Who are the Jewish Characters in my Fiction? Why Do They Matter?
Beyond the Easter eggs (er, afikomen) in my work, who are my Jewish characters? After all, there are far more Jewish surnames than Shapiro! And Shapiro is an Ashkenazi name, from Germany.
But we’re not all Ashkenazi, and we’re not all from Germany. Although I have a tendency to favor those kinds of names in my writing. But that’s more because those names are more familiar and easier for most Westerners to pronounce.
And please don’t see the continuing Shapiro parade as necessarily implying an actual familial relationship between characters crossing universes. It’s not the equivalent of Smith, but it’s close enough, I suppose.
Why Talk About My Jewish Characters Now?
Today, the original date of posting this blog entry, is two years since the October 7th massacre.
My feeling about adding Jews as characters has always been a kind of message to those who hate us: you didn’t get all of us. Take that, antisemites!
And, more importantly, we’re thriving. And so, I’d rather counter such horrors with joy. We’re all right. We’re better than all right.
How Does Their Background Define and Inform my Jewish Characters?
Well, as we say, it depends.
Just like for real live people, my Jewish characters don’t always look to their roots when they make decisions, speak, think, work, move houses, marry, or anything else.
However, their roots can sometimes define these decisions and life changes. Or, they can affect how the character is perceived by others.
After all, we might look at someone wearing a large cross around their neck differently from how we would look at a person wearing a tee shirt that says, ‘I love pot’.
For characters who are a lot more religious, the question of keeping kosher will probably inform their choices. So will (most likely) questions of where to be able to worship and, if a character is single, if there are any Jews in the area who could be marriage material.
For not so religious characters, the kosher laws may not matter at all. Or, they may be an occasion to be naughty or to simply not tell a more religious family member or friend.
Rather than simply turn this blog post into a list of Jewish characters, I think it makes more sense to divide the characters up in a few different ways.
The Past
No discussion of characters of any sort from the past (whether Jewish or not) would be complete without talking about The Real Hub of the Universe and The Duck in the Seat Cushion.
Let’s start with the former.
Herschel Taub
When Ceilidh first meets the entity she names Shannon Duffy, they tell her that their most recent ‘subject’ before her was a Jewish man who immigrated to the United States—Herschel Taub. Herschel has recently died when the entity meets Ceilidh.
For Shannon, the hardest part is that Herschel’s wife, Blima, did not allow them to see the subject until it was too late, and he had already died.
Blima Shapiro Taub
While Blima may at times feel like a villain in the Real Hub universe, I think that a reader should keep in mind that she’s in a rather awkward position. Here she is, married to a man she barely knows (which was typical for the time).
I capture a bit of their wedding day in the short story, The Bride.
But her husband has a male companion who is odd and who is around at all hours. And this companion knows her husband far better than she ever can or will. Would she be jealous?
I think that’s almost a given. But at the same time, she could be in a rather good position. Herschel would be held back from any truly rash behavior, and the entity would protect him. The likelihood of Blima being widowed young was very low.
For Blima, as they say on Facebook, it’s… complicated.
Levi Altschuler AKA Shannon Duffy
While I’ve already covered this character elsewhere, and they aren’t human, anyway, I think they still belong here, in a discussion of Jewish characters in my works.
I like the idea of them observing human culture through the eyes of the Jewish community over the ages. It’s likely that they saw a great deal of violence. Did Shannon ever intervene? I believe that an entity that believes in justice would.
However, it’s likely that a human (perhaps centuries earlier than Herschel’s birth) would have asked Shannon to stop, probably fearing the entity’s actions would be doing more harm than good.
Now, let’s turn to The Duck in the Seat Cushion.
Lisette Bloch Tanner Kleinman
MJ’s mother survives the Second World War and the occupation of France by becoming a partisan. She and her sister fight the Nazis although Lisette doesn’t carry a gun. Rather, like my real life great-aunt, she smuggles tobacco and other contraband.
Lisette is also more observant than MJ, at least at the start. But she’s mindful of the majority culture in Oklahoma and does not seem to have objected when Walt took the kids to church.
