Jul 5, 2021 9:00 AM

Mendel's Quest, aka Angry Jew, Helped Me Embrace My Heritage

Growing up Jewish was a challenge, but who knew an over-the-top game like this one would help me come to terms with who I am, and what my own culture meant to me.

In 2014, three Israeli friends released Angry Jew, a game about a furious—but cute—Jew who zips back through time to 1894 Russia to kick Cossack tuchus. Originally an Android app, the latest iteration is also available in the Apple store. The tiny hero, Mendel, is on a quest to regain stolen religious books—punching and spin-kicking sickle-wielding baddies while screaming "Goyim!" "Dreck!" "Gevald!" or “Sheigetz!" with a thick Yiddish accent, just like me in my dreams.

When Avishai De Vries pitched the game idea to his programming friends Gil Elnekave and Edo Frankel, they found it hilarious—and crazy. “It’s the perfect gimmick,” thought Elnekave, but “it has no grounds to make any money whatsoever.” Still, he believed in his buddies’ talent and was looking for a side project, so he jumped on board.

The most important aspect of the game is Mendel’s appearance. He rocks a shtreimel, the fuzzy round fur hat orthodox Jews wear, and has a beard that would make Drake jealous. His hair is inky black and his nose is ginormous. When I was younger, I was taught that those characteristics were hideous—that people who looked like me, who came from similar backgrounds, weren’t heroes, we were shysters.

Jewish people have used humor to process trauma in vaudeville, films, books, theater. But Angry Jew’s creators hadn’t seen it in video games. “It's another representation of the same spiel,” De Vries said. The nebbish who fights back. He explained that non-Jews were the ones who created this stereotype, “so I will take power over it.”

In my case, the stereotype was drilled into me after my parents moved my family from Niskayuna, New York, where there were Jews aplenty, to Voorheesville, New York, where I was singled out as one of the only Semites in my fifth-grade-class. During the ’90s (and every other era), kids were (are) hella mean. I get super defensive about “locker room talk” being normalized (I see you Trump) because I know how racist, homophobic, sexist, Islamophobic, and anti-Semitic it is. In middle school, I had pennies pelted at me. Once, I watched a classmate place a quarter between his thumb and ring finger and flick. The coin spun down the hall, sawing into my eyebrow, leaving a scar.

My family is a typical Jewish immigrant story. My grandfather journeyed to America from Poland in the early 1900s to escape pogroms and rising anti-Semitism. In New York, he went from peddling scrap to owning his own wallpaper store, which my father took over. After my bar mitzvah, I became the stock boy, schlepping paint cans, slapping down price stickers, and dusting shelves.

Deitcher’s Wallpaper Outlet commercials aired sporadically on local TV stations. My peers trailed behind me in the high school hallways, mocking my father’s nasally voice from the ads: “Come ta Deitcha’s Wallpaper Outlet. We won’t be undersold.” I despised the kids who picked on me, but I detested my family too, questioning how we weaseled our way into white, Christian America. Even though my father worked 60-hour work weeks, I still felt as if we hadn’t earned our success.

I tried fighting back, but couldn’t figure out how to throw a punch that my opponent felt. By 11th grade, I devised a new way to survive: mocking myself before others could. I rushed for pennies in the hall. I called myself the Hebrew Hammer (years before the movie), the Killer Kike, and the Jewish Juggernaut, all funny because I was a scrawny string bean.

After graduating high school, I accepted I was tethered to my heritage. I even studied it in undergrad—while I binge drank nightly and went in and out of detox. There were many Mendels that protected me through those years, many Mendels who helped me heal after I got sober at 25. They fed me shabbat dinners. Studied Torah with me. Taught me to wrap tefillin.

In Angry Jew, Mendel has a Yoda-like rabbi who spits proverbs. “As long as you understand your foolishness,” he says, “you are smart.” I learned to not be so hard on myself. To laugh again. To love the family and culture that made me.

I came across Angry Jew when I was 10 years sober in 2016, after the creators launched a Kickstarter for Angry Jew action figures. I downloaded the game instantly. Every time I punched a Cossack in the face, it felt like I was taking power over my trauma.

Kat Schrier, associate professor and director of games at Marist College and the author of We the Gamers: How Games Teach Ethics & Civics, sees games as a way to build community with others, as well as a stronger connection to yourself. “When you are able to see yourself represented through a game, you can express yourself in a way that maybe you are not able to in your everyday life,” she said. In the game, I mattered, so in my life, I did, too.

She recognized that much of what made Angry Jew work was that it proudly boasted it was “Made by Jews” on the start screen. She said developers should be sensitive to how they represent cultures and identities, but “you want to be able to make fun of yourself, too,” she said. “Part of the playfulness of games is being able to kind of tease yourself and laugh at the foibles that we all have. We all have weaknesses. We all have flaws. And that's the beauty of games. They allow us to grapple with the messiness that is humanity and to play with our identities. And games allow us to feel like we don't have to be perfect all the time. We're just allowed to be the silly, unique, complex people that we are.”

Playing a game about my history created by people with similar backstories was a powerful experience. If it were created by non-Jews, it would have hit much different—especially the jokes. “There's a concept of punching up or punching down,” Daniel Kelley, associate director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center for Technology, told me when I asked him about when the line crosses from funny into being bigoted. He said what matters is who the joke is on: the oppressors or the marginalized folks.

De Vries admits he likes to “poke the bear,” but knew when they were going too far. “It's bringing awareness through laughter and disturbing what is acceptable,” Elnekave said. Still, things got cut. A pig riding mode. Flaming tefillin. Hand of G-d invincibility. The initial character sketches for Mendel were tossed because Mendel looked too angry, almost like anti-Semitic propaganda.

After the game was launched, people complained the time machine resembled a gas chamber. Some kvetched about the name and the nose. The programmers received hate mail, but they also received oil painted fan art. The Anti Defamation League stamped Angry Jew with a Kosher symbol. The game was a hit in yeshivas. Their parents kvelled.

After a year and a half of creating Angry Jew, De Vries, Elnekave, and Frankel realized they needed a business plan. Turns out, they made great art, but not much money. There are sketches for levels based on the Spanish Inquisition and Exodus from Egypt, but they couldn’t justify making them financially.

The game “haunts” them, says Elnekave. When it became incompatible with new phone models, they received requests to revise it, so last year it was resurrected on Android and Apple devices with a new name: Mendel’s Quest. New glitches appear with new operating systems, but the developers continue to be pulled back to Mendel. It is “a Jewish story,” said Elnekave. “Everything is symbolic.” They are still “poking the bear” with their newest project, an NFT trading card venture titled Crypto Jews. Each card showcases a different historical figure, balancing pride with humor. The title is a play on Jews forced into conversion during the Spanish Inquisition.

I asked the programmers if they envisioned Angry Jew as a game that would only be played by Jews. “Is Golden Axe—a Viking game—only for Scandinavians?” De Vries replied.

I sat on that comment. One of the anti-Semitic tropes that has most damaged me is the concept that my trauma isn’t real. That I’m just another weak and whining Jew. Mendel’s Quest is played by players who have probably never met anyone Jewish. There are Indonesian fans. Chinese fans. Brazilian fans. Tons in Russia. They are acknowledging our scars. Laughing with our humor. Viewing the world through our eyes. They are falling in love with Mendel, too.