What makes a story Jewish?

Attempting to find categories of Jewish stories

This is a blog about exploring Jewish storytelling…so what exactly is a Jewish story? My first post posed questions about Jewish writing craft and what a resulting Jewish story would look like. Now I want to pause for some different questions.

• Do we think that using Jewish writing craft will always lead to Jewish stories?

• Does writing Jewish stories require Jewish writing craft?

I do not pretend that I am the first person to start talking about the idea of a Jewish story. I want to consider what other people define as a Jewish story. I do not want to arbitrarily decide what I think a Jewish story is without considering the context of what people have considered Jewish storytelling throughout the past. And so - while my interest tends to be more on the process and writing - I think it is worth starting with some understanding of what we might mean when we call something a “Jewish story”.

What follows is a list of types of Jewish stories, or ways a story might be considered Jewish. I am pulling from a few different sources, including the article Jewish Science Fiction and Fantasy: A Primer in Uncanny Magazine Issue Twenty-Five by Stephen H Silver - which is where we will start our discussion today. There is a list of links and resources at the end of the post and in some cases I have included a mention of resources in the list itself for if someone is interested in looking into something further on their own. The list is not intended to be exhaustive. Some of the items may overlap. This is our starting first draft of a framework so that we have something to discuss and start with. I expect I will be expanding and revising and elaborating on these and changing my opinions about this at a later date. This entire project is me learning in public.

Before we get into the list, I am going to start with a quote from Jewish Science Fiction and Fantasy: A Primer which was originally written about Jewish speculative fiction stories - and I recognize there is more to storytelling than Science Fiction and Fantasy - but I find the quote is still an interesting place to start nonetheless.

“…what all of it has in common is a representation of the common bonds that exist within the Jewish community, not necessarily accepting or denying the shared beliefs, customs, traditions, and religious tenes, but exploring them. This exploration can take the form of questioning how ancient traditions apply to the modern (or future) world, how they link people together, or even their relevance.” - Stephen H Silver, Jewish Science Fiction and Fantasy: A Primer, Uncanny Magazine Issue Twenty-Five, ¹

And with that to ponder - onto our list:

1. Jewish on the Surface: Stephen H Silver discusses four types of Jewish science fiction (don’t worry - we won’t stop at four, but this gives us a solid place to start) - starting with the category Jewish in Name. According to Silver, this category “is simply the inclusion of a character with a Jewish name who may or may not show any other signs of Jewishness”. This includes story where the identity of the character is not even important to plot, theme, etc. I think this is the category that comes to mind for most people when they think of Jewish storytelling. But I think it is worth asking - is it a Jewish story simply because it is a story about a Jew? I have also changed the name of this category to be slightly broader as I am merging it with another category from another source. I have found a blog article which cites Jewish ethnologist Dov Noy as providing four factors that make a story a distinctly Jewish tale.² I am still working on finding the citations and looking into this further. For now - I am including these four factors of distinctly Jewish tales here as well, which at a high level are time, place, characters, and message. These, along with Jewish in Name are all about the story being Jewish on its surface. The four factors are

   1. “A Jewish tale takes place in the time defined by a Jewish calendar: one of the Jewish holidays is mentioned – Rosh Hashanah, Pesach, or Yom Kippur – or things happen on Sabbath.”

   2. “The action takes place in either the Land of Israel, in a synagogue or Beth Midrash, a Jewish cemetery, in a Sukkot hut etc. The settings can be Jewish districts, or towns themselves, such as Chełm for instance.”

   3. “The protagonist is one of Jewish Patriarchs, tzadiks, prophets, kings, or even a common man.”

   4. “The message is usually a moral or teaching in some way connected to the ethics of Judaism and that – in Dov Noy's opinion – is the indispensable trait of any Jewish tale.”

2. Jewish humor: The second category, according to Silver, includes stories that “grow out of the Borscht Belt school of comedy. It uses its Jewish content, often resorting to common Yiddishisms, to humorous effect. In many cases the humor comes from the dichotomy of the incorporation of a Jewish character in a non-Jewish situation”. Storytelling in a way that includes Jewish humor and Jewish comedy and in so including that humor making the storytelling Jewish. To learn more about Jewish humor - see Jewish Comedy by Jeremy Dauber - which proposes and discusses its own loose categories for types of Jewish Comedy and discusses the history and development of Jewish Comedy over time.

