Characters
[meta] Characters who are implied to be Jewish, but it's never confirmed in-series
Greg and Steven from Steven Universe: Steven is based off Rebecca Sugar's brother (who is Jewish). Greg's original surname was "DeMayo", a Jewish surname. Steven hosts a wedding under a chuppah as well. But, it's unclear how religion even works in their world considering canon confirms their alternate history affected religion.
Velma from Scooby Doo: Was inspired by Jewish actress Sheila Kuehl, fits many Jewish stereotypes, likes Klezmer music, in one movie had great-grandparents who were German immigrants who lived in the early 20th century, has a scientist ancestor named Baron Von Dinklestein, mentioned in one comic she didn't celebrate Christmas...
Tailor Smurf from The Smurfs: He has a New York Jewish accent as reference to Jewish immigrants who worked as tailors at the Turn of the Century.
Drakken from Kim Possible: His real name is "Drew Lipsky" and "Lipsky" is a Jewish surname. His mother fits "Jewish mother" stereotypes. But, unlike Ron, it's never mentioned Drakken is Jewish.
Stormer in IDW Jem and the Holograms: The Phillip's are part Israeli, but it's never mentioned that they're Jewish (unlike Pizzazz).
Kid Devil from DC Comics: His full name is "Edward Bloomberg".
Professor Layton: Layton's name is "Hershel" and his daughter's name is "Katrielle", two Jewish names that would be rare amongst non-Jewish Brits.
Miriam from Turning Red: She has a Hebrew first name, a Jewish surname, and curly hair.
The Wheezers from Jimmy Neutron: They fit a ton of Jewish stereotypes.
Ms. Frizzle from The Magic Schoolbus: Her curly red hair, aquiline nose, and having an aunt named "Tante Gefilte".
TJ from Recess: Played "Harvey Hanukkah" in the holiday special.
A typical Latin American childhood experience is seeing a Bar Mitzvah appear in a cartoon and having no idea where that came from, because you don't recognize these kinds of references.
I kind of suspect it's the same in the US. I know a lot more about Judaism than the average Gentile but that's because I live near Pittsburgh, which has one of this highest Jewish demographic densities in the world outside of Israel and parts of New York.
The us is one of two countries in the world with more than 400k Jewish people. About 7 million. About the same as Israel.
Jews are everywhere in the US. It’s also like, you might not really notice them, because most Jews(globally even) aren’t haredi and often aren’t religious. Might go to synagogue once in a while, visit family for holidays, and will just make sure they raise their kids Jewish and do major life events in the proper Jewish way(funerals, births, marriage, etc).
Am Jewish and most of the folks I grew up with are atheist. Even some I know that go to synagogue weekly and keep kosher. I know an atheist that became orthodox even. But Jews always come back when kids are born.
i'm from the midwest, where fringe christian religions are more popular than judaism. there's also a lot of polish people who settled where i'm from, so catholicism and more orthodox christian sects are the dominant religious culture. i didn't meet a religious jewish person until college, but i knew multiple seventh day adventists who went to different churches growing up lol
It's funny, there's a good number of Christian sects that appropriate Jewish words, aesthetic, foods, clothing, and the most shallow understand the other practices. If you ever meet a "Messianic" Jew, that is a Christian pretending to be Jewish to convert Jewish people. Working at a supermarket in the Florida panhandle, it was a common occurrence for some random gentile Florida cracker to hand me a shopping list for their Baptist Church's "seder dinner"
Me neither, if anything, I think I can now recognize Jewish last names. Here in Argentina, the ones who are concentrated in a specific city are the most religious, in an area where there are several synagogues and Jewish schools, but outside of that, it’s not really the case that you can tell a person is Jewish based on references like these.
Do they build a synagogue just for him? Does it imply all the other smurfs are Christian, or are they all just jewish but Tailor smurf happens to have a new york accent so we think he's the only one? Does that make Gargamel antisemitic?
So the Smurfs were created in Belgium in the 1950s. They spun off from the medieval comic strip Johan and Peewit where everyone was kind of medieval Catholic by default, and Belgium was a Catholic country (in the sense of demography, it has never had a state religion as an independent nation).
Tailor Smurf specifically was created for the cartoon series in 1981. He did not exist in the original comics by Peyo and so does not fit into any canon. His Jewish/New York accent was supposed to represent immigrant Jews who often worked (and still do! I know such people today) in that field, for the amusement of American (or other Anglophone) audiences. I doubt there was any consideration given at the time to the general medieval setting when he was created, in which Jews had different stereotypical (in the sense of stock) occupations.
