Editing Jewish Characters: What to Keep, What to Question, and What to Amplify

A few years ago, a fellow writer sent me a short story for feedback. It featured a Jewish character who, strangely, had no cultural or emotional ties to anything remotely Jewish. This included no references to Jewish family rituals or appellations , food,  holidays, not even a passing sense of discomfort or belonging. When I asked why, the writer said, "Well, I didn't want to alienate readers." That moment stuck with me. The reason wasn't because I hadn't heard it before, but because I had, far too often.

If writing Jewish characters comes with its own emotional and historical weight, editing them (whether you're the author or not) can feel even trickier. We're balancing nuance, sensitivity, identity, and sometimes marketability. But it's in the edit that a character's authenticity either deepens or gets diluted.

Here are some thoughts from the editor's perspective.

Let's start with the common impulse to sand down Jewishness to make a character "universal." That might mean taking out the Yiddishisms, the bar mitzvah flashback, the reference to a father who fled Yemen or Russia or Iran. It might mean softening a scene that touches on antisemitism, or removing a joke that feels "too Jewish."

But in doing so, you're often removing the very texture that gives the character shape.

Jewish characters don't need to perform their identity in every scene. But erasing it entirely, especially in edits, sends a message: This isn't relevant. This isn't safe. This won't sell.

I once worked with a writer whose protagonist was a secular Israeli woman in her 30s. In early drafts, she sang pop songs in Hebrew, debated politics with her cousins, and occasionally lit a Friday night candle (not out of obligation, but out of habit.) After a professional edit, those moments were stripped. When I asked why, the writer said her editor "wanted her to appeal to more people." But what made the character compelling, read: what made her herself, was gone.

• Ambiguity. Many Jewish characters live in the in-between: secular but not unaffiliated, attached but conflicted, aware but quiet about it. Don't cut these tensions in favor of clarity. Jewish identity often is ambivalent and that's the truth of it.
• Details that don't need to be explained. You don't have to footnote kugel or mezuzah. Trust your readers. And if you're the editor, trust the writer. Context often does the work.
• The ordinary. Jewish characters shouldn't only show up in Holocaust stories, terrorist plots, or family fights over inheritance. A quiet Shabbat meal or a memory of a grandmother lighting candles can carry emotional weight and ground the story in real life.

• Jewish joy. There's room for trauma, yes, but there's also dancing at weddings, loud seders, sarcastic humor, intellectual debates over soup. Don't let the heavy define the whole.
• Ritual and rhythm. Jewish life has texture: weekly, monthly, yearly. These rhythms can add depth to a story and should be treated as living elements, not backdrop props.
• Subtext. A character nervously hiding their Jewishness. A moment of pride in saying a Hebrew word aloud. A flash of inherited guilt. These are moments that don't shout, but they resonate.

In speculative, fantasy, or dystopian fiction, Jewish identity can often be mistaken for a "real-world" detail that doesn't belong in an invented world. But Jewish characters deserve to exist in magical realms, futuristic landscapes, and alternate realities, too.

Instead of editing out the culture, consider how it evolves in those spaces. A spacefarer saying the Mourner's Kaddish alone on a ship? A Golem in a fantasy world based on Eastern Europe? A prophet card drawn in a magical realism story?

Jewish elements don't need to be deleted; they can be adapted, expanded, and imagined forward.

This can be delicate. You might get comments like "Can you make this more relatable?" or "What's the significance of this scene?" That's not necessarily bad; it's an opportunity. Respond with context, not defensiveness. But also remember: you don't owe a complete cultural translation. Your job is to stay true to the character and their world, even if it means pushing back.

If you're an editor yourself and not Jewish, ask yourself:

• Am I suggesting this change because it improves the story or because I'm uncomfortable with what I don't recognize?
• Am I honoring the complexity here, or simplifying for ease?

A good editor wants the character to live fully on the page, even if that means encountering unfamiliar customs, names, or histories. Don't flatten the story for familiarity's sake.

• ❏ Does this character feel dimensional and specific or generic?
• ❏ Have any essential cultural or emotional layers been erased?
• ❏ Is the language overexplained or does it trust the reader?
• ❏ Are Jewish elements reduced to trauma or stereotype?
• ❏ Is there space for joy, ritual, humor, and contradiction?

When I edit my own Jewish characters, I remind myself: their identity isn't a layer to be peeled off for clarity. It's the scaffolding beneath the story.

And in these times, when writing anything Jewish can feel dangerous, when even a mezuzah on a fictional door might raise eyebrows, it becomes even more important not to retreat into silence or flatten our characters to avoid discomfort. We need more Jewish stories, not fewer. More variety, not less.

And if a reader doesn't get every word, that's okay. Jewish characters, like all fully human characters, deserve to exist without constant translation.