Tangentially related to my last post, rant time: I would like to talk about Unsong, and why I think it's less Jewish than I've expected it to be.
First thing first, yes, I'm aware that the author is Jewish. That doesn't really change my judgement much. I also know the author has a tumblr account, so there's a nonzero chance he will see this post. In shch a case, I hope he can understand that I'm merely frustrated with being told this was a Jewish story and finding it less so than I expected, and that this doesn't really reflect the quality of his writing. From that angle, I think Unsong is rather good. I'm not sure it's for me, though.
What lit me up here forst was the electricity-on-Shabbat part. Admittedly, in Jewish circles it is common to think of it as fire. However, the Halachic discussion over it in Orthodox circles is less certain - there were claims that it's construction, or completion, or just something too weekday like to do on the rest day. However, in this story, the main purpose of the Shabbat commandment is regarding electricity. Which is rather weird. Also, not sure I like the way the commandments are treated - but that also stems from replacing G-d with Uriel, so what can I say at this point.
Now, the above point isn't commenting that much about the Judaism of the story. After all, it is actually very much a Jewish thing to consider electricity prohibited on Shabbat and connecting it to fire. No, my problems come in other areas.
First, the worldbuilding. Specifically, the war in heaven. The whole thing about a third of the heavenly host siding with Lucifer and fighting against the larger part of the angels? That is a very Christian thing, actually. If it was ever in Jewish lore, it was taken out of the canon long ago. Fallen angels are something of a different matter, and are a bit complex. Kudos for including the "angels can't speak Aramaic" thing, but honestly, this feels more like a nice fun fact added in more than anything. The explanation is kind of original, though.
Then there's the Midrash Shem on Kissinger. Which says that we learn kissinger would be the name of a bad person because Judas Iscraiot kissed Jesus in the act of betraying him. Relatedly, Kissinger happened to be a Jewish man and comparing Jews to Judas was one somewhat common antisemitic trope.
Now, to be fair, I don't really know much about Watergate, Nixon or Kissinger - funnily enough, the most I know comes from the Unsong version, which is different from the actual event in a number of ways, I'm sure. So I can only assume that Americans have a very good reason to dislike Kissinger - he was also likely a token for Nixon, who was himself somewhat antisemitic. So I'm not going to get on anyone's case for disliking him. Also, despite what I said, I don't think mr Alexander intended in any way to be antisemitic towards Kissinger. Not just because he's Jewish - that doesn't exclude people from being antisemitic, especially considering Kissinger himself may have harbored some bigotry towards his own people - but because I don't see any sense in it. However, what he did do was use a very Christian story as part of that. Oh, and there's also the Messianic figure born from a virgin.
Now, one might argue that a story having numerous Christian elements doesn't exclude it from being Jewish. I suppose that's an interesting argument to be had, but the end point is that if I wanted stories with Christian elements I could read 101 other books. So for me, personally, seeing just all that again... the Jewish elements didn't feel enough. This is largely a me problem, I can acknowledge that, but it's frustrating.
