Joan Marcus and Nora Marcus-Hecht

She/hers

How have stereotypes about physical appearance impacted how you convey and/or internalize your Jewish identity?

Joan: So this touches on something I hoped to get to. A lot of my Jewish identity has to do with my awareness of a painful stereotype that Jews have money. I've always been a dressed-down, t-shirt, and jeans sort of person, and at some point, I realized that I was subconsciously fashioning myself so I didn't appear wealthy. Growing up, many of us in my town didn't have money, including myself and my friend Tovah, whose father was a rabbi without a congregation. My father was a poorly-compensated art history professor, and later he worked as a third mate in the merchant marine. But I became increasingly aware of the stereotype surrounding Jews and money as I went to college. I started to understand that people would assume I was upper-middle-class and had a lot of money just because I was Jewish. It's frustrating because it's not true for everyone in the community and reinforces harmful stereotypes.

Nora: I can relate a lot to the issue of the money stereotype as a Jewish person. It wasn't until a friend in high school pointed out that another friend was saying things like ‘I'm not rich like Nora's family’ that I realized how prevalent this stereotype was in my life. Despite my family not actually being wealthy, it was then that I realized not only how other people perceive my family because they don't understand what a professor's salary is but how I perceived my own family as not being rich but being upper middle-class for a while.

But lately, I've been more aware of physical stereotypes and how they are often used to depict Jewish characters in the media. For example, I saw a video on decoding TikTok aesthetics and noticed how the goblins depicted often had hook noses and an obsession with shiny trinkets and money. And in movies like Tangled, the villain has dark curly hair and is portrayed as evil. It's frustrating to see these stereotypes perpetuated, but continuing to challenge and educate others is important.