The idea behind the
Jewish Genre Challenge
is to challenge ourselves
to read books with
Jewish main characters
across many different genres
As Jewish readers, when we’re reading a sci-fi, thriller, romance, or other genre book (e.g. horror, mystery, fantasy) and the main character happens to be Jewish, we take notice. Jewish characters don't show up often in genre fiction. When we stumble across this in our everyday reading, we often have an excited “ping!” of recognition - “Hey, this character is like me!”
For non-Jewish readers, reading Jewish genre fiction can expand our ideas about who Jewish characters can be. Many readers - Jewish and not - have only encountered Jewish characters suffering in the Holocaust, living in tents in Biblical times, or leading neurotic New Yorker lives. There’s nothing wrong with those stories, but for those of us who specifically love genre fiction - like fantasy, action, mystery, and romance - we know that Jewish characters can and do belong in all of those stories and settings as well.
Why the focus on Jewish main characters? Why not make it books by Jewish authors? We know Jewish readers are hungry to see themselves reflected in the genres they love. However the sci-fi genre, for example, owes much of its existence to Jewish authors and yet because of antisemitism, very few of these prominent authors created works with Jewish main characters (or any Jewish characters at all). Many Jewish readers of genre fiction have spent years reading books by Jewish authors without encountering a single Jewish character.
As a secondary consideration, we also want to make space to include genre books like The Calculating Stars and Spinning Silver, which were written by non-Jewish authors with well-researched Jewish main characters who still give us that happy “ping” of recognition. Not every Jewish reader will feel like these characters represent them accurately, but the same could probably be said for the Jewish characters written by Jewish authors.
