(no subject)

[beatrice_otter]

On Tumblr, someone pointed out that given Howard Stark's now-canon background (where he grew up and his parents' occupations), he is almost certainly Jewish passing as Gentile.  And that, you know, this gives extra oomph to him helping Jarvis get Anna (his Jewish wife) out of danger and to England and later America.  (And I want to read that story, and I hope someone is writing it!)

But you know what other story I want to read?  The one where it's a Jewish holiday and Steve absentmindedly mentions it to Tony ("Happy Chanukah!" or appropriate greeting for whichever holiday it is) and Tony is baffled because he's not Jewish (not anything, really, pretty much raised atheist), and Steve is Catholic (or Episcopalian, I've seen an interesting meta on what it would mean if Steve was an Irish Protestant, but whatever he is, definitely Christian.)

So then Steve is all, wait, but Howard was Jewish, and he didn't show it, but then things were a lot worse for Jews in those days, I thought you would be public with your religion/ethnicity!

And Tony is all, no, nope, nuh-uh, no Jewish background in the family that I know of.

And Steve goes, then how/why did Howard know Yiddish?  Because a lot of the scientists on Project Rebirth were Jews, so Yiddish was spoken around the labs, and Steve never heard Howard speak it but he definitely understood what the others were saying when they were cursing people out or arguing or joking around in Yiddish, so.

And Tony's mind is blown, and he goes on an incredibly tacky orgy of self-discovery to "find his Jewish roots."

Comments

[staranise]

Okay, that sounds cool.

(Though oh Tony. *facepalm*)

Double extra bonus points if Pepper knew. And is Jewish herself.

[beatrice_otter]

Yeah. There is no way that Tony does this in a tasteful, respectful manner. That's just ... no. I can see it now: every offensive stereotype explored at once. With a bit of actual searching thrown in the mix, so you can't just discount it, but heavily disguised by all the sheer tackiness and stereotypes.

[staranise]

But that's not what the story needs to be about? IDK, I think you had a great idea but you're fixating a bit much on one little aspect of it.

[beatrice_otter]

I didn't think I was fixated on it, actually. If the story had any of Tony's reactions past the initial you're kidding, that's how I think it would play out because Tony is an ass. But if you look at the plot bunny it's one line tacked on to the end.

In your comment, you said something about "oh, Tony," and I was like, "yeah, oh, Tony." and expanded a little about Tony's general dickishness and insecurity and how that would play out (nothing good). I don't generally consider responding to a comment to be a sign of fixation? Though looking back I did respond to that and not the other part of your comment, so.

I don't see how Pepper could have known if Tony didn't, considering she would have met Tony years after his parents died and were no longer important for much of anything except how they impacted Tony's Daddy issues. If she were Jewish herself, that would be the best bet for keeping Tony as close to funny with the least amount of offensiveness.

[likeadeuce]

Headcanon accepted.

[domarzione]

I... honestly don't think I could run far enough away from this prospective fic fast enough. (Sorry.) It's... I can't imagine Steve being that clueless having grown up in New York. I can't imagine Tony being that oblivious. I can't imagine this staying on the right side of "wow, this is offensive" if the punchline is Tony wearing a giant gold chai pendant with a knish in one hand and a matzo in the other.

Being Jewish then and being Jewish now... it's not "oh, it's easier now." Because in a lot of ways it isn't. And the history of American Jewish assimilation is complicated one that's not about being crypo-Jews suddenly allowed to live openly. And for New York Jews, it's almost a separate case entirely.

It's also my family history and maybe that's why I'm not eager to see it turned into a Judd Apatow comedy, but... yeah. Sorry for showing up and grousing, but...

[beatrice_otter]

This is why no gentile should ever write that fic, because I would not know where the line is. Obviously, from this exchange.

I wasn't actually necessarily thinking that the fic would be about Tony being offensive about adopting Jewish culture. I was thinking more about Steve assuming that Tony was Jewish, or at least knew that he had Jewish heritage, and that reaction there. Tony being a dick about it would follow if you extended it. Tony is a dick about everything, much as fandom tends to make him a woobie. I mean, yeah, there is genuine emotional depth there, and Tony might genuinely want to search for his heritage, but he would cover it with asshole, as he pretty much always does.

[domarzione]

I don't think anyone but a gentile would want to write this fic, honestly.

Steve might assume Tony was Jewish, but it's not a given and not even likely. Intermarriage was already a thing in the 1940s, especially among the high-flyers like Howard and the celebrity types. Steve would have a sense of Howard's secularism and certainly in Howard's history with (non-Jewish) women and would probably think it odd if Howard had made that kind of return to faith. He would make no assumptions that Tony was Jewish and, if Tony was technically Jewish, that he cared about being Jewish.

