Early 20th Century Catholic and Jewish Questions

[nyxelestia]

I'm writing about two men from New York, starting in the Great Depression and WWII, and ending in the 21st century, and I'm trying to develop some background for them to use across two separate stories, possibly even more

Comments

[michelel72]

Three quick things:

- If his mother is Jewish, he almost certainly wouldn't "convert" to Judaism in the sense one would "convert" to Christianity. He's Jewish by birth; he's observant or he isn't, but I'd be very wary of using the term "convert" to indicate embracing Judaism over a Catholic upbringing. (I have a friend who did "convert" to Judaism; depending on the community, that can be a fraught topic.)

- Becoming bar mitzvah basically just means he reaches the age of 13 and thereby becomes responsible for his actions. The ceremony that most modern folks use the term "have a bar mitzvah" for is a religious demonstration of training in and understanding of the religion, I think typically by expounding on a section of the Torah mapped to the now-a-man's date of birth (double-check that rather than relying on me). And then, in many communities, an associated party.

- Under US law, "Next of Kin" has a specific legal definition; it's not someone you just pick out of affection. (This is apparently different from the laws/customs of other countries, which may be why I see fanfiction characters "naming" friends/teammates/roommates/whatever as their next-of-kin all the time.) It's possible the character might list someone who doesn't actually meet the definition, but that won't actually hold any weight for legal purposes. (It's surprising and disturbing the degree to which the law assigns rights to your property/person/medical decisions/body to the person it calculates as your legal next-of-kin if you're not very careful to draw up exactly the right paperwork.) If you want an "emergency contact" or similar, or a medical proxy or similar for the 21st century portions, use that language. Wikipedia is a decent start for that latter stuff, but it varies state-by-state, too.

[michelel72]

Clarification: By "responsible for his actions", I mean specifically in a religious sense -- whether he follows the various requirements/expectations/commandments outlined for a Jewish man. Here's a 101-level link on the topic; it makes my points on this topic much more clearly and succinctly.

[nyxelestia]

-Sounds like the kind of stuff I keep hearing my own Hindu relatives. -_- If Bucky were embracing Catholic practices, though, would he still be considered Jewish? I know there's a lot of controversy about converting to Judaism, whether people can convert, etc. - but for someone of an interfaith parentage, how would that apply?

-Duly noted!

-Fuck, I forgot that. *headdesk* I don't suppose there's a single term to encompass emergency contact, medical proxy, and beneficiary/heir? For some reason, I remembered to have a ton of paperwork involved in establishing the Barnes' descendent as all of those for Steve, yet I kept using NOK-terminology. D: Probably just as well you caught me on this now - the subplot about people freaking out about a "random teenager" inheriting something pretty damn important to him is coming up soon in my story, I'll have to remember to use the correct terminology from now on.

[michelel72]

If Bucky were embracing Catholic practices, though, would he still be considered Jewish?

Judaism is matrilineal. His mother was Jewish, he's Jewish, end of.**

(** Everything religious has caveats; there may be very small communities/traditions that would debate the point, but for your purposes: He's Jewish.)

Doesn't matter what other faiths/practices he dabbles in or swears to or whatever; he was born to it, and he either adheres to what he's "supposed" to do or he doesn't.

As my Conservative-ish friends tell it, badly filtered through my memory (= check this somewhere if you decide to rely on it), most forms of Judaism are enjoined to discourage converts. By which they mean people-not-born-to-Jewish-mothers-who-want-to-"become"-Jewish-anyway. There's strife in several communities about whether conversions into Judaism from outside are valid or sufficient or possible, etc. But none of that applies to Bucky; he can't "convert" to what he already is.

I can't promise you he'd necessarily be welcomed ("back") without suspicion if he came into a particular Jewish faith community with a strong Catholic-training background, but that's more of a social (people-being-people) question.

[nyxelestia]

This divergence is the source of most of my questions, honestly. Most of my knowledge of Judaism comes from Persian Jews and Secular Jews, so while I have a pretty good gist of Judaism as a cultural heritage, I know very little about is as a religious one. Aspects of religious identity I do know about, they often are very general and I usually know about specifically from controversies and debates (i.e. most of what I know about Passover and Seder plates initially came from debates over the inclusion of non-traditional items like oranges and olives).

