How misguided would it be for me, a non-religious amateur writer, to depict a Modern Orthodox character?
I'm an amateur creative writer - emphasis on "amateur", for better or worse - and for the past few months I've been working on a post-apocalyptic story. I see fiction, first and foremost, as a way to explore ideas, so the focus is less on action and drama, and more on the philosophical questions that living in such a situation would pose, although the former isn't absent by any means. I'm not honestly sure what prompted me to consider including a Jewish character, and I knew that doing so respectfully and accurately would be a tall order, so I started with a lot of reading, focusing on things written by actual Jewish people. I came away with even more questions and an entirely unexpected sense of longing. I have, I think, a pretty strong sense of who this character is, and the sort of questions she might invite me and my eventual readers to grapple with; but they aren't questions I feel comfortable engaging with on my own, so I set out to talk to people.
This provided harder than expected.
I get the sense that what I'm trying to do is a really sore subject for many people, or at least those I've spoken with. I get the sense that people, or at least those I've spoken with, are accustomed to writers treating Judaism like any other minority identity: a superficial aesthetic if you're lucky, an appalling stereotype if you aren't. I, do, genuinely care about writing a respectful depiction, but that doesn't mean I can. The responses I've gotten have ranged from skepticism and concern to - well, as one of the moderators on r/judaism put it, "don't do this. Perhaps it's silly of me to even be asking this. Perhaps its offensively misguided. If so, please tell me. I would rather cut this character than publish misinformation or put another cliché-ridden stereotype out there. But if I'm giving up too early, you can tell me that too. I'll listen either way.