   1. Edit/Update: This is an edit made after publication - but I have decided to update this section to include Dauber’s 7 strands of Jewish comedy. For more information - each of the following has its own chapter, following the history of that niche. Jewish comedy is…

      1. A response to persecution and antisemitism

      2. A satirical gaze at Jewish social and communal norms

      3. A bookish, witty, intellectual allusive play

      4. Vulgar, raunchy, and body-obsessed

      5. Mordant, Ironic, and metaphysically oriented

      6. Focused on the folksy, everyday, quotidian Jew

      7. About the blurred and ambiguous nature of Jewishness itself

3. Wish fulfillment: This third category is obvious by its title. For example, one of the most common examples of Jewish wish fulfillment “is using science fiction to rewrite the Holocaust. Many alternate histories, written by Jews and non-Jews, explore a world in which different events meant that the Holocaust didn’t happen or was not as devastating as it was in our own timeline.” The setting of the world, the nature of the premise of the story, and the theme being explored is expressing a wish fulfillment based on our Judaism, our history, our reality. Something I want to consider going forward is whether there is something uniquely Jewish about the way Jewish wish fulfillment works - especially in consideration of the counter example of a branch of Jewish literature in which Jewish stories do not have conclusions or endings because Jewish stories are not actually about the final fulfillment. For more on this idea of Jewish stories not having conclusions - you might consider reading People Love Dead Jews by Dara Horn - specifically the chapter titled “Fictional Dead Jews”.

4. The Jewish What-if?: Silver’s fourth category is one he calls serious Jewish Science Fiction which he says “tackles the questions of Judaism. These stories look at the survival of the religion and culture as well as raise questions that Jewish scholars will have to face at some point in the future. When should Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur be celebrated on a different planet with a different length of year and day and separated from Earth by relativistic space? Is a genetically modified animal that looks like a pig and tastes like a pig but meets all the rules of kashrut permissible or would eating it be breaking the rules?”. This is a Jewish spin on science fiction specifically. There may be exploration here as to how this might apply to other genres - using the story itself to explore questions of Judaism. As someone commented on my first post, using a story to explore and ask questions feels very Jewish. I think that this approach to bringing the Jewish what-if to a story could likely also apply to an alternative history or a horror or any other genre - though I haven’t tried writing those myself. As such, I have broadened and re-named this one as well.

5. Jewish folklore: There is a range of sources of Jewish folklore which people continue to use as inspiration. The frameworks, elements, and themes of Jewish folklore can continue to inspire and create new Jewish stories. For example, I include in the category the stories with modern adaptations of Golems and Dybbuks. The previously mentioned blog which I have found to be a promising start but I am still working on finding the original citations and sources for - it also provides a classification of Jewish stories as created by Howard Schwartz, an editor and publisher of Jewish fable anthologies. Schwartz identifies four different classification of Jewish folk tales - each which serve a different purpose - 1) Fairy Tales, 2) Folk Fables, 3) Supernatural Tales and 4) Mystical Tales. “Fairy tales are magical stories, folk fables depict the lives of common folk, often enriched with divine or magical intervention. Supernatural tales express fear of evil forces – such as dybbuks, demons (especially the widespread stories of demoness Lilith, reflecting male fears about a beautiful woman able to cast an evil spell). Mystical tales on the other hand show wondrous deeds of great people, usually prominent rabbis: rabbi Akiwa, the Seer from Lublin, or Ari (Izaak Luria).” ³ While I am not sure whether the distinction between Jewish Fairy Tale vs Jewish Supernatural Tale is one that matters for a modern audience at the bookstore - I would like to explore this further to get a sense of ways in which these tales may be mined for inspiration for modern adaptations. To learn more about Jewish folklore - you can consider reading any of the anthologies of Jewish folklore edited and published by Howard Schwartz. One that I am aware of is Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism which is divided into ten sections/categories of myth: Myths of G-d, Myths of Creation, Myths of Heaven, Myths of Hell, Myths of the Holy Word, Myths of the Holy Time, Myths of the Holy People, Myths of the Holy Land, Myths of Exile, and Myths of the Messiah.

6. Midrash and Aggadah: Midrash and Aggadah are two terms which generally refer to stories written by Rabbis as part of rabbinical commentary. I sometimes hear them referred to interchangeably and sometime understand them to be distinct. So my understanding is that there may be context I am missing here for whether these should be separate or not. I most often hear Aggadah as referring to the stories and parables in the Talmud and I most often hear Midrash as referring to the general genre of stories that are expansions of a biblical narrative in order to reinterpret something, provide more clarity, fill in the details, etc. I have heard some people refer to midrash as a form of biblical fanfiction. While I understand classic traditional midrash to be written solely by Rabbis, I have heard more modern stories referred to as Modern Midrash when providing another perspective or retelling of a traditional biblical tale. Similar to Jewish Folklore, I am not as much expecting any of us to write new aggadot but I want to include this category in the framework because this is a classic Jewish type of storytelling that we might find inspiration from - and may be worth exploring and discussing further.