I've definitely heard the "you have to be born Jewish to be Jewish" thing before, but again, I've heard about this mostly whenever it was fought over, so I'm not sure how prevalent this mindset actually is. I know a lot of people who view Judaism as an ethnicity more than a religion, so they believe you cannot convert into it...but I also know plenty of people who do view it as faith and about knowledge and spiritual choice, not just bloodline. The impression I've gotten is that most Jews will not encourage conversion the way most other religions do, and many will even actively discourage conversion, but only very Orthodox or Conservative Jews actually bar or do not recognize conversions.

One thing I have planned is both the actual Catholic and Jewish institutions as relevant to the story are very progressive (the town this story is set it is incredibly progressive already, in canon, so I'm just expanding on that), so I have a fair amount of leeway as far as tradition and doctrine are concerned. I just need to figure out what the traditions and doctrines exactly are, so I can stretch or break them in a way that makes sense for the story.

[michelel72]

My circle of friends is largely Jewish (I'm not), generally Conservative to Orthodox (though those very broad categories contain a wide range), and not secular.

As far as I can tell, your actual research point isn't about "recognizing" conversions, though, is it? The controversies tend to be about those born to non-Jewish mothers (or, in Israel lately, those born to mothers who themselves were not born Jewish but converted before having children, IIRC). Conversion is a loaded term. But, regardless of that, you have Bucky being born Jewish, so again, there is no conversion to recognize or not (unless you're also researching broader ideas for a different character).

(Unless you want him to have been born to two Catholic parents and he's drawn to Judaism because of an uncle's wife or something; then he'd have reason to "convert", since he wouldn't already be Jewish. That would include its own set of problems, though; honestly, I'd recommend you just drop the term "convert" entirely and work with a Bucky who chose to reconnect with/embrace Judaism belatedly, since that's what you've been describing.)

Speaking as an outsider, I've found jewfaq.org to be a reasonable starting point (back when I was trying to write a Jewish character, for a story I never ended up writing). It sounds like you're probably dealing with a Reform community (or maybe Reconstructionist, which is rarer), but mind also which timeframe you're talking about. The "progressive" version of either religion in the 1920s-1940s would not work the same way as the "progressive" version of today in all matters, so don't conflate Bucky's search for a faith community in WWII with How Things Work Today.

[nyxelestia]

Yeah, there's no conflict about Bucky not being born to a Jewish mother, it's just about his own childhood experiences, issues with his cultural heritage/identity, etc. But in both stories, his mother was Jewish, so he is Jewish either way from that Orthdox perspective. For the purposes of this story, though, I'm not too concerned about Orthodox standpoints.

What was 1920s-1940s Reform Judaism like? How might early 20th century Reform Jews (Reformation Jews?) react to an interfaith family? Or to someone born to a Jewish mother, raised Catholic, but then coming (back) to Judaism later on in life?

In the 21st century, the bulk of his experience/knowledge is coming from a secular Jew (one who for all intents and purposes is basically a Jewish Atheist that moonlights as a warlock) who'd been raised in a Reform environment. Additionally, he's learning a lot of things "backwards". i.e. Since he "died" before the world really discovered/realized the extent and systemic nature of the Holocaust, he doesn't actually know about it. He learns when, upon asking why there's an orange on the Seder plate, his descendent mentions opting to not include an olive (which he typically does), and explains why. Bucky has to ask "since when is there a Jewish state?!", which leads to Stiles having to explain the Holocaust and the history of Jewish peoples during and after WWII, and the complications with Israel-Palestine, and this is how Bucky learns about the Holocaust.

It's ultimately a small part of his broader story - trying to reconnect with his cultural heritage and his religion are only small parts of figuring out his sense of self and his identity in the aftermath of 70 years of brainwashing.