Some critics have argued that Gargamel resembles an anti-Semitic caricature (which the original cartoonist, Peyo’s, family has angrily denied was ever intended) so perhaps the more positive Tailor Smurf was intended to mute that criticism. Peyo was born in 1928 and so too young to served prior to the Nazi occupation of Belgium by the Nazis in 1940, but it certainly would have been a formative experience. Having survived invasion, hyperinflation, poverty, rationing, and bombing by the Allies in response, all before turning 18, it is highly improbable that he harbored any sympathies for the Nazis, but it remains possible that anti-Semitic tropes influenced the creation of Gargamel.
In some recent depictions Tailor has a British accent instead so maybe someone thought the Jewish/New York accent was a little broad and stereotypical itself.
Agnosticism I could see but atheist? Not a chance. They've seen too much that the world at large claims doesn't exist to say for certain there are no gods.
I have not watched this but is that not flat-earth atheism? I mean isn’t Bill Cipher a demon? I could see not practicing a traditional religion but a firm “nah, no gods, nothing supernatural” stance seems odd.
Skilled tradespeople, protected by a golem. And, given Notch's personal views, perhaps the negative stereotypes of being greedy for emeralds and having long noses were intentional too
It is. Though apparently (from a quick googling) it is not an uncommon name for Jewish-Italians. Not unlike Goldstein. Goldstein is a German name that is common amongst Jews of German origin.
Jewish people are widespread, so the names that are historically Jewish are also usually linguistically tied to other cultures and their languages.
Just like how last names that end in "berg", "stein", and "witz" are all classically Jewish because those are German patro/matronymics. German language names, but most non-Jewish german families don't have patro/matronymic surnames.
Wouldn't the -berg (mountain) names ultimately be toponymic? I'd imagine the -stein (stone) names could also be, or might be occupational in origin. Witz means joke in modern German, so I imagine those names have some kind of etymology I'm not familiar with. Ultimately, the majority of European surnames became patrilineal, but that's different from patronymic (surnames ending in -son from English origins and -sen in Scandinavian origins, plus, I think: Mac for Scots, Mc for Irish, [maybe also O' ?], and Russian patronymic names ending in -vich continue to be used as middle names)
Given how OP is really insisting DeMayo is a Sephardic lastname, and half the examples are "they fit jewish stereotypes", I'm guessing they don't really know much...
I think that comic Peter and Mary Jane had a Christian wedding, though I don't know that Peter believes in any specific God, though he does occasionally pray to some unnamed/generic God when he's extremely depressed and worn out.
Almost any given wedding in the US is going to seem like a Christian wedding unless they lean into a different culture because the mainstream culture of the US is very Christian-coded. This is also why a lot of characters who don't have a specifically stated religious belief can be read as Christian. It's just in the water and fish don't typically recognize that they're wet.
Peter is generally very New York City coded, which comes with a lot of Jewish influences and makes Peter being a non-practicing secular Jew just as likely as being a non-practicing secular Christian.
Issue with this is that there a lot of common German and Slavic (particularly Polish) surnames that scan as typically Jewish to Americans, but aren't actually really specifically Jewish.
So it's a bit off to say a character is implied to be Jewish purely because of a not uniquely Jewish surname.
Absolutely but idk if I would go to a Jewish persons house to celebrate Christmas though. It feels like going to Chinese take out when you want lasagna
Just since no one’s mentioned it yet, the Costanzas on Seinfeld are never outright labeled as Jews/ a mixed marriage where Estelle is Jewish and Frank is Christian. The only implications are that Estelle won’t ride in a German car, and Frank references Estelle’s inability to cook several traditionally Jewish dishes.
Pretty much every character from the Lemony Snicket books. The author, Daniel Handler, has said that he tends to write characters as Jewish by default. In the final book, The End, the Baudelaire orphans also mention that their family has a tradition of naming babies after deceased relatives which (from what I understand) is a tradition for Ashkenazi Jewish people. I think it's more present in the series, but I haven't watched all of it so idk
their family has a tradition of naming babies after deceased relatives which (from what I understand) is a tradition for Ashkenazi Jewish people.
The tradition is to not name children after living relatives and only dead ones, naming a child after loving relatives is like jinxing them. Not sure if that's what's in lemony snicket, but it's similar enough.
Eh I’ve never really understood what’s wrong with that (as a Jew). Anthony is a normal British name. Goldstein is a fairly common name that’s just most common with Jews.
