The boy returns later with an alien corpse Albert says to put back. 

We see a hacker get into the state department files about UFOs. We see a bunch of what we can assume are people in The Syndicate or involved with it calling each other about the hack and something they are calling the MJ file. The Lone Gunmen show up at a sick Mulder’s house and tell him the hacker is now on the run and wants to meet him. Mulder meets with the hacker, who apparently didn’t take any precautions or think through what he was doing before doing it. A Chris Carter self-insert, I see. 

Mulder shows Scully the files, which he then freaks out about because he thinks they’re gibberish. 

Dude.

Scully has a brain and says she thinks it’s Diné. In the next scene, Skinner confronts Mulder about the files. Mulder denies having them and takes a swing at Skinner, who bends Mulder over his knee and spanks him, metaphorically. Scully then has to come to a disciplinary meeting about Mulder’s behavior, and the meeting basically sets up that he’s going to be fired for this. We then see Bill Mulder and CSM talking at Bill’s house. Basically, everything has gone to shit because of the hacker, but CSM is still trying to protect Mulder. 

Scully goes to Mulder’s apartment and wakes up a sick Mulder. She’s worried they are going to get fired, and wants reassurance that this is worth it, so Mulder puts up the X in the window to summon Mr. X. Scully goes to research about the Diné language and eventually gets put in touch with Albert Hosteen, who was a code-talker in WW2. 

Mulder’s dad calls him and asks him to come. Mulder leaves his apartment, Scully shows up and someone shoots at her, ostensibly thinking she is Mulder. At Bill Mulder’s house, he says some cryptic shit to Mulder about never throwing in with other people’s politics, how he did it and regrets it. That Mulder’s going to find out terrible things about him. God, how I wish he would just tell him something useful. But this is a Chris Carter episode! Mulder’s dad goes to the bathroom and Krycek kills him. Mulder finds the body and calls Scully, who lowkey thinks he did it but tries to convince Mulder to leave the crime scene so he won’t get arrested. He comes to her apartment because she tells him she got shot at at his apartment and sleeps there. 

Scully steals his gun to run ballistics on it to clear him. Mulder is pissed as hell over this. Scully’s doing her best, but I get why Mulder took it wrong. Scully figures out that the water in Mulder’s apartment is being poisoned and that’s why a woman shot her husband of thirty years earlier that day. In the parking lot of Mulder’s apartment, Krycek sneaks up on Mulder, but Mulder beats the shit out of him. Scully shows up and shoots Mulder to keep him from killing Krycek, who gets away. 

Scully takes Mulder to Albert Hosteen in New Mexico. He tells them the files are about an international conspiracy about aliens that started in the 1940s, and apparently Scully’s name is in them. Hosteen talks to Mulder about the Anasazi being abducted by aliens. (Eye roll). Eric takes Mulder to the area where he found the alien body. CSM calls Mulder and tells him Mulder’s father authorized the project, which he doesn’t explain. Mulder climbs down into a buried box car and calls Scully to tell her about the pile of gassed alien corpses he found. Scully tells him the documents are about Axis powers in the U.S. doing human experiments. Eric closes the lid suddenly as a helicopter with the CSM lands. The CSM’s underlings don’t see Mulder in the bunker. I’m pretty sure the implication is that he hid in the pile of bodies. This… is certainly a choice we will discuss later. The underlings toss a bomb in the bunker. End of episode.

On to “The Blessing Way,” and I will try to go faster this time. Hosteen has a monologue about “Indian” sayings about history and memory that we will return to later as well. After this, we learn with Scully that the government men beat the shit out of the Hosteen family for not telling them where Mulder is, as the government men did not find his remains in the boxcar after throwing the bomb. Scully goes to look for him in the boxcar, but when she leaves the area, she is intercepted by a helicopter and the files are taken from her. 

Scully is being put on leave for missing a meeting with Skinner. The two argue about what is going to happen next and what Skinner is able to do about it. Scully goes to the basement office, but the digital copy Mulder hid there is gone. Cut to the CSM trying to convince the rest of The Syndicate the Mulder is dead. Cut to the Diné finding Mulder and starting a ceremony to resurrect/resuscitate him. Frohike goes to Scully’s apartment and tells her the hacker has been killed.

The Diné ceremony leads to Mulder having these terribly written visions of Deep Throat and his father. I rewatched this scene three times and I simply retained none of the atrocious dialogue. During Deep Throat’s monologue, Mulder has a vision of the aliens being gassed with *hydrogen cyanide* and clawing against the walls, eventually finding a little hole they tried to get out of. This is ostensibly how Mulder survived the bomb. This vision is very important to the point I will discuss below. Bill Mulder has a stupid ass monologue about fate and choices and this is when I rolled my eyes so hard they fell out of my head. So many words to say nothing at all!