One person I have never covered is Walt’s sister Suzie, who is dead before the book starts. Were she and Lisette friends? I like to think they were, and that Suzie would have enjoyed having an exotic sister-in-law to teach the ropes and spend time with.
Sid Tanner
MJ’s older brother looks a lot more traditionally Jewish than she does, and I almost see Sid with a kind of John Tuturro look (even though the actor is Catholic). Sid also ends up as an accountant and seems to live an almost stereotypical mid-twentieth century Jewish life.
But Sid is also as much a product of the Tanner farm as MJ is. He can balance the books and milk a cow. Later in life, he and Nadine make Aliyah. That is, they emigrate to Israel permanently. In the final chapters, the reader learns they’re living in Tel Aviv.
MJ Tanner
The heroine of The Duck in the Seat Cushion does not look like most people picture Jews as looking (she’s blonde and favors her father’s midwestern WASPy looks). This saves her from the worst antisemitism in her school until after Sid graduates.
Then, unfortunately for MJ, it’s open season on her.
While MJ does not marry a Jewish man, Jim does eventually convert.
Nadine Shapiro Tanner
Sophisticated Nadine takes her fashion cues from Marlo Thomas in That Girl.
Much like Sid and MJ’s stepbrother Hal Brown, jr., Nadine is a visually artistic person. But in her case, she is more of a designer than Hal (who is more of a photographer).
Named after Nadia, a woman who hid her mother during World War II until they were betrayed, Nadine has the weight of her parents’ expectations on her.
Shlomo and Rakhel Shapiro
These two Holocaust survivors met in a transit camp after the end of the hostilities. They came to America and Shlomo was able to get work as a professor. When he gets a tenured position in Oklahoma, they come to the Midwest.
It’s…a bit of a culture shock.
They are surprisingly good natured, and their own sweetness is magnified when Walt and his second wife, Graceanne, embrace them as family when Sid and Nadine marry. Without this new-found family, Rakhel and Shlomo would have been extremely isolated in Broken Arrow.
Veronique Jacobson Royce
Unlike her cousin Lisette, or Lisette’s sister Jeanne, Veronique did not spend WWII in the French resistance. For one thing, she was a lot younger. It was simply impractical.
So, instead, she was hidden by nuns after escaping the day the Nazis came to round up a number of people from the Paris Jewish ghetto. This was the last day Veronique saw her parents.
After the war, she remained in Paris for a couple of years, living with the mother of a slain schoolmate. Once that woman died, Veronique and her friend, the former resistance fighter Michel Kleinman, left on a ship bound for Canada.
At age fifteen, Veronique bluffed her way into a legal secretary program.
Michel Kleinman
A resistance fighter, he knew Lisette and was in love with her sister. But Jeanne was killed during the war. Michel went to Canada with Ariel and other survivors.
When Lisette left the family and stayed in Quebec, he took up with her, and they married. With a strong sense of duty, Michel volunteered to serve in Vietnam for the American war effort. His unit called him Mike. He was killed while Lisette was pregnant with Ariel.
Ariel Kleinman Royce
Ariel of course never knows her biological parents. Her mother passes on when she’s not even two years old yet. But Veronique loves her and has been raising her from the jump anyway.
MJ suggests to Walt and Graceanne that they might want to have Veronique and Ariel live with them. Ariel is, after all, MJ and Sid’s half-sister. Graceanne is all-too eager to raise the girl, probably due to having lost her own daughter tragically.
And so, Ariel and Veronique come to live with the Tanner clan. When Veronique marries Jack Royce, they formally adopt Ariel.
Ariel grows up to marry a woman of color named Tanya. They have six cats!
Jewish Characters from More or Less the Present Day
Of course, MJ, Sid, Nadine, Veronique, and Ariel all fit into this category.
But so do some of the characters from Mettle.
I personally love the idea and the dynamic of showing Jews surviving an apocalyptic event. And they are able to do so without losing their humanity or their faith in the process.
