Shadowhunters and Downworlders

In the chapters that follow, there are references to Simon’s Jewishness aplenty, couched in his trademark self-deprecating humor. But despite Simon’s status as a member of the “other” tribe, he almost seems to function in the narrative of City of Bones as the Everyman: the average sidekick to Clary Fray’s powerful heroine, the nice cute guy to Jace Wayland’s sexy bad boy. He is so normal, so mundane, that even the other characters are prompted to ask what Simon is still doing at the New York Institute post–demon attack shenanigans, long after he should have been kicked out. He is singled out as Other not because he is different from us, the readers, but because, in being normal, he is different from the other characters, and therefore doesn’t belong.

It would be forgivable to wonder why, then, with the spotlight necessarily following Clary as she works through her litany of protagonist’s problems (Demons! Missing parents! Strange gifts!), it is stated more than once that Simon-the-sidekick is Jewish. Token minority syndrome is a not-uncommon character affliction, one in which a secondary character seems to belong to a cultural/ethnic/religious minority solely as a means to set him or her apart from other secondary characters. And when presented with an ensemble that includes as disparate and remarkable a cast as Clary, Jace, Valentine Morgenstern, Alec and Isabelle Lightwood, Magnus Bane—you get the picture—you could be forgiven for wondering if perhaps Simon’s Jewish identity was thrown in just to make him stand out a little.

But then things change. As they always do.





The Other versus the Other: The Vampire versus the Jew


After Simon is attacked at the Hotel Dumont in City of Ashes, Raphael, the leader of the New York vampire clan, appears at the Institute holding Simon’s bloody, alternately limp or writhing body in his arms, and presents the Shadowhunters with a choice: Kill Simon or help him transform into a vampire. A Downworlder. A monster. The very thing that Shadowhunters are meant to protect mundanes like Simon against.

To put it mildly, it’s not an easy choice, and Simon, while writhing and all, is incapable of making it himself. So Jace asks Clary what Simon would want, if he could choose. When Clary speaks, she is clear—they can bury him to help him rise as a vampire, but she will be there when it happens. And she insists that he be buried in a Jewish cemetery.

Simon is blood-soaked and suffering, and the longer the Shadowhunters wait, the higher the likelihood that he will die. But even though time is of the essence, Clary doesn’t order everyone to take Simon to the nearest cemetery—she insists that it be a Jewish cemetery. Clary, who knows Simon better than anyone, knows that being Jewish is an inextricable part of his identity, so she makes the choice she knows he would make for himself. In making that demand, she is making a statement. A big one.

The laws surrounding death and burial are yet another way that the Jewish people have remained distinct, separate, and Other from the cultures and civilizations around them. As the Roman historian Tacitus wrote in his Histories, “The Jews bury rather than burn their dead,” distinguishing us, the Jews, from them, the Romans. There are strict procedures that govern the watching, the washing, and the guarding of the body when a Jewish person dies, far too numerous and complicated to recount. They comprise volumes of the Talmud (oral law) and Torah (written law). As the young Shadowhunters discover, so too are there strict procedures that govern the burial and subsequent rising of a vampire, and they enact them under Raphael’s guidance.

When Simon emerges from the earth, he is chillingly transformed. And when he is offered blood, Clary watches as “Simon, who had been a vegetarian since he was ten years old…snatched the packet of blood out of Raphael’s thin brown hand and tore into it with his teeth” (City of Ashes). The only thing Simon wants and needs in his first moments as a vampire is blood. And his first act as a vampire is to violate Jewish law—in a Jewish cemetery, no less.

It’s a masterful metaphor. In becoming a vampire, Simon becomes Other in ways that clearly parallel but are fundamentally incompatible with Judaism. He finds himself a member of a tribe governed by laws—but he is loath to abide them. He finds his diet restricted and regulated—but he is loath to satisfy his new needs. Simon’s new identity as a vampire immediately conflicts with and encroaches on his identity as a Jew, one of the most defining characteristics of his human life. Simon has always been different and Other from the Shadowhunters, but as a vampire, he is now Other in a new and sinister way.

Unfortunately for him, it’s only the beginning.

As City of Ashes progresses, Simon struggles to remain himself despite the physical ways in which vampirism transforms him. He nearly singes his fingers when he places them in the sunlight for the first time. His every waking and slumbering moment is consumed by the thought of and thirst for blood. But, as he says, “At least Jace can’t call me mundane anymore.”