#it would have to be ed's dad who's Jewish and I can't see Ed embracing anything from him

[oak1985]

In honor of Taika Waititi’s Jewish heritage, but mostly because I’m Jewish and I want it: have some Jewish Ed Teach.

Every year since he’s captained his own ship, Ed makes sure that he’s got barrels of apples and jars of honey on board before Rosh Hashanah.  Those two days he’ll just sit in his cabin, eating whole jars of honey, plunging a spoon or his knife or his whole fucking hand into the jar.  It’s not until his first autumn with Stede, though, licking honey off of Stede’s soft lips and his rosy nipples and his long fingers, that Ed thinks the sweetness might actually last through the year.  

Ed gets his first tattoo after he kills his father, a small chai on the palms of his murderer’s hands, because he intends to fucking live, damn it.  (The fact that palm tattoos fade easily, so he has to get them redone every few years, the sting and wince and the reminder that life hurts doesn’t have anything to do with it, fuck you). It’s a promise and a curse and Ed glories in the fact that Jews aren’t supposed to get tattoos and here he is staking a claim to his father’s people and repudiating that patriarchal authority of can and can’t and should and shouldn’t in the same breath. 

Pirates don’t get days of rest anymore than they get retirement, but one Friday night, Ed asks Stede to braid his hair and when Stede murmurs in his ear that he looks like the Sabbath Queen, Ed reflects that he is learning new ways to be a pirate all the time.  

Ed doesn’t believe much in God and wouldn’t worship one if he did, but every time he tricks the English navy or takes a Spanish galleon or fires on a French warship, he thinks about Daniel facing lions and Judah Maccabee’s guerrilla warfare and Judith beheading Holofernes because he’s too focused on his dick and her tits to think a woman could be a threat (and isn’t that a fucking gorgeous fuckery, eh?) and Ed thinks that the real miracles are the small, oppressed, hurting peoples of the world who refuse to succumb to the power of empires.  

Ed’s broken half the Commandments by the time he’s 14 and the other half bite the dust as soon as he becomes a pirate and it’s never bothered him.  Still doesn’t.  But after Stede takes back the ship and the marooned crew returned and Lucius emerges from (the realm of the dead, Davy Jones’ locker) the fucking secret passageways, what the fuck, Ed starts to think about teshuvah.  Starts to think about returning.  To himself, as he wipes off the greasepaint and tears and tries to figure out who the fuck he wants to be.  To equilibrium, as he offers Lucius knife lessons (that Black Pete ends up taking instead) and lets Jim curse him out in Spanish for long hours and gives embroidery thread and a shake of his hand to Frenchie and helps Fang pick out a puppy.  To belonging, as he works his way through apologies to every one of the crew.  To softness, as he steals armloads of books for Stede’s library.  To love, as he cuddles Stede close and tries not to grip him with fear but to hold him with trust.

The day that Ed bites into a challah Roach baked for him, it tastes like home.  It’s stupid, maybe, his mother made parāoa rēwena and takakau, not his father’s foods, so it’s not like Ed grew up with challah in his home.  But then again the home he was born into never felt very much like one.  It’s only here, with the family he and Stede have chosen to build together, that Ed thinks the exile might have finally found--no, made--a home.  

#jewish #ed teach #taika waititi #does it make sense? #not really #it would have to be ed's dad who's Jewish and I can't see Ed embracing anything from him #but I don't care #I wants it #I WANT THE PRETTY #edward teach #our flag means death #ofmd #ed is not observant and neither am i #sorry if the chai tattoo offends people #but it actually seems very in character to me #diaspora #british empire #empire #google tells me that parāoa rēwena and takakau are māori breads #māori folks please let me know if there's an error here