Discussion: Homegrown Magic and Zionism

I feel that I need to address the controversy surrounding Homegrown Magic and Rebecca Podos (review here). There are many claims that the book is antisemitic and that Podos experiences internalized antisemitism. I discovered this after finishing the novel. I wasn't even planning on talking about this book from a Jewish perspective. Although, as you can see, I did make this discussion separate from my review. The only Jewish things I noticed in it were the names "Yael" and "Margot" and a community that looks out for each other. Unfortunately, "Yael" was consistently mispronounced by the audio-narrators. I do think that should have been corrected, but that didn't even make it into the allegations I've seen. As for a community that looks out for each other, Bloomfield wasn't Jewish-coded. If you were to make a case for tikkun olam, that would actually hurt the antisemitism allegations. 

I am Jewish, but I could still miss something. I mean, I only found out a couple years ago that the "lizard people" conspiracy theory is antisemitic. So I spent a few hours digging into these claims, making sure I had all the facts. It seems that so many of the people accusing it of antisemitism have either only read the description or are just echoing others. The claims came from the time of the Advanced Reader Copies (ARC) going out. It's possible that there were bad things in it then and they got cleaned up, but I'm not investing the time to go back and read that version. I saw that the blurb had been updated to appease the concerns of folks that saw a similarity between the Nazi propaganda of a Jewish octopus sticking its tentacles into the world and "an obscenely wealthy banking family with its fingers in every pie in the realm". It's not unheard of for an author to make a mistake and clean it up after the ARC. Haley Neil did it for Once More With Chutzpah. She cleaned it up to make sure it wasn't accidentally anti-Palestinian and even addressed the atrocities in Gaza. 

That brings me to what I dug up. The main people making the claims were Zionists mad that Podos is an anti-Zionist. They took things about Yael's family and made it seem like that meant the book was antisemitic. One point is that Yael's mother put them in a mask with horns for the masquerade near the end of the book. I can absolutely see how that might look antisemitic without the proper context. Another is that their family is full of rich bankers. It is a negative stereotype that Jews control the economy. However, to anyone who has actually read the book, I can assume they'd notice there's no Jewish coding of the family. Podos actually based the economy off of the 13th century Italian banking families. The most obvious proof of this being the family's patron, who provides magic in exchange for loyalty and wealth. The third and final point the naysayers bring up is the family's last name, Clauneck, named for a wealth demon. I'll dive more into demonology shortly, but my point here is that they're so confidently taking things out of context and people haven't been shutting them down.

So, demonology! Clauneck is a demon that takes and gives wealth. He's not a very well-known demon, there's even debate about which religion's lore he comes from. Several of the Zionists I came across declared him to be Christian. That's possible, but he could just as easily be Jewish. Jewish demonology is fun! My sibling does a lot of scholarly work with it! My first Podos book was From Dust, a Flame. This book is a contemporary dark Y.A. fantasy that incorporated a demon heavily into its plot. Podos knows what she's doing with demonology. Yael mentions that someone far in their family's past had demon blood and that's how that ancestor ended up with magic. Inclusion of a demon isn't antisemitic. Jewish lore has demons, and so do other cultures. 

Yael's arc is to break the cycle of generational trauma within their family and fight back against the capitalistic ideals implanted in them. Their family is greedy, but not comical, as I saw one Zionist suggest. Facial features are not Jewish-coded, behaviors aren't, pieces or culture shown in the book aren't either. This book is mostly just a queer romance within the cozy fantasy genre and is anti-capitalist. It champions communities that look out for each other, unlearning apathy and compliance, and being brave enough to ask for help. I know I won't reach the Zionists, the people who so conveniently forget that Margot is a Jewish name and she doesn't have a family in banking. I don't think I want to reach people who support genocide anyhow. To those who are on the fence about reading Homegrown Magic because they heard it was antisemitic, I'm telling you it's not. It's hardly even Jewish.