Noah Braverman
In a lot of ways, Noah is the epitome of the ‘good son’. He’s smart and has a good job, and he’s a big part of why his mother is not in an extended care facility (nursing home).
However, even though I never put it ‘on screen’, the course of his mother’s illness has to be wearing on him.
If the events of the story had not taken place, he would likely have either paid for more intensive aid than Olga could provide or would find a nursing home for his mother. At least during the story, she’s not a completely empty shell.
Eleanor Braverman
Eleanor is far from a standard ‘Jewish mother’. Rather, she is an intellectual, a fact which makes her decline even more heartbreaking.
I see her almost as a Bostonian version of a super-smart Jewish woman living on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and going to art galleries in her spare time.
Olga Nicolaev
With a last name that translates to something like Nichols or Nicholson, Olga’s Jewishness is a lot more subtle. But when the group has to bury Eleanor, Olga knows the Mourners’ Kaddish by heart.
Jewish Characters of the Future
Now we’re talkin’. There are so many of them. We’ll start with the first Obolonk trilogy.
Greg Shapiro
Wisecracking Greg is almost like a 1940s gumshoe. About the only thing I don’t have him do is wear a fedora. He’s not too observant—in one scene, he reminisces about having hit on Peri, who is canonically Christian. Greg also hits on Akanksha Kondapalli.
Let’s move onto characters from The Enigman Cave.
Marnie Shapiro (Chase)
When we first see Marnie in Bet on Marnie, she’s married to Dr. Ben Chase, who is about as WASP-y as anyone can get.
She is not looking for love, and her falling in with Lex Feldman is serendipity rather than anything she planned. But he’s one of the few people on the ship who can understand and appreciate the concept of strip dreidel.
Lex Feldman
Lex also has a history of dating outside the faith. In fact, he had proposed to Amy Allenby, but she turned him down, before the mission started.
Let’s move onto characters from Time Addicts (the second Obolonk trilogy).
Josie James
Josie, in some ways, is about as lapsed as you can get. After all, she does take up with a Muslim guy. But just like Marnie with Lex, it’s not through any sort of preplanning on anyone’s part. It just…happens.
Through Josie, because she’s the main character, the reader learns of family gatherings centered around a number of Jewish holidays, including Chanukah. A number of regularly scheduled family get-togethers makes a lot of sense for this clan.
After all, they live on different orbs within the Solar System. It’s the only practical way to see each other.
Hayley James Shapiro
I wanted to single out Hayley because she’s modern Orthodox. While many of their siblings are more lapsed, Hayley picks up the slack singlehandedly. And…she’s sometimes the butt of jokes. As in, someone will order a BLT at a restaurant and say not to tell Hayley.
Like other Ashkenazi parents, Hayley names her children after deceased family members. Her son, Saddik (a name which means ‘righteous’ in Hebrew) is named for her father, Steven.
Hayley has wed an Israeli, Dov Shapiro, and she’s made Aliyah, just like Sid Tanner and Nadine Shapiro Tanner. And, she also lives in Tel Aviv.
Josie and Hayley’s Siblings and Other Family Members
Most of Josie’s other siblings are as lapsed as she is. Deb is married to Terrell, who is probably a Baptist. Greg is married to Ines, who is Catholic in name only.
Jewish Characters in my Shorter/Short Stories
There are definitely some! Julia Rosen in Lizzie Borden is Vital to the Timeline is snarky and kinda bored by…time travel? Well, eventually even amazing things are bound to get a little dull.
Emily Schechter in Naturalization is also a Jewish character. She gets literal aliens acclimated to life on Earth.
And the main character in Eight Nights is rather observant, but also kinda kooky.
Okay, very kooky.
My Jewish Characters: Takeaways
The Jewish experience is far more varied than I’ve depicted. Hell, I’ve barely scratched the surface! Imagine highly religious Jewish characters dealing with a lack of understanding or needs fulfillment in deep space?
I mean, do you honestly think that aliens living on, say, Alpha Centauri will be able to make good chicken soup? And don’t get me started on how tough it’ll be to find a halfway decent challah cover.
Oy!
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