Yes, I like shopping. But I’m no Jewish princess

Shortly after my father died I was confronted with the most hurtful effects of the stereotype. I was on a tube and saw an old friend of my dad’s. Quickly, what I thought might have been a warm exchange turned into a conversation about selling Dad’s house.

As someone who grew up largely outside the Jewish community I’ve felt anxious about how people’s opinion of me might change once I reveal I am Jewish. It is not a significant anxiety but it is the kind that sits dormant waiting to be activated.

I thought my dad’s house to be an odd topic of conversation but I explained how it had been a hard and painful process to sell the house I grew up in and go through a life time of memories, working out what you can bear to part with.

Apparently my humanity and my grief was invisible because the so-called friend remarked: “Well, now you have all that money what have you got to worry about?”

The words hit me like individual bullets. I knew exactly where that sentiment came from. They had delivered it without a second thought. I got off that train and burst into tears.

These portrayals of our personalities are reductive and insulting. They can also be dangerous.

When a group of actors recently complained that not enough Jews were playing Jews on the stage or on screen, I thought — this is not the issue. What matters to me is the way those characters are written. If the writing is based on stereotypes, then it’s hard for actors — of any background — to give a nuanced performance. In other words, the stereotypes mask the fact that we are people, like the rest of them.

Jewish women you see in the media might be gregarious, strong and confident but behind closed doors, just like the rest of humanity, we have moments of doubt, fear, and vulnerability.

And perhaps we rely on the stereotype because it helps masks moment of sadness, trauma, and loss. Why be sad when you can be funny?

In the past month we’ve read news reports about two Jewish women being denied a religious divorce by their despicable husbands. In Manchester, Alan Moher lost his appeal against a court order to pay his wife maintenance until he gave her a get.

And in Israel, Yisrael Meir Kin, whose mother’s burial was delayed by rabbinical authorities until he agreed to grant his wife a get after 14 years, went back on the agreement.

I don’t imagine either of those women thought on their wedding day that the men they were marrying were so ghastly that one day they would be capable of the kind of manipulation and control domestic violence charities now warn and educate against.

Why do we not hear or see their stories told and represented outside of our community bubbles?

Perhaps because it is easier to view Jewish women as one big monolithic group of shopaholic, loud, whining princesses than it is to see us as more complicated and human.