7. Jewish Character Typing: This category is one of my own that I am adding here - and it is not fully thought or fleshed out. But I wanted to add it here to make space for it and will likely circle back around to it for its own post later. But the spark of the idea for this is that I have heard from various sources about how Superman was modeled after Jewish characters - the easiest and most obvious example is Moses. Moses was placed in a basket, to avoid certain death, and sent down the river for a new family to raise - where he had power that he would not have had at home. Superman was placed in a spaceship and sent away from home, to avoid an otherwise certain death, to be raised by a new family and he received powers he would not have had if he had stayed on Krypton. And that had me thinking - I had to talk an unknown number of times in High School English class about how many characters in literature are modelled after and secretly based on Jesus Christ. Apparently, according to one of my old teachers, anyone with the initials of JC, we should assume are a stand in for Jesus. But I have never heard of someone doing a similar analysis of a story using the general character of Moses, or Abraham or any other biblical character. Just Jesus. (But maybe I simply didn’t take enough literature classes). Stories explicitly about Moses would likely either fall into the categories of Jewish on its Surface, or Midrash and Aggadah. This one is something different. If people can read through literature and see Jesus in anyone who has the initials JC, why can’t we read stories and compare Superman to Moses? Does that make Superman a Jewish story? I don’t know. I don’t claim answers here. At least not yet. There are multiple books related to this idea that are on my list to read but I have not read yet. I did say it was not fully fleshed out. For more information on the connection between Superman and traditional Jewish stories, one to start with is the book Is Superman Circumcised?: The Complete Jewish History of the World's Greatest Hero by Roy Schwartz.

8. The Jewish Journey: Last and potentially least - we return to where I proposed we start in my first post - in which I argued that elements of traditional writing craft are Christian, and if we modeled our stories after Jewish inspirations instead we would shape our stories differently. In that post, I proposed that a story in which plot is inspired by Jewish sources, such as torah would lead to Jewish stories as origin stories. As I think I made clear here today, I do not think this is the only way for a story to be Jewish - but I do think it something worth discussion - so I am including it here. For more background on my perspective here - you can read the full post via the link in the footnote.⁴ My post is originally inspired by and heavily quotes People Love Dead Jews by Dara Horn - specifically the chapter titled “Fictional Dead Jews”. Edit: After first publishing this post, I finally realized what I was trying to say here. In writing craft, we often talk about The Hero’s Journey as a general story shape after which many stories can be fashioned. What this category is - is me trying to identify a Jewish specific Journey that is an alternative - that is more particular to Jewish stories - as opposed to The Hero’s Journey universalism. I have changed the name of this category accordingly. If this is a topic of interest to you - there are many books about the Hero’s Journey, and more recently the Heroine’s Journey. One that has been recommended to me but I have not yet read or even purchased is The Heroine's Journey: For Writers, Readers, and Fans of Pop Culture by Gail Carriger.

And there we have it. A place to start - at least regarding this question of ways a story can be Jewish. As always, please feel free to provide commentary, disagreement, push back, criticism, suggestions, requests, etc. I want this to be a conversation. I do expect this will need revision over time. I am sure I missed something. Links are listed below.

Links

• Jewish Science Fiction and Fantasy: A Primer - https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/jewish-science-fiction-and-fantasy-a-primer/

• A fairly extensive list of Jewish Science Fiction and Fantasy https://www.stevenhsilver.com/jewishsf.html

• An article about Jewish Fables and Tales - https://shtetlroutes.eu/en/jewish-fables-and-tales/

• Book Link for Jewish Comedy by Jeremy Dauber - https://www.amazon.com/Jewish-Comedy-Serious-Jeremy-Dauber/dp/0393247872/

• Book Link for Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism by Howard Schwartz https://www.amazon.com/Tree-Souls-Mythology-Howard-Schwartz/dp/0195327136/

• Book Link for Is Superman Circumcised?: The Complete Jewish History of the World's Greatest Hero by Roy Schwartz - https://www.amazon.com/Superman-Circumcised-Complete-History-Greatest/dp/1476662908/

• Book Link for People Love Dead Jews by Dara Horn - https://www.amazon.com/People-Love-Dead-Jews-Reports/dp/1324035943/

• Welcome and Introduction Article in which I discuss People Love Dead Jews and Jewish writing craft - https://golemsquill.substack.com/p/welcome-and-introduction

• Book Link for The Heroine's Journey: For Writers, Readers, and Fans of Pop Culture by Gail Carriger - https://www.amazon.com/Heroines-Journey-Writers-Readers-Culture/dp/1944751343/

1. https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/jewish-science-fiction-and-fantasy-a-primer/

2. https://shtetlroutes.eu/en/jewish-fables-and-tales/

3. https://shtetlroutes.eu/en/jewish-fables-and-tales/

4. https://golemsquill.substack.com/p/welcome-and-introduction