Scully goes to Skinner to tell him the hacker is dead, which is somehow going to clear Mulder’s name? Skinner pretty much shuts her down and just wants the tape which she doesn’t have. Cut to Scully just now finding out about the chip in her neck???  How would she not have known??? She tells Melissa about the chip and Melissa thinks she should go to therapy to unlock her memories. She tries, but it gets very intense, the therapist startles her and she leaves. Poor Scully :(

Cut to Mulder, who is fine now due to appropriated mysticism and plot armor. Scully, randomly, sees Skinner leaving her apartment building. She goes to bed and has a vision of Mulder telling her he’s back from the dead and ready to do the work together. 

Scully goes to Bill Mulder’s funeral, where the Well-Manicured Man basically tells her people are after her and might send someone she knows to kill her. 

Mulder goes to his mom’s house to show her pictures of The Syndicate and ask her questions, but she keeps refusing to look and saying she doesn’t remember. Scully leaves her apartment to go to Melissa’s, but Skinner intercepts her to talk and they go to Mulder’s apartment together. She pulls a gun on him because she’s convinced he’s there to kill her. Cut to Krycek shooting Melissa because he thinks she’s Scully. Boo, Krycek. Tomato tomato tomato. While Scully interrogates Skinner at gunpoint, she gets distracted for a second and he pulls a gun on her too. 

On to “Paper Clip.” We are almost done. We get another monologue from Hosteen, this one is about a white buffalo that is a good omen. 

Mulder burst into his apartment and instantly sides with Scully and pulls a gun on Skinner. LMAO. LMFAO even. Maggie is at the hospital with Melissa, who is gravely injured but still alive. Cut to The Lone Gunmen filling the audience in on “Operation Paperclip,” where Nazi scientists came over to the U.S. to work for the government. This was a real thing, but TXF is fictionalizing it. The guy standing next to Bill Mulder in the photo is Klemper, who is a fictional Nazi who did terrible experiments on Jews in particular. The shudder that passes through Duchovny as Langly explains this— me too, bro, me too. I am not confident that was an acting choice, as opposed to Duchovny being uncomfortable, but it’s very compelling. In this alternative history TXF is offering, the project continued into the 70s. Frohike tells Scully her sister was shot and Scully wants to go see her, but Mulder convinces her it’s too dangerous. 

Mulder and Scully go to meet Klemper. Scully confronts him about some of the terrible shit he did, which was nice to see from the token conservative of the duo. Klemper tells them where the photo was taken and the mathematical equation to use to get into the files. He then calls the WMM to tell him Mulder is alive. 

Cut to Hosteen at the hospital with Maggie and Melissa. Cut to Skinner trying to strike a deal about the tape. Cut to Mulder and Scully finding Scully’s file in the archive, then Samantha’s file, which used to be Mulder’s apparently. They get split up, goons show up to kill them, and eventually they sneak out the back. 

Skinner, Scully and Mulder argue in a diner about what to do about the tape. Scully decides that Skinner can start negotiating, but not actually give up the tape until Mulder says. Hosteen monologue time. The calf is sick and its mother died. This is bad. Skinner goes to the hospital and follows a mysterious man who was standing outside Melissa’s room. The man and Krycek jump him and steal the tape. Krycek escapes a car as it blows up. I still don’t know why? It doesn’t matter. 

The WMM, Mulder and Scully meet at Klemper’s, who is now mysteriously dead. The WMM fills them in on what Mulder thinks was the plan to create an alien human hybrid. Scully says this isn’t possible because DNA wasn’t discovered yet. (Once again, Carter’s attempt to write a smart person fails catastrophically because he is not a smart person). She thinks the WMM is feeding them a lie to prop up the Nazi agenda of human tests. That wasn’t the Nazi agenda— the Nazi agenda was a master race, but ok, Chris. Scully storms off. 

The WMM tells Mulder Samantha was taken as insurance to keep Bill Mulder from revealing the truth, and now Mulder is in danger. Krycek calls the CSM to tell him he’s alive. Teena tells Mulder Bill is the one who picked who would be insurance. Skinner tells the CSM Hosteen used oral Diné tradition to teach a bunch of men the contents of the file, so destroying the tape won’t do anything. The plot hinging on the U.S. government not killing a bunch of Native Americans is… exasperating but I suppose it is science fiction. Melissa dies.

Analysis

The invocation of the history of the Nazis for a sci-fi myth arc dehistoricizes the Nazis, making them into campy fictional villains rather than real people who harmed real people. Of course, the Nazis went after many groups, but it is absolutely undeniable that antisemitism and anti-Roma racism was fundamental to the entire project of Nazism and not a quirk of history. This problem is not isolated to these episodes— the later episode titled “Herrenvolk” also invokes this history. There is a similar critique to be made of “731” and “Nisei” and dehistorization of Japanese WW2 war crimes. In TXF’s telling of events, the legacy of German fascism is some goofy alien nonsense, and not the nationalistic fascism of the modern day. Of course, we live in a different time politically now, but it still creates this alternative history where the legacy reads totally differently and is removed from the actual historical legacy that we must constantly grapple with. 

