MC's Jewish identity and the Wandering Jew: hoping I will not screw this up

Hi, Kitty C.

I really like your concept and would love to read it someday. I don't know if this helps anyway, but I am of Jewish heritage. My family and I don't eat pork, shell-fish etc. We don't label ourselves as Jews, we are in fact Christians--but, we don't keep Christmas or Easter or Halloween.

Religious Days We Observe

Passover Service: For us, the Passover is a memorial service which we do in remembrance of Christ. We do the service the evening before the actual Passover. In the service we read passages from the bible, do the foot washing ceremony, break bread is a symbol of Christ’s body broken for us. and ask God to give us His mind and attitude, as members of the Body of Christ. Drink the wine which is a symbol of Christ’s blood shed for the remission of sins.

Passover: At sunset the next day we then observe the Passover and the beginning of the Days of Unleavened Bread.

As you know, the Passover is kept to remember when the children of Israel were led out of Egypt. We keep the Old Testament Passover along with a New Testament. Moses led the children out of bondage, but we--having Christ--are free from the bondage of sin.

The Days of Unleavened Bread: It goes a week long; 7 days and no leavening is to be eaten or found in your house. The leaven represents sin/arrogance/pride. Leavening puffs up to remove it from ourselves and out household represents us removing sin from our lives as well as humbling ourselves.

Pentecost: In the old testament this was when Moses presented the Ten Commandments to the children of Israel. In the new testament, this is when the Holy Spirit was given.

Feast of Trumpets / Rosh Hashana: (I don't know how the Jews keep Rosh Hashana,) but for Christians the meaning of the Feast of Trumpets represents Christ's return.

Atonement / Yom Kippur: 10 days after the Feast of Trumpets is Atonement which represents when Satan is locked away and all of mankind can be at one with God. It is a day of fasting.

The Feast of Tabernacles / Sukkot: A week long feast that represents Christ's 1,000 year reign.

The Last Great Day: Which follows the Feast of Tabernacles is a Holy Day that represents when all the dead are raised and judged.


-- We keep "Jewish" Holy Days, but with Christian meanings. They're not really Jewish Holy Days, their God's Holy Days, Biblical Holy Days, they don't belong to the Jews only. A common misconception is that all Israelites are Jews. This is false. While all Jews are Israelites, not all Israelites are Jews.

I'm not sure if this knowledge might help you or spark ideas, but I figured I'd mention it anyway since a Wandering Jew wanders the earth 'til Christ's second-coming, right? Jews who keep these Holy Days call themselves Messianic Jews and there are a number of churches in America that teach this doctrine.

Mod note:

Quentin, while your sharing about your family may be useful to the OP (although her MC is clearly very different than your family and the question of holidays celebrated was not at issue) your blanket comments about Jews are not acceptable here in this room. Being yourself of Jewish ancestry doesn't give you the authority to make categorical statements about all Jews, and is certainly no license for you to make derogatory remarks.

Your participation is welcome in Roundtable but don't go down that road again.

^ Sorry I edited. I pointed it out mostly as something to consider with characterization.

I remember what I was going to add now.

What we believe is that there are 7 Eras of God's Churches on Earth. You can find them listed in Revelation. The Thyatira Church Period was from 606 A.D - 1520 A.D. Led by Peter Waldo. I'd have to check the doctrines of Peter Waldo, but I think they follow closely to our doctrine I mentioned above.

It may be a lot to ask, but you might want to read Eugene Sue's huge sprawling novel The Wandering Jew, to get some sense of perspective historically. This novel was written in the early 19th century, is as big as War and Peace, but not by any means unreadable. I'm probably the only person here who has actually tackled it, and even though it took a while, I don't regret having done so. At least be aware of it, and maybe do a bit of research into it.

caw

Quentin Nokov said:

We don't label ourselves as Jews, we are in fact Christians--but, we don't keep Christmas or Easter or Halloween.

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Umm . . . Quentin . . . Halloween isn't exactly a Christian holiday. In fact, it's not a holiday, at all. And, as commercialized and secularized as they have become, Christmas and Easter are about the only major holidays that can be considered Christian in origin.

In the U.S., virtually all the other official holidays are political or historical in origin (Presidents Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Columbus Day, Veteran's Day, Martin Luther King Day). And, of course, the calendarical New Year's Day.

caw

Kitty Crocodile said:

An update: I've done a lot of reading and rewriting over the past months. For anyone interested, I can warmly recommend George K. Anderson's The Legend of the Wandering Jew, a detailed account of the Wandering Jew and his various aliases and appearances in European texts and folklore from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century. As a result I've deleted the references to the Wandering Jew from the 15th-century section of the story and saddled the MC with the problem of immortality and wavering mental health alone, and in the 19th century another character begins to taunt him as the Wandering Jew. The identity is thus imposed on him in a much later time period.

I started subbing the novel last month, and today I realized I've set up another character in a much too modest house for a kept mistress in late 19th-century London. The work never ends.

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I expect you've already realized this, but a Jew in 15th century Spain would likely be speaking the Sephardic language called Judezmo or sometimes, Ladino or Judaeo-Spanish, and would follow Sephardic traditions rather than those of the more familiar Ashkenazi Jews.

That said there was a formal expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 via the Alhambra Decree. This is similar to the official expulsion of the Jews from England by King Edward I.

Yeah, this is always something I've wondered about, to some extent. I think it's potentially really dangerous for privileged authors to write from the perspective of the disenfranchised.

I know that, as a white person, I've never written a story from the perspective of a black person, because how can I possibly understand what it's like to be black? I'm nervous to write from a female perspective for the same reason, but I've done it with limited success before.

All of that said, I am Jewish, and I can't say I find anything in your story particularly objectionable, as you described it in your first post. I know that when I read Roth and Bellow, I absolutely feel that they get me, and my experience, somehow. And I wonder if a gentile can do the same thing.

But anyway, all of the writers I know disagree with me about my first point, so probably take my thoughts with a hefty grain of salt.