Shadowhunters and Downworlders

And whatsoever man there be of the house of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn among them, that eateth any manner of blood, I will set My face against that soul that eateth blood, and will cut him off from among his people.

And yet we have been accused throughout history of drinking human blood. The first instances of blood libel leveled against the Jewish people were recorded in the eleventh century and were immortalized in a ballad depicting the ritual murder of the child Hugh of England in 1255.1 In the Middle Ages, not practicing Christianity was thought to be evidence of devil worship, and attempts were made to wipe out entire Jewish communities. Accusing us of drinking the blood of Christian children was a surefire, inflammatory way of prejudicing non-Jewish neighbors against us. Rumors also grew that Jews could reanimate after death, so naturally Jewish corpses were burned or decapitated and staked for good measure.

In the nineteenth century, there was no Other as culturally frightening as the Jew. Most often emigrating from eastern Europe, Jewish people were depicted as pale-skinned, black-clothed, hook-nosed, and sunken-eyed. As immigrants, we were rootless—wanderers, with no national identity—but nevertheless seen as clannish. Jews reject the cross and holy water. We did business and engaged with our adoptive nations, but we resisted assimilation, prompting allegations of parasitism, of feeding off those host countries like leeches and ticks and lice (which is how much anti-Semitic propaganda depicts us). And one of Hitler’s personal inspirations, Karl Lueger, a mayor of Vienna, was known to have tossed off the term blutsauger in reference to Jews. The translation: bloodsucker.

One popular theory about Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the vampire standard-bearer, is that he was a monstrous, Gothic incarnation of these anti-Semitic stereotypes: a hook-nosed, wealthy wanderer of eastern European origins with a lust for blood and wealth. Think such hatefulness and ignorance is in the past? Think again. As recently as 2010, a cartoon run on the Al Aqsa children’s channel of the terrorist group Hamas portrayed anti-Semitic stereotypes of Orthodox Jews drinking the blood of Muslim children.2 Blood libel and anti-Semitism, which helped fuel the atrocities of the Crusades and the Inquisition and the Holocaust, are clearly still alive and well in the twenty-first century.

Though the image of the Jewish people has remained virtually unchanged through time, the image of the vampire has not. Vampires aren’t entirely the same today as they were in the era of Nosferatu and Dracula; see True Blood and Twilight and more books and films and television shows than I can name. Still, a few things remain: Typically they are depicted as pale-skinned, sunlight-shunning undead who need blood to survive. In the Mortal Instruments series, vampires belong to clans. They are immortal. They are vulnerable to holy symbols, though which ones depend on individual vampires’ beliefs. They are pale. They are nocturnal. They can shape-shift into bats and dust and rats, and they can control and mesmerize humans. They have laws and rituals and needs that differentiate them from other classes of Downworlders, often in unflattering ways.

Because of the historically anti-Semitic associations between Jews and vampires, portraying even a fictional Jew as a vampire, a blood drinker, could go dangerously awry. The Jewish people may even today still embody the cultural Other, but monsters, we aren’t.

Technically, though, Simon Lewis is. Clary Fray, Mortal Instruments’ heroine, is a Shadowhunter; so is Jace Wayland, the hero. Their mission? To protect mundanes from Downworlders. Monsters. Which is exactly what Simon becomes.

Or does he?





The Everyman as the Other


We first meet Simon Lewis at New York City’s Pandemonium Club, which he attends with Clary. She notes that he stands out in the sea of dyed/pierced/adventurously dressed teenagers because he looks so normal. Freshly scrubbed hair, check. Glasses, check. Lovably nerdy T-shirt, check. “[A]s if he were on his way to chess club” (City of Bones), Clary says. (Oh, Simon.)