[michelel72]

As for the NOK stuff: IANAL, but I don't know of one. But most cases you only need one or another -- Mrs. Barnes is his emergency contact, or some random teenager is his beneficiary (if not a direct descendant) or heir (probably most applicable to direct descendants). Medical proxies are handled by yet a third kind of paperwork, and there's durable power of attorney, and other fun stuff. You might check right-to-marry sites for details about how that stuff is (was) handled for non-legal-spouses; they have/had to cobble together a lot of replications of spousal rights, so they had to work out exactly what those rights were ... so you might be able to get a good listing and/or terminology from them.

[nyxelestia]

I'll definitely look into that.

One of the biggest problems for Steve is that his situation concerning inheritances and medical proxies are incredibly complicated by his unique situation, so I'm often looking up law that is already unclear in actuality, just to make it more unclear in fiction.

Since Steve is the world's only living and successful supersoldier, back when he first signed up for the experiment in the 1940's, he actually signed away a lot of his medical rights since his body sorta-kinda became SSR/military property, and his phsyiology was (and actually still is) a state secret. But medical rights have come such a long way since then, and since Steve is still the only successful superhuman in existence, it's not like law concerning that have been tested or developed much in the meantime. He has a medical proxy, but in theory, the modern organization (SHIELD) might be able to override them because they claim a type of ownership over Steve's enhanced body - maybe. No one is completely sure, because most of the organization is pushing for SHIELD to have that authority, but Steve's primary superior - and director of SHIELD - would rather defer to family (chosen family, but Steve's choice of medical proxy). By the time this could become a legal battle, it turns out SHIELD has been infilitrated and taken over by a terrorist organization, which throws out at least half of all the legal studies written on the matter anyway.

Similar matter with the inheritance, because the main point of contention is Steve's iconic shield. By virtue of history and usage alone, it is incredibly valuable as a WWII weapon and artefact - but more importantly, it's made of the rarest metal on Earth. As far as anyone knows in-universe, this shield is half of all of the vibranium on the planet, and the metal combined with the history makes this chunk of metal worth hundreds of millions of dollars...and if anything ever happens to Captain America, the heir to that shield will be a teenager. The problem is that, no one is sure who technically owned it before it was given to Steve, because of the chaos of WWII and private contracting at the time (which is probably historically inaccurate, but this was a WWII movie with genetically-modified space Nazis and ancient alien technology, so... *shrugs*). Since no one is sure who originally owned it, the legality of it being gifted to Steve is unclear, which means no one is completely sure who legally owns it now, but if it's not cleared up and something happens to Steve in the meantime, it'll go to the teenager, since as far as anyone knows right now, Steve himself owns it, which means the shield is technically a personal effect.

In fact, the cavalier-ness of Steve getting legal recognition for his chosen family is what kickstarts much of the story. Steve goes into this legal mess thinking about all this paperwork as "making sure the closest thing I have to family in this new century/millenium is the one who makes my medical preferences known if I'm unconscious, and who gets my motorbike and whatever random crap I have laying around my apartment if I'm dead". Then someone else points out that Steve making these decisions means "whoever gets to make medical decisions about the world's only supersoldier, and whoever inherits half of all vibranium on the planet, which is also one of the most individually valuable WWII artifacts in history and the personal weapon of arguably the most successful soldier in history". When this is brought up, and Steve reveals his choice is a teenager, that makes a LOT of people very unhappy with him.

[michelel72]

Ah, I see; it's the process itself in modern day. That makes a lot more sense.

But regarding the shield: It was developed by Howard Stark as part of the war effort. Marvel canon loves to play fast and loose with war contracting, but I'd say it's very much an open question whether Steve owns the shield or is merely being allowed to use it by the US Army ... at least as far as the Army is concerned. Especially if you have the military and/or SHIELD already arguing over the tech that is Steve. (Remember that Steve's paperwork wouldn't mean a thing if the military or SHIELD or idk, maybe even Stark Enterprises challenged the legal status of his person, his medical rights, or the shield and won ... or even got an injunction issued as everything crawled through the courts.)