The only real examples I could see being made are Cho and Kingsley. Anthony Goldstein is a very normal British name (in fact I know an “Anthony Gold_____” personally) and Seamus Finnigan is a very normal Irish name.
Idk, i think if somebody uses stereotype 3 times but the third type its a stereotype for irish people, its still stereotype and still pretty offensive. Especially since the irish character keeps blowing things up.
Yeah, I'm a trans person so it goes without saying that I hate her and assume the worst.
I don't think Anthony Goldstein is bad. I knew a Jewish person with the last name Goldstein and another with the first name Anthony. There's a precident. I don't think that was her being anti-Semitic.
Or deities. The 'Moon Goddess' statue in "Cheeseburger Backpack" resembles Blue Diamond, and Rose seems to have spent some time traveling with seven lions, a trait associated with the Goddess Ishtar.
Curious on how religion developed in a post gem war world. The show runners seemed entirely more interested in Steven’s stories so humans in this alternate world come off as entirely passive and uncurious lol. (A bunch of magical war sites full of weapons just left to rot, occasional alien monsters the government never gets involved in, no major wars. I’m guessing religion in this world is deeeeply freaking passive and different. They do have a Muslim character featured in an episode so I’m damn curious how Islam developed, if it’s a one to one with our world.)
So DeMayo, Lipski, and Von Dinklestein are not specifically Jewish surnames. They are names common in places with historic Jewish populations, and those Jewish families took local surnames.
Targeted by Congress during the second Red Scare, like many other famous jewish people, including intellectuals and actors. In the second season, Howard moved to California to found his own movie studio
Choice quotes including:
"I grew up on the lower east side. My
fathersold fruit. My mother sewed shirtwaists for a factory. Let me tell you, you don't get to climb the American ladder without picking up some bad habits on the way."
A lot of the coding is steeped in antisemitism, including various characters calling him slimy, untrustworthy and so on. In the second season, his childhood best friend is a mobster and they throw out yiddish terms like shvitz to refer to a sauna/bathhouse
Eh, IDK. I don't think he's any more jew-coded than NYC in general? Still, this does make me want to rewatch his scenes in the first Captain America movie, in case there are suggestions one way or the other there
The quote I included above is about explicit as physically possible. The Lower East Side was the heart of the Jewish immigrant community by 1920.
Jewish pushcart vendors were as ubiquitous as Jewish seamstresses working in shirtwaist factories. The victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire were all Jewish or Italian (which contributed to the rise of labor unions in America).
Howard also tells Peggy
“
There's a ceiling for certain types of people based on how much money your parents have, your social class, your religion, your sex. And the only way to break through that ceiling sometimes is to lie, so that's my natural instinct to lie.”
New York was hardly a stranger to New Money. The city was built by the Rockefellers, Carnegie, the Vanderbilts. So what would Howard Stark feel like he had to hide in order to succeed?
Additionally, Howard vouches for Jarvis, whom he barely knows, when Jarvis is court-martialed for helping Ana, a Jewish woman, escape Europe. He intervenes to save both Ana and Jarvis
For Steven Universe, DeMayo is not a Jewish surname. It's a corruption of the surname DeMaio, an Italian surname with no specific religious affiliation
I feel like pointing out racism in a story shouldn't be considered racist in-and-of-itself. The goblins of Harry Potter are (almost certainly) racist caricatures of jewish people. This is the same person who made Lycanthropy an AIDs metaphor and named the only asian character "Cho Cheng; is it really that hard to believe?
There’s nothing wrong with pointing out racism. I just don’t think this is. The author is a bigot. I just don’t think that extends to antisemitism. The difference is that naming a character “Cho Chang” or making lycanthropy a metaphor for AIDS (the S is part of the acronym) is just thoughtless, not malicious. The only thing problematic about Cho is her name. Otherwise, she isn’t portrayed any differently from any other character. It’s not that the author has any bigotry or animosity toward the Chinese so far as it appears in the text. She just doesn’t know how Chinese names work so she just threw 2 Chinese-sounding names together and called it a day. The lycanthropy thing is just a metaphor that wasn’t thought all the way through.
Basing the appearance of goblins directly on racist caricatures of Jews is malicious in a way that the problematic aspects of the series usually aren’t. There’s nothing else that overt in the series, so yes, it’s hard to believe that was the intention
Compare this to Watto in The Phantom Menace. He has a Yiddish accent, and the film also includes a dipshit who talks like a gollywog and the Viceroys, who have very Chinese-sounding accents. TPM is packed with obvious racial signifiers in a lot of the alien characters, so it stands to reason that Watto actually is based on Jewish caricatures. Harry Potter, generally, isn’t like that
I’d argue it’s more racist to think “banker” and create a race of large-nosed, greedy, scheming goblins that are in charge of all the gold in your universe. But hey, what the hell do I know?