Furthermore, the imagery invoked in the gassing on the aliens, desperately clawing at the concrete wall to get out of the small room they are trapped in is a conscious invocation of gas chambers. The decision to use hydrogen cyanide is deliberate. I only wonder why they didn’t go even further and label the canister Zyklon B, but we must be thankful for small mercies.

The writers might not have always known the tropes they were playing with, but in my opinion, this is too extended a sequence to be a coincidence. Surely even CC isn’t this ignorant. (He might be though. I do not believe he is a smart man.) To then add to that imagery by having Mulder (who we will get to in the final installment of The X Files Loves Dead Jews) hide in the pile of gassed corpses from the government who is trying to kill him is to reinforce Mulder’s association with these tropes. To what end is Mulder constantly martyred in ways that invoke historical Jewish suffering? We will get there. 

There is another element to this arc that I’m not sure they totally thought through and that’s the division of the concepts of memory and history. Here's a quotation that starts off "The Blessing Way."

 Hosteen: There is an ancient Indian saying that something lives only as long as the last person who remembers it. My people have come to trust memory over history. Memory, like fire, is radiant and immutable while history serves only those who seek to control it, those who douse the flame of memory in order to put out the dangerous fire of truth. Beware these men for they are dangerous themselves and unwise. Their false history is written in the blood of those who might remember and of those who seek the truth.

There is something frustrating about things like “ancient Indian saying” rather than attribution to whichever actual community this idea comes from, assuming it comes from one at all and not CC’s brain. As I stated in the front matter, the problems in the portrayal of Jewishness are not isolated to Jewishness; they frequently apply to other marginalized groups, women, and general, deeper issues with CC’s writing in particular. Nevertheless, the concept of peoples who trust memory against peoples who trust history and seek to eradicate memory is quite poetic to me, and it’s actually a division that also exists in the Jewish world. There is a quote from the Chabad website by Mendel Kalmenson that encapsulates quite well the dynamic I am speaking of. 

“Put differently: History is made up of objective facts, and memory of subjective experience. As you might have guessed, Judaism is less interested in dry facts than in breathing experiences. It is for this reason that much of Jewish tradition and ritual draws on reenactment. We don’t just commemorate, we remember. We don’t just recount someone else’s story, we relive our own.” 

The idea isn’t that history isn’t true or important, rather that memory captures something history does not. Accordingly, in Hosteen’s monologue and this Chabad quote, we see that some treat history as something that is past and fixed, and some, in their valorization of memory, treat history as something living and dynamic. 

I don’t necessarily think CC is educated enough about Judaism to be invoking a discussion of memory standing in opposition to history and being given a moral value above it, but he nevertheless wrote it. Native Americans (CC’s versions at least) and Jews, (and Mulder judging by how the camera pans over where we just saw him during Hosteen’s monologue— we will get there) are two examples of peoples of memory. The U.S. government, Nazis, and other related historical forces are peoples of history. These malevolent sources use history to eliminate the truth and will eliminate peoples of memory to do so. At the end of the episode, it is memory that ultimately saves the day when Hosteen and company memorize the files. 

Paired with the intentional invocation of the Holocaust, we see this way in which marginalization is woven into the story of the U.S. governments involvement in what we learned in “Colony” and “End Game” is the impending alien colonization of the planet. Taking real life historical traumas of colonization and genocide and making it the sprinkles on your Bad Sci-fi Sundae is really dismissive of the actual human beings this shit happened to. I’ve only ever seen this talked about extremely briefly on the podcast “The MSR Files,” but hopefully more fans can understand soon how this is a major issue. One of the ways that it’s a major issue, as discussed with the above summary of People Love Dead Jews, is that it doesn’t include anything about these dead marginalized communities and what they were/are like while alive. That’s the crux of the problem. Not only is suffering reduced to a background ornament on the overall story, the real people this happened to are erased.

This is the point of my argument and this meta. Dead Jews, along with other dead and suffering marginalized people, are something TXF loves to waive around without any of the dignity and respect necessary for those conversations. The fandom tends to not understand this very well, reproducing the same dynamic in fics. As the myth arc evolved to focus on sexual/reproductive violence, many criticisms of the myth arc tend to focus on the violence against mostly white women, starting and ending with our girl Dana Scully. These criticisms are really important, but they tend to overlook the way in which the myth arc, especially early on, is a racialized eugenicist project, which is just as important to remember as the feminist criticisms of the arc. Of course, the villains doing racist things, as well as sexually violent things or things that remove someone's reproductive autonomy, could have been a good story despite being morally reprehensible, as depiction is not endorsement, but the lack of dignity given to real world victims really makes it plain that this is not about telling a meaningful story. This is about shock value. 

The next installment of this meta will move from the Jews-as-Victims framing to the Jews-as-All-Powerful one, by moving on to everyone’s favorite elite globalist [redacted] cabal— The Syndicate! In the meantime,  I’ve written other meta that touches on this subject. Here’s my meta about Mulder and antisemitic tropes, my meta about Pine Bluff Variant, and my meta about Drive. 

Thank you for reading!