Also, SHIELD's infiltration wouldn't invalidate their legal claims or prior legal studies, except to the extent it could be argued that the original organization ceased to exist at some defined point (and infiltration since its inception almost certainly wouldn't be relevant to that). Corruption is not a legal disqualifier. :)

[nyxelestia]

The thing is, when Howard Stark made the shield out of vibranium, was the vibranium his, or was it the SSR's? For that matter, was the SSR a US Army division that happened to have some European/Allied agents in it, or was an international organization whose majority just happened to be US soldiers? In the movie, it seemed presented in the latter, but in the TV show (Agent Carter), it seems to be the former. So was the shield Howard Stark's, given to Steve as a personal gift? Was it Howard Stark's, but he was technically just letting Steve use it while he legally owned it? Was the shield the SSR's and Steve is just using it at their allowance?

Steve actually assumed it was that last one, and it's only when it turns out Steve has an heir outside of SHIELD that the question of the shield's legal ownership even comes up in the first place. Steve just assumed that the organization would get the shield upon his death, and Tony would either fight them for it or not give a shit (with Steve himself also not caring much who between the two of them gets his shield after he dies, as long as no one touches it while he's still alive - which they won't).

Steve signed away his medical rights to Project Rebirth's officials, except that project was formally/officially shut down with the death of Erskine, and the entire SSR ceased to exist sometime in the late 1940's (to be replaced by SHIELD, yes, but the SSR itself 'ended'). SHIELD legally doesn't exist anymore - that's why, in Agents of SHIELD, it's been a secret organization ever since the revelation of HYDRA. Since it doesn't legally exist, it can't make any legal claims or take legal actions. (Not to mention its current director is the biggest Captain America fanboy in the history of ever, so even if SHIELD could do that, Phil Coulson wouldn't.)

The idea isn't that the infiltration of HYDRA invalidated SHIELD's claims, but rather that the infiltration of HYDRA "contaminated" a lot of legal studies and cases that SHIELD was involved with, meaning that any precedent set by them is now under question or considered unreliable, and any decision made by SHIELD is of questionable validity since it's not clear if "SHIELD" made that decision or "HYDRA". I am going with the interpretation that while HYDRA was growing inside of SHIELD, it wasn't really a big part or hadn't achieved much infiltration until the last few decades (specifically, once Peggy and Howard were out of the picture). But since it was there and since the infiltration is so pervasive today, no one knows where HYDRA ends and SHIELD begins. That means no one knows where SHIELD's legal status begins or legal validity begins. And since HYDRA had also infiltrated other organizations - including Congress - how far does the taint go? Can a law be considered invalid if someone voted it in while under HYDRA's influence? Or if it was written up as a legal case study by a HYDRA lawyer? If it was accepted by a judge being bribed or blackmailed by HYDRA? A pretty big portion of the story at this point is that so many laws and policies are up in the air simply because no one is sure whether they were legitimate in the first place because HYDRA.

[nyxelestia]

Additionally, for the main story I'm researching/focusing on right there, there's another problem. It turns out the supernatural world - as in supernatural/mythical creatures - not only exist, but have a lot of internal laws and customs established. There is a lot of debate as to whether or not any of these laws should be recognized, even if it's only as far as the extent to which traditionally religious customs or laws are recognized. While mainstream society as a whole may not care, a lot of military/intelligence organizations are trying to get various supernatural factions on their sides, so they are trying to get on these different communities' good sides.

This doesn't affect Steve, but it will affect Bucky. In terms of "next of kin obligations/responsibilities" (emergency contact and medical proxy, namely), the first and obvious choice for him is his actual family - Stiles. But after Stiles (or in the event Stiles himself is indisposed, which is a legitimate concern), who should it be, since Bucky has no relatives beyond Stiles? Just assigning a social worker (as is a typical response within the comparable civilian situations) won't work, but military law may not longer apply, either. Within human law/society, a lot of people think it should go to the man who's known Bucky the longest and has the most other connections to Bucky: Steve. But since many people are considering respecting supernatural law, that would mean there's a second candidate. While Bucky is human, he is also in a werewolf pack, so as far as supernatural law is concerned, the alpha of the werewolf pack, Scott, should be the next contact/proxy after Stiles. (Steve and Scott both think the other one should be it, and Stiles and Bucky think there would be almost no difference, anyway, since Steve and Scott are practically the same character in two different fandoms the same person, having such similar (civilian) backgrounds, decision processes, and philosophies.) Meanwhile, there could be a third option, in the form of Bucky's "nephew-in-law", his niece's husband and Stiles' father (and adoptive/honorary papa to everyone in Scott's pack, anyway).

Can you tell I'm a poli-sci pre-law student?

[michelel72]

How would "the Barnes' descendent" be the emergency contact and medical proxy and beneficiary of Steve, by the way? None (-ish) of those would be inheritable designations; Steve's estate would have been settled when he was declared dead (if he was; and if he was never declared dead even under the usual seven-years-or-so guidelines, there would have been no estate to discharge).

I suppose you could have Steve having written up a will naming a sequence of living Barneses as his beneficiary, providing a formula for determining a suitable Barnes if none of those were yet living when the will was executed, but ... that would be oddly prescient for him to have written into a will, you know? (And still leaves the problem of when the will is executed.)

Especially since, as far as 1940s New York State would have been concerned, Bucky predeceased him. So in the more likely event that he named Bucky as his beneficiary, would he have taken time out to draw up a new will between Bucky's plunge and his own assumed death/disappearance? (Also, what's Steve's financial condition at that point? If you're using the he's-pretty-poor canon most folks use, would he even have had a will in the first place? If not, if he legitimately has no actual next-of-kin under the New York state formula, his possessions probably end up at a state auction or something. I'd recommend checking into how common it was to have a written will in that era and for his social class.)

If he did name a sequence of Barneses or the class of living Barneses as his beneficiary, his estate would pass to that person or those persons when the will was executed; his will could request that certain possessions be handled a certain way after that point, but I'm not aware of any way such a request can be made binding on the recipient (though they certainly might choose to honor his wishes in their succession of wills over the generations).

[nyxelestia]

The descendent being Steve's beneficiary, heir, and contact are all a result of recent paperwork, not something that happened in the 1940's.

Steve and Bucky both named Mrs. Barnes and her daughters (Bucky's sister) their beneficiaries and emergency contacts in the event of their deaths (she also received both their death/funeral flags). There isn't an estate to settle because Steve is poor. He'd already been living with the Barneses when he finally got enlisted with Project Rebirth, so they already had all his stuff, anyway.

He was "adopted" into the Barnes family in his late teens/early adulthood (in that they considered him like a family member). So when he woke up after his 70 year nap, one of the first things he did was look for "his" family, and found only one last descendent of the Barnes family - Stiles, a main character of another fandom that this fic is a crossover of. In the other fandom, the family is known for "taking in strays"/has a reputation in fandom of 'adopting' people (chosen family is one of the biggest themes in that fandom). As such, when Steve mentions not technically having any family in the modern day, they offer to be that for Steve, the end result being a lot of paperwork making Stiles the beneficiary/contact/heir.

As I mentioned elsewhere in this post/these comments, a lot of my reasoning for asking these details is specifically so I can figure out how to screw them the hell up with the unique situations of those involved. i.e. Since Steve is technically a walking, talking biological weapon, it's theoretically possible for the military-intelligence organization to be able to override his family's medical decision, but only because he'd legally signed away a lot of his medical rights when he signed up for this experiment; the question is how much of those agreements are still relevant today now that medical rights have come such a long way since then...but by the time this could actually become relevant, it turns out that organization has been overtaken by terrorists so no one is listening to them, anyway. Similarly, Steve just named Stiles his heir so that his bike and whatever random crap he had laying around in his apartment doesn't end up with total strangers...but then it turns out the legal ownership of his shield is unclear (Was it owned by the SSR or Howard Stark in WWII? -> Today, does SHIELD have claim on it, or Tony Stark?), so if something happens to Steve, then this iconic and historical weapon made of literally the rarest metal on Earth valued at hundreds of millions of dollars will end up in the hands of a teenager. Legally speaking, there is nothing anyone can do about it unless someone is willing to go through the trouble of proving that Captain America never owned his shield in the first place. This is so politically contentious that by the time it hits the courts for real, SHIELD has been unveiled as overtaken by HYDRA, and Tony Stark is making his own vibranium, so it goes back to being Steve's personal effect/item due to both plaintiffs basically dropping out of the case altogether (one by no longer legally existing, the other by no longer caring).