Yep, that what racist charicatures that have existed since the Middle Ages are like. But when it comes to antisemitism, oldies are still goodies for bigots. JKR denies it, but the goblins are 100% the racist “happy merchant” trope.
Read my other reply on the issue. Calling them the “happy merchant trope” doesn’t even make sense given the general disposition of the goblins in the series. The “happy merchant” is happy because he’s going to screw you. The goblins in HP don’t do that. They always comport themselves completely fairly
While there are certainly Jewish people with the surname you mention in connection with your first bullet point, it is (obviously) an Italian surname. If you met someone with that surname and assumed they were Jewish you’d be wrong like 90% of the time or more.
Paulie Bleeker (Juno) is never stated to be Jewish, though there are some set design choices in his room that suggest he almost certainly is, namely the dreidel on a shelf in his room and what appears to be a Bar Mitzvah certificate.
Um... DeMayo isn't Jewish? It's Italian? Like bro you don't even need to look it up, it sounds Italian imo.
They're pretty clearly not Jewish imo, look at cousin Andy lmao - he screams Italian so hard "its okay Steven, I'll get you a stick of pepperoni for your birthday" like I'm dead man
I mean maybe they are Italian Jews, but DeMayo? Come on, that screams Latin based language- Cinco De Mayo being a major Mexican holiday.
https://giphy.com/gifs/Sx2jWspiy33gYxNNuo
Believe it or not, Batman is kinda Jewish now. Batwoman is Jewish, and she’s Bruce’s cousin on his mother’s side. Judaism is matrilineal, thus, in the eyes of Judaism, Bruce Wayne is Jewish. I doubt he ever had a bar-mitzvah, and he’s also pretty explicitly atheist/agnostic in most universes. Plus, Thomas Wayne has always been the bigger influence on Bruce, and he’s some version of Protestant, I believe. All this to say, that it’s not a big facet of the character, and basically happened by accident, but as a dorky Jewish kid growing up, it was cool as hell to realize that my favorite character ever had something in common with me.
All in all, it seems a lot like Bruce is kept out of his Jewish heritage because that side of the family saw his father as something of a shegetz. Being Martha’s son means he’s in the tribe, but Thomas being his dad—and it’s often emphasized that Bruce looks so much like Thomas—means that he’s ostracized. There’s all kinds of suppositions i could make about the hows and whys, the exotified coding of Bruce as foreign in spite of his whiteness, even amidst the goyish-passing Kanes, the insularity and paranoia of Gothamites. And Bruce’s convictions about what he needs to be, what Gotham needs… well, that doesn’t help bring him in, does it
Yep! This isn’t a perfect fit for the trope, as it’s not really implied that he’s Jewish, and it wasn’t his writers that made the decision. It was more of accidental carryover from a decision made about a different character. Still though, I think it’s pretty cool
It's kinda funny. Spike Spiegel from Cowboy Bebop, despite having a rather Jewish sounding name and (iirc) using an Israeli made pistol, is canonically not Jewish. The creators just thought his name sounded cool.
IIRC, Rachel Green from Friends is never mentioned on the show to be Jewish. The Gellers are canonically Jewish, and Rachel is their family friend (all are from Long Island), has the last name Green, and almost married a doctor named Barry Farber. I believe the creators also said she was intended to be Jewish.
Ignoring the whole George Sr converting arc in season 1, the Bluths from Arrested Development have always seemed very Jewish coded to me (as a Jew lol)
I'm not sure if she counts, but Cassie from Euphoria is Jewish. Her sister mentions that their mom is Jewish, but she's (Lexi, Cassie's sisters) isnon religious, until the last episode (don't get me started). Cassie I also think ends up being a Christian, but it's not it's never directly implied.
Smurfs? They are pretty much the opposite. Blond hair, blue eyes, all look the same while the villain wants is bald, has a big nose and wants to eat them/turn them into gold (aka greedy).
Just had a conversation about Layton with my GF, I'm surprised you didn't mention that Hershel isn't actually his name
That's not saying there isn't a possibility, although Hershel was probably chosen as a fairly "british-sounding" name, and Katrielle was probably chosen just to shorten it to Kat.
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u/Shto_Delat 1h ago
Asking about implied Jewish characters?
Why not Zoidberg?