feature
Meet the Real-Life Sister Act Behind the
A Jackie Hajdenberg | JTA
s children in upstate New York, twin sisters Julia
DeVillers and Jennifer Roy went to Hebrew
school three days a week, spent their summers
at a JCC summer camp and got to know local Holocaust
survivors through their father, who survived the Nazis as a
child in Poland. They also celebrated Christmas with their
mother’s family.

Aware of their dual religious and cultural backgrounds
from a young age, DeVillers and Roy personally sent their
public elementary school principal a letter asking to place
a menorah next to the school Christmas tree. The girls
gathered a couple of the other Jewish students together to
present the letter to the principal, to resounding success:
A real menorah was added to the school’s holiday display.

It was something straight out of an American Girl story.

And as of this week, in a sense, it is one.

Last week, American Girl released its fi rst twin dolls,
Isabel and Nicki Hoff man, who are also the fi rst characters
from an interfaith family. Their stories take place in the late
1990s and were written by DeVillers and Roy, inspired by
the sisters’ own childhood experiences. The twin dolls’
parents are, respectively, Jewish and Christian, and their
mother, Robin, is named after the authors’ mother.

“It’s incredibly special to us that the twins bring this
Jewish and interfaith representation that so many kids will
relate to,” DeVillers said.

Roy added, “People are not necessarily one thing or
another these days. And while we are Jewish, we did grow
up with both holidays and both cultures in our family. And
that’s how we wanted our characters to be and to feel.”
The dolls are a milestone in how the lived experience of
many American Jews is refl ected in popular culture. Recent
surveys of Jewish Americans consistently note high rates
of interfaith marriage, and show that a signifi cant portion
Above: Isabel and Nicki Hoff man are the two newest American Girl dolls in the historical collection.

18 MARCH 2, 2023 | JEWISH EXPONENT
Dolls: Jackie Hajdenberg via JTA; Book: Photo courtesy of American Girl. Design by Jackie Hajdenberg, via JTA; Authors: Courtesy of American Girl via JTA
Two New ’90s Jewish
American Girl Dolls



Background: Andrii Vinnikov/iStock / Getty Images Plus; Computer Icons: vatrushka67/iStock / Getty Images Plus; Sticker icons: Sofi r/iStock / Getty Images Plus
of those couples raise their children
either fully or partly Jewish.

Isabel and Nicki are the second
and third historical Jewish American
Girl dolls,
joining Rebecca
Rubin. Rebecca’s story refl ected an
earlier generation’s perception of
normative American Jewish identity:
Her family immigrated from Russia
and lives in New York’s Lower East
Side in 1914, while navigating issues
of assimilation and religion.

Stories of joint Chanukah-
t novel
rs fi
e Christmas
celebrations are not
th ,”
ki and Nic
“Meet Isabel about the Hoff man twins, exactly new. A TV episode Isabel and
in the series ed in August.

Nicki’s character’s might have watched
will be releas
as teenagers, “The Best Chrismukkah
Ever” from the drama “The O.C.,” aired nearly two decades ago.

But the dolls and their stories are “super innovative and relevant
for 21st-century Jewish interfaith families,” said Keren McGinity, the
interfaith specialist for the Conservative movement of Judaism and
a professor of American studies at Brandeis University.

“Anytime there’s cultural representation that depicts real life, it’s a
good thing,” McGinity said, though she added that some depictions
of interfaith families are more robust than others.

“On the one hand, it’s terrifi c that they’re refl ecting contemporary
American Jewish life by depicting an interfaith family through these
characters and reinforcing the fact that it only takes one Jewish parent
to raise Jewish children,” she added. “And it remains to be seen how
they are Jewish beyond celebrating the December holidays, and
how they’re interfaith beyond celebrating the December holidays,
plural.” The new twin dolls are the latest in American Girl’s iconic series
of dolls, which hail from diff erent eras of American history and come
with novels about their lives. American Girl has historically aimed to
present a diverse set of dolls. Other recent off erings include Evette
Peeters, a biracial girl who cares for the environment, and Kavi
Sharma, an Indian-American girl who loves Broadway musicals.

The new historical characters, Isabel and Nicki, retail for $115 each.

Their stories are written by DeVillers and Roy, respectively, and
begin on Dec. 11, 1999, when they receive their journals as a gift for
the last night of Chanukah.

They have their own distinct personalities, which the authors say
somewhat resemble what they were like as kids: Isabel has a preppy
style and loves dancing, and is advertised wearing a pink cable-knit
sleeveless sweater over a pinstripe shirt, with a plaid skirt, platform
shoes and a beret. Nicki likes skateboarding and writing song lyrics,
and appears on the American Girl website wearing a backwards
baseball cap,
choker necklace,
blue T-shirt dress
and sneakers, with a
fl annel shirt tied around her
waist. Isabel’s book begins with a nod to a late-1990s
fad: “Hi, New Journal! You’re my present for the last night
of Hanukkah!! I was going to save you for after Christmas and New
Year’s, but we also got NEW GEL PENS!”
In Nicki’s book, her interfaith identity is mentioned two weeks
later: “Did I mention my family celebrates Hanukkah AND Christmas?
Well, we do.”
The two journals, “Meet Isabel” and “Meet Nicki” are fi lled with
text and sold with the dolls. The stories take place during the same
time frame, as the girls celebrate the winter holidays, face their fears