Growing up in the early aughts, I loved watching “Braceface.” It was an animated TV show that found a special place in my heart and one that my parents appreciated too because it was, according to them, “wise.” The protagonist, Sharon Spitz, was more relatable to me than any other fictional teenage girl in popular culture. Sharon didn’t have superpowers or an appearance befitting a supermodel rather than a junior high student. Her joys and struggles were familiar. She was real, and that realness felt comforting to me as a tween. But it wasn’t until I revisited the show in my late 20s that I truly grasped its trailblazing role in portraying diversity and challenging the conventional Jewish tropes.
The show begins when Sharon Spitz’s life becomes suddenly complicated by braces with extraordinary electromagnetic powers! The magical element of the show isn’t the part I am most interested in revisiting, though — I’m more concerned about the breakthrough moments of her adolescent life as she experiences puberty, her teenage problems revolving around relationships and striving for independence and of course, the way the show portrayed her Jewish identity.
Sharon is an empathetic junior high student concerned about social issues and animal rights, with dreams of becoming a vet one day. Sharon is the middle child. She lives with her two brothers — Adam and Josh — and their mother, Helen, while their father, Richard, is usually out of town pursuing a career as a musician. Richard and Helen divorced when the siblings were little. Through their father, Adam, Sharon and Josh are Jewish.
The show peppers its episodes with Jewish moments throughout the series, more than I’d ever seen on a mainstream show at the time it was airing live. The Christmas episode “Angels Among Us” introduces The Spitz siblings’ ethnicity. Sharon loves Christmas and Christmas-related customs. She’s disappointed when her family doesn’t participate in Christmas preparations like they used to do. Everyone is busy except for Josh, who chooses to dive into the family’s Jewishness and celebrate Hanukkah instead.
It’s clear that actively celebrating Judaism is something brand new at the Spitz house. Josh’s disastrous attempt to cook latkes leaves Sharon palpably startled. “Since when do you celebrate anything other than Christmas?” she asks dismissively. “So? We are fifty percent Jewish,” Josh replies. “We should at least make an effort to see what that side’s about.” Sharon gets even more upset when Josh proudly proclaims he will abstain from partaking in Christmas-related customs in honor of his new beliefs, causing the two to end up in a heated argument.
In search of the perfect Christmas, Sharon visits her best friend, half-Chinese and half-Italian Maria, whose family combines Chinese and Italian traditions to celebrate together. Much to Sharon’s surprise, she comes home to her family preparing for Christmukkah. Josh apparently misses Christmas caroling and eagerly joins in when Sharon improvises an impromptu Hanukkah carol: “On the first day of Hanukkah my bubbe gave to me,” sings Sharon, and Josh concludes: “two spinning dreidels and a bagel with cream cheese”. Helen is in the kitchen baking Christmas dishes, apologizing for not prioritizing family over work. The family then reunites in the backyard to honor everyone’s traditions. Josh lights the menorah with help from Helen’s cousin and recites the blessing encouraged by all gathered around the table.
The show also dives deeper into some of the harder parts of being Jewish. In the episode “Grey Matters,” Sharon is confronted with her sense of Jewish identity for the first time when her maternal grandfather pays a visit and begins to drop tone-deaf remarks about Sharon’s friends based on their ethnic backgrounds. After Maria calls Sharon out on her acceptance of his prejudiced jokes toward Maria and her boyfriend Mohammed, Sharon worries that her grandfather may be racist and wonders if growing up as his grandchild made her insensitive to prejudice. Since Sharon’s Jewish background is no secret, and her friend group is a diverse cast of characters, her friend Dion — a gay boy — dismisses her suspicions: “You’re half-Jewish, half-WASP, your best friend’s a Chinese-Italian mix, Brock’s Black and I’m adorable. If you were racist, don’t you think you’d have a problem with all that variety in your life?”
Tensions rise when Sharon confronts her grandfather about his judgmental views about others. “My family came from England 300 years ago, and I let your mother marry a rock drummer,” he says before adding, “and a Jew no less.” Sharon is hurt on a personal level. By this point in the series, the show has made it clear to the viewer that while she might not be the most vocal about her Jewish background, Sharon is very grounded in who she is. Helen tries to defend her father, explaining to an angry Sharon that her grandfather has nothing against Jewish people, but coming from a small town, he didn’t have contact with other Jews and didn’t know what to expect when he met Sharon’s father. Sharon’s not satisfied with Helen’s response. By the end of the episode, Sharon realizes that in spite of her grandfather’s big heart, he struggles to approach what he perceives to be a changing world in an appropriate way. Meanwhile, Sharon is accustomed to that world — it’s the only one she’s ever known.
Throughout the series, Sharon and her brothers break the popular tropes about what it means to look Jewish. The three siblings inherited different features from both parents. None of them has a stereotypically prominent nose or curly hair — their Jewish father is actually blonde and blue-eyed — but it doesn’t make them less secure about their Jewish identity.
Although Richard’s connection to Judaism and Jewish tradition is inconspicuous, it plays a somewhat important, yet hard-to-identify, role in his and his family’s life. Whenever Sharon gets into trouble, Helen calls her by her full name: Sharon Esther Spitz. The series never clarifies after whom Sharon got her middle name (beloved Bubbe?), but its Jewishness clearly stands out among the family’s overall tendency to lean towards WASP culture. Diasporic families often give a common first name to facilitate blending in with the majority, while the middle name highlights the cultural identity, allowing switching between the two when needed. It’s never explained why Helen kept Richard’s great-grandma’s Hanukkah menorah. Perhaps Richard didn’t want his children to forget their Jewish roots despite the divorce, or maybe Helen, a therapist always concerned about everyone’s mental health, considered it crucial for the siblings to be able to explore their Jewish heritage.
The show deftly features the challenges of navigating differences in an interfaith family, which the Spitz family handles exceptionally well. Each sibling has a different approach regarding their Jewish ancestry. Josh wants to explore his Jewishness. The siblings’ patrilineal descent is never raised as an argument as to why he shouldn’t, and throughout the series, it’s never pointed out as less valid. Sharon seems to share Adam’s indifference to Jewish descent until she feels personally attacked by her grandfather’s comments. In a subtle way, it shows that regardless of her observance, Sharon perceives being Jewish as part of her identity.
There are other Jewish easter eggs in the series. One of the Spitz cats is called Moishe. Sharon’s high school teacher is Mr. Melamed, which translates literally to “teacher” in Hebrew. Adam has a friend named Isaac Rosenberg. Sharon is voiced by Jewish actress — and one of the show’s producers — Alicia Silverstone. The two share a striking resemblance: both are green-eyed blondes with Jewish fathers (though, unlike Helen, Alicia’s mother has converted).
“Braceface” showcased and celebrated underrepresented groups in the early aughts, when diversity in popular culture was close to non-existent. The Spitz’s inconspicuous yet unapologetic Jewishness questions the cliches about Jews, reaching out to those who feel less Jewish due to their appearance, patrilineal descent, complex family backgrounds or lost connection to Judaism. The show illustrates that Jewishness comes in all shapes and sizes, and that identity is for nobody but us to define.
Late Take is a series on Hey Alma where we revisit Jewish pop culture of the past for no reason, other than the fact that we can’t stop thinking about it?? If you have a pitch for this column, please e-mail submissions@heyalma.com with “Late Take” in the subject line.
