Misused: Matzo Fever

The trope as defined in the text is a variant of Everyone Looks Sexier if French, where someone finds Jews especially attractive. However, many of the examples listed are cases where one member of a romantic couple simply happens to be Jewish, and the other one has never said that s/he prefers Jews, which of course isn't really a trope at all. Also, in some examples it's even mentioned that someone loves a Jewish guy/girl despite her Jewishness, which would be the opposite of Matzo Fever.

On the main page, these examples definitely fall under the categories of "s/he just happens to be Jewish" or "loving someone despite her being a Jew":

• X-Men: Colossus and Kitty Pryde have had an on-and-off relationship over the years.
• In Miller's Crossing, two Irish-American gangsters get into a love triangle with a Jewish woman.
• The Fearless Vampire Killers: Alfred falls instantly in love with the beautiful Sarah. Ironically, Alfred is played by the very Jewish Roman Polański, while Sarah is played by Texas bombshell Sharon Tate. The couple hooked up in real life.
• The Illusionist: This is a strong part of the subtext. The protagonist Eisenheim, a.k.a. Eduard Abramovich, is only Ambiguously Jewish (but not very ambiguously), but it's hard to escape the conclusion that the Crown Prince isn't the only reason he and Duchess Sophie von Teschen have to move to America to be together.
• In Mr And Mrs Smith, Mrs. Smith (played by Angelina Jolie and therefore awesomely hot) tells her husband, once she's finally started being honest with him, "I'm Jewish."
• In Richard III in the 21st Century, the titular time-displaced monarch falls for a beautiful single mom, Sarah Levine. He's shocked to discover she's Jewish and afraid of what this could do to their relationship and/or future children, being a medieval Catholic and all, but he comes around to happily going with the flow.
• Fran Fine in The Nanny is very, very Jewish, and attracts the attention of dozens of men over the years, including many celebrities and (of course) her boss the Broadway producer Mr. Sheffield.
• Glee: Puck and Rachel date for no reason other than that they are both Jewish in a very obvious parody of the Token Minority Couple. Rachel also has a Stalker with a Crush in the form of Jacob Ben Israel (yeah, guess what religion he is).
• Northern Exposure milked the Belligerent Sexual Tension between Maggie O'Connell and the show's Jewish protagonist Joel Fleischmann for several seasons before finally giving them their Slap-Slap-Kiss.
• Lisa from Saved by the Bell was originally written as a Jewish American Princess so Screech's affection for her would have been this. She was rewritten when Lark Voorhees was cast.
• In a Suburgatory episode where resident Alpha Blonde Dalia dyes her hair and starts hanging out with a nerdy wannabe-magician named Evan (who she earlier mocked and ignored), it's believed she's just covering up her father re-marrying and her not being included. Then Evan dumps her, a further social disgrace, and she returns to her old hair color and social circle. The end of the episode shows her sneaking off to the garage to study the Torah.
• It takes a while for him to realize it and then admit it, but Oliver has it bad for Felicity in Arrow. Barry Allen and Ray Palmer have also been smitten with Ms. Smoak, although in the comics Ray is Jewish.
• Kelly Kelly played with this trope. She's half Jewish and Matt Stryker once referred to her as "the hottest Hebrew". She was Jerry Lawler's favourite Diva and was promoted as the Ms. Fanservice of the women. But then again her being Jewish was hardly common knowledge and they rarely acknowledged it aside from the occasional line on commentary.
• Esther in The Bible was chosen to be the Great King's Hot Consort and was the Persian Empire's most beautiful woman. At least the King thought so. And some other Jewish people in the Bible are described as beautiful as well.
• Rachel Stevens of the band S Club 7 is Jewish. While the rest of them had to audition, she was requested through her modelling agency to come in and record a demo tape. She found out she had been accepted within two weeks while the rest weren't chosen until after six months. In the TV show that came with the music, Rachel was presented as the glamorous beauty of the group. After splitting up with her boyfriend for the second season, she became a Serial Romeo.
• The Merchant of Venice: Jessica might be the oldest example of this in popular western literature. Jessica is the beautiful daughter of Shylock, and she runs away with Lorenzo, the gentile nobleman in love with her.

But those are just cases where I'm familiar with the work, or where the description makes it clear there's no "Jew fetish" involved, I'm sure several of the other examples don't fit the trope either.

There are also a couple of examples which appear to have nothing to do with romance/attraction as portrayed in the work rather than fandom loving a Jewish person:

• The X-Files: Fox Mulder of is of Jewish descent (according to his actor, himself part-Jewish). Guess after whose fandom the Estrogen Brigade trope was named.
• John Zorn is of Jewish descent and has mixed klezmer in his music. Some of his albums are very much inspired by Hebrew texts and Judaism. For instance, his album "Kristallnacht", the album "Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass" and his recordings with the bands Masada and Bar Kokhba to name a few.

So it looks like a major cleanup of examples would be needed for this trope?

edited 26th Jul '16 2:43:14 PM by Tuomas

Good strong OP. Opening.

My suggestion would be to cut all the examples that don't fit, then add an exclaimer to the description, something like this:

Note that this trope only covers cases where Jews are considered to be particularly attractive within a fictional work. It doesn't apply if a character in a romantic pairing simply happens to be Jewish without the other character showing any preference for Jews, nor does it apply to fans in real life finding Jewish actors or characters hot.

edited 27th Jul '16 4:58:24 AM by Tuomas

Yes, looks like a clear case where we simply have to cut the existing misuse and tighten the description. The additional paragraph proposed above sounds good.

Also agreeing that that's a sensible change to make.

Looking at the page, there's so few examples that actually fit I wonder why we need "Everyone Looks Sexier if French: Jewish Edition." It's the epitome of The Same But More Specific and I can't help but leaving it, even with a tightened description, will still lead to misuse.

edited 27th Jul '16 6:19:34 AM by Larkmarn

Everyone Looks Sexier if French, as it's defined now, is about specific nationalities, but obviously Jews live in many different countries, so Matzo Fever is more about culture and ethnicity. And we have tropes that are based on ethnic/cultural stereotypes rather than nationalistic ones: Sexy Scandinavian, Latin Lover, Sensual Slavs... Technically these could all be merged under one trope page, like Attractive Ethnicity or something, but I think there are differences between what aspect of a specific ethnicity is stereotypically depicted as attractive. For example, based on the (legit) examples under Matzo Fever, it seems the Jewish culture is typically shown to be what makes them particularly attractive, whereas with Sexy Scandinavian, for example, the attractiveness is more about the stereotypical Scandinavian physical appearance. And with Latin Lover, it's a combination of both.

edited 2nd Aug '16 2:42:20 AM by Tuomas

I'm good with adding that disclaimer.

Can't figure out a way to not make this sound lightly anti-Semetic (and whether "culture" and "nationality" are sufficiently different), but are there enough examples of people attracted by Judaism to count for a trope? As OP points out, the trope gets wind up used as "attractive Jews" not "attractive because Jewish" which is a huge difference (in that, you know, the first is not a trope at all).

edited 2nd Sep '16 8:50:58 AM by Larkmarn

We have a lot of "tropes" that are just attractive X. Honestly, I think we should ditch all of them. They're largely just a place for people to say they thing a character is hot, no matter if they are In-Universe or not or if it has any bearing on the work.

Characters' looks having an effect on the plot should be troped, but I'm not so sure if just being hot is enough.

I mean, look at Hot Scoop. It's just a list of every fictional reporter who turned someone on and the wicks are even worse. The problem goes beyond this one trope.

You know, ~shimaspawn has a point.

Maybe what we need is a supertrope that does not allow aversions or straight examples like Most Common Superpower does about how people in fiction tend to be attractive. Then we can ditch all these specific tropes and their examples, move any interesting ones to the supertrope and list specific patterns in an analysis page.

@ Tuomas: So Race Fetish but more specific? Because between cutting out examples where a character is attracted to someone in spite of their Judaism and examples where they're just "hot Jew" I don't think we've really got enough examples to justify a subtrope here.

Clock expired a long time ago and no progress since then. Closing.