Jewish assimilation is a choice, not something forced upon people to hide their true selves. It's not a parallel to homosexuality where Jews were simply waiting for social mores to progress to a point where they could be themselves in public. It's a conscious and willing decision to put aside the rules of your faith, leave the community of faith, and live like everyone else. Historically, the community of faith was absolutely necessary to ensure survival because endless pogroms and laws against Jews even in 'enlightened' states meant you needed group protection, but in 20th Century America, you didn't and, free from it being a life-or-death choice, people like Howard chose to live apart from it.

You and I have different readings about Tony; I don't think he's a dick about most things and I can't imagine him caring enough to be a dick about this. His family history is not in need of discovery; Howard's got a Wikipedia page. Tony knows who his grandparents were.

Also, and this matters, for American Jews, our pre-America 'heritage' is usually murky, untraceable, and unimportant to our lives. Almost all of us are Ashkenazi Jews and we're in America because our forebears were chased out of somewhere in Eastern Europe for being Jewish. We have no ties to a hometown or to a country because that origin point was happy to see our forefathers leave and our forefathers were eager to put it behind them. It didn't matter in America; among Ashkenazi Jews in New York, it mattered a lot more if you were Litvak or Galitzianer than if you'd come from Vienna or Minsk and the latter details tended to get lost. And any trace that might have remained back in the Old Country was probably obliterated by the Holocaust and WWII.

(I can tell you what country my maternal grandparents came from, but not where in Poland, nobody in my family can because we don't know, the story changed, and our family was in flight. It's not uncommon for early 20th Century Jewish families to have the first few kids born in the Old Country, one or two born in England or somewhere else in transit, and the last few to be born in America. That happened with three of my four grandparents' families.)

TL;DR, Tony is unlikely to have any interest in researching his roots beyond what he already knows and, were he to try, would be unlikely to find anything.

[fiamaya]

I don't think you're being fair, here: For background: I'm a math geek with one Jewish and one non-Jewish parent, raised none-of-the-above, got curious about what it meant to be Jewish as a young adult, now absolutely identify as such, although not very observant. (I always knew my mom was raised Jewish, but it wasn't particularly relevant to my childhood.)

I agree that Steve would be unlikely to assume that Tony is Jewish just because of Howard's upbringing. His mom, after all, was names Maria, which is on the short list of least Jewish girl's names. But it's not at all implausible for Steve to assume that Tony knows that Howard was, originally, Jewish: it could be a discussion of different religions with Thor, for example, and for Tony to be totally surprised. Given that new knowledge, I could easily see Tony being curious about what "being Jewish" means. Based on my experience, and those of others like me I have known, he'd be more likely to go down the rabbit hole of Jewish rabbinic discussion and laws, than the heritage (Polish, Russian, etc.) I can easily see him, say, having a conversation with JARVIS while he's puttering that ends up chasing the kosher food laws back to "Don't seethe a goat in its mother's milk," and trying to figure out how we got here from there. There's a lot there that's fascinating to a geek-type mind, no matter what you think of it.

I'm not saying this is a great idea to write: I know that my opinions about a lot of Jewish laws, which I could easily see putting into Tony's mouth, would upset other, more observant, Jews. But my TL;DR: having Tony explore the religion, as an obsessive outsider suddenly curious about what "being Jewish" means, seems entirely plausible. And hey, writing a seder with all the Avengers could be a lot of fun.

[domarzione]

I don't see how Tony could ever not know that Howard was born Jewish and, since he probably failed to convert to anything else, remained Jewish until he died. This is a non-starter point for me. He knew Howard was a secular Jew, he knew Maria was (presumably) not, and that by the laws of Judaism, Tony himself was not considered Jewish. He doesn't care.

I don't see Tony ever being interested in faith-qua-faith at all, to be honest. He's a strong disbeliever in the occult in general. He's not going to be curious about the God and laws of his forefathers because it's all hocus-pocus. It's not a matter of being "geeky" or not; geeks are as unique as everyone else and not everyone is required to follow the stereotypes. Tony is a builder and a pragmatist and a futurist and he doesn't like to consider the past at all. He's not interested in his own or in his father's or in the magic building blocks of religion. He could not care less about shatnez or its origins -- that's for the social sciences and their storytelling.

Also, his prime motivating factor in almost every single thing he's ever done is to disavow everything Howard did and stood for, to stand on his own merits (or lack thereof) and be his own man. Going looking at religion, let alone his father's religion, is not something I see as following on that path because the whole animating factor of a religion is submission (to laws, to gods, to the more learned, etc.).

This is not to discount your experiences or say that they don't matter. They're yours and thus they do. But I don't see Tony as interested in that kind of self-examination. YMMV.

[imadra_blue]

I confess I have no interest in Tony Stark, that is a very interesting idea to explore.