December: Jewish characters that I liked
[tell me what you'd like to see me post about in December!]
skygiants: I would love a post about Jewish fictional characters you've really liked!
I saw this and said aloud, "this is really hard. There are none." Which I then immediately realized was not the case, that there were some that I like, but my kneejerk reaction is, uh, pretty indicative of my history with this subject. There are just so many bad ones, and I do not go out of my way to seek out good ones, so it is weighed down in my memory.
But! Some good ones exist! So here is a post about two characters from Shtisel, warning for abortion.
Giti and Ruchama are mother and daughter. Giti's having a tough time of it these days. She married the first guy she went on a date with, despite there being major red flags that her parents weren't that enthused about, but she was so sure. And then the red flags turned out to be correct. In the first season, he abandons her. He works as a shochet (iirc) in a different country and then... just ups and vanishes. No contact! No money sent! No get! And so she's got all the kids (4 or so?) including a baby, and she's trying to make it work and also not let anyone know that her husband just did this to her. Giti's oldest, Ruchama, is 14 or so at this point, and Giti leans on her a lot. Giti is not always the best person but she is so understandable and sympathetic.
Eventually Lipa, the asshole husband, returns. Giti sort-of-mostly reconciles with him. Ruchama, though? Ruchama absolutely completely does not. She doesn't get over it. She doesn't let him forget it. She'd be happy to humiliate him in public about it. She is also very correct, because...
So, during this reconciliation period, Giti gets pregnant. She doesn't want the pregnancy. See above: asshole husband who abandoned her. This is way too soon for this. While she's at an appointment to get an abortion, she gets told that her grandmother is very sick. She decides not to do it and goes home. She has the baby. Giti and Lipa had found out about a woman whose husband had died and they didn't have kids, so the woman wants to pay someone having a son to name the kid after her husband. Giti and Lipa initially agree (although don't agree to take the money -- this is important), but then Giti gets cold feet because the woman crosses some boundaries and makes Giti feel unsafe. Giti tells Lipa that she doesn't want to name the baby after the dead man, and there's a different name she wants instead. Lipa took the money, though.
And so we come to the bris. Giti is standing in the womens section, watching. And then Lipa... says the name he sold, not the name they agreed on. Giti can't stop him or do anything about it at the time. She has just been humiliated again by this asshole and can't say anything about it. And for a baby she hadn't wanted to have in the first place.
Giti goes off to a retreat to recover and isn't that interested in coming back. Lipa's not used to being the caregiver for so many kids; one night, when he's had it with them and can't even anymore, he puts them in a taxi and sends them off to the retreat center. Surprise, Giti, here's your kids, do some childcare! Love, your asshole husband.
During all this, Ruchama is the one who knows that Lipa abandoned Giti and the kids. Ruchama watches this happen. She sees her father continue to be a jerk. Ruchama overhears her family saying that, Giti, you can't get a divorce, think about what it would do for Ruchama's shidduch prospects!
Ruchama is canonically 15 at this point. She has been seeing a teenager learning in some abandoned basement or whatever. She's been bringing him food. Because Ruchama is a good girl! She wants good things! She wants a loving family, she wants a talmid chacham husband and she wants to take care of him. HER ASSHOLE FATHER IS NOT DESERVING.
Anyway, Ruchama hears this, that the reason her mom shouldn't divorce her dad is because of Ruchama, and is like "I can solve this problem; I am a strong, independent woman who knows exactly where I can find myself a man." She goes the teenager and says, let's get married. He agrees. They go off to a restaurant, where they find some of Ruchama's uncle's friends. They get married. There, Ruchama has now solved that problem! Ruchama does not exist to be blackmail for her mom!
Unfortunately, it causes some more problems. Because Chaninah, the random guy she found learning, doesn't really know how to be a good husband? Like, he wants to be a good husband, but he is being distracted by his erections about her, and it's not going well for him emotionally about that. What he seriously needs is for someone to sit him down and explain to him how to be a good husband, but he doesn't have that, since he has no contact with his family, and is on his own. I should note that I am unclear of how old he is meant to be, but the actors are similar ages, so it's not absurd to say that he's also meant to be 15 or 16.
He goes off to another yeshiva to go learn. Giti tries to convince Ruchama to divorce him. Like, the Shtisel family as a whole is on Team "It Is Better To Be A Married 15 Year Old Than A Divorced 15 Year Old". Whereas Giti? Giti is on Team "Ruchama Is Not Going To Make My Mistakes". She does not, however, have a frank conversation with Ruchama about her past history and how that informs her feelings on Ruchama's marriage, because Giti is not the type to ever do that. Giti only comes around on Chaninah when she finds out that he's not at all like Lipa, that he's financially responsible, and is an overall good dude who needs some help (unlike Lipa, who gets chance after chance after chance and learns from this that there are no consequences).
During all this, Giti has agreed not to divorce Lipa, but she's also not letting him forget that he did all that shit. She's not over it. He's not living it down. Good, he shouldn't, he hasn't done teshuva. Also, quite frankly, I don't know that if she wanted one, he'd give her a get. Because he didn't do that when he abandoned her the first time. Anyway, hopefully he'd be a better person if she decided to divorce him, but I'm not confident. There's this great moment where Giti tells Lipa that he doesn't love her, because if he loved her, he wouldn't have abandoned her. Vicious and also accurate.
Anyway, where we leave off at the end of season 2 is, everyone is still married, Ruchama and Chaninah are more happy about it than Giti and Lipa are. There's gonna be a season 3! I look forward to finding out what happens then. (It debuts Dec 20! I have no idea the turn around on when I'll be able to see it, though. But I welcome spoilers once they exist.)
But yes, those two. Those two are great. Ruchama is my absolute favorite, like, cue the "you have done nothing wrong, in your life, ever" image. Giti, though? Gitteleh, your life is hard. I hope it gets better.
Honorable Mention #1: ALL OF A KIND FAMILY!!!!!!
Honorable Mention #2: A character I don't know if he's canonically Jewish, but I've read some really great fic in which he is Jewish, and since that's fictional+fictional, he is definitely fictionally Jewish at some point and through some metric? Anyway, it's Leonard Snart of DC Comics, and
nirejseki's fic about him has that so so so so so well done. His Judaism is a part of him and his life in a way that is so real and so well-crafted, and in Countless Roads in particular (link is to my rec), it's used as a plot point in way that blew me away at the time. And I really don't much see this kind of thing a lot, at all, ever. Nirejseki does it so fantastically well, true masterclass. Highly recommend.
This entry was originally posted at https://lannamichaels.dreamwidth.org/1168366.html.