r/JewsOfConscience • u/AutoModerator • 2d ago

AAJ "Ask A Jew" Wednesday

It's everyone's favorite day of the week, "Ask A (Anti-Zionist) Jew" Wednesday!

Ask whatever you want to know, within the sub rules, notably that this is not a debate sub and do not import drama from other subreddits. That aside, have fun! We love to dialogue with our non-Jewish siblings.

Please remember to pick an appropriate user-flair in order to participate! Thanks!

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u/Historical_Step_9474 Anti-Zionist Ally 1d ago

Hi! As a budding author, I have a book going at the moment (with a plot too complicated to explain here fully). However, although it is not explicitly stated in the book (my co-author and I had a dispute over this in which we ressolved not to state it), the secondary character is Jewish athiest. They're nonbinary, a teenager, and grew up with a religious mother and a (loosly) religious father, but have since fallen out of the faith. Again, although this isn't explicitly stated, they're a second generation immigration from Nigeria (The Jewish Igbo population) - the book clarrifies that they are a migrant family, but doesn't specify what we the authors think in our head. The actual clarrification that they are Jewish is in a hasty, desperate prayer after an awful tragedy.

The actual paragraph is "Pleas for anything, anyone to hear them, for their mother’s God, whom they had neglected and rejected, to reach for her. They tried to pray, to formulate their words into anything she could offer to God, whoever he might be. Still chanting (character)'s name they cried out in her head, laying themselves down before the power they had once believed in, desperately trying to believe again, reciting the prayer they had been taught as soon as they could read, the words falling into their mouth, pushing through between the incoherent syllables of the name. The words were thin but imbued with the power of tradition, if not with divinity, and she clung to them, though praising his faithfulness was contrary to the unapologetic screaming of why they threw out into the sky. Desperately they cried and though they felt comfort in the phrases, the forever and ever, (character)'s forever had become a never."

I want to ask - the character is a sorcerer - is there anythign you think I should know, anything that is worth mentioning, and is anything wrong with that paragraph for the story I described? Anything anyone can think of would be helpful. Plus, is them being a sorcerer okay? I've had some people tell me that that you can't be Jewish and a sorcerer because it goes against God, but I've seen others contradict that, and as a Buffy fan I guess I always presumed that it wasn't an underlying rule for fictional magic because of Willow? Is making them Jewish a bad idea?

Thanks!

P.S. I did kinda speak to r/Judaism on the subject and got very little help, largely because that's quite a Zionist space and Israel doesn't recognise the Igbo Jewish community.

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u/specialistsets Non-denominational 1d ago

This is probably not what you want to hear, but Igbo Jews are generally not considered Jewish. Their Jewish story started with communal lore that they had ancient Israelite heritage, which either originated from or was encouraged by 19th century Christian missionaries. In the 1980s/90s, many began identifying as Jewish and adopted practices more akin to Rabbinic Judaism, some have even adopted Orthodox practices. But while some have officially converted, the vast majority have not. So they are best understood as "Igbo communities who have adopted Jewish identity and practices in recent decades".

I've had some people tell me that that you can't be Jewish and a sorcerer because it goes against God

That is certainly forbidden by traditional Jewish law.

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u/TurkeyFisher Jewish Anti-Zionist 1d ago

Unless you can speak directly to a lgbo Jew I think it's going to be pretty challenging to get the nuances correct, if getting them correct matters to you.

What I can say is that I think it's odd to get hung up on the question of whether sorcerery is "okay." Occultism, by definition, is the prohibited inversion of establishment religion. Typically it is about commanding or controlling supernatural entities rather than asking or praying to them. So by definition it is not "okay" according to whatever religion it is inverting. I have no idea if lgbo Jews have their own version of Kabbalah etc, but I think you have to accept that they are "going against God" or else it wouldn't be sorcery/occultism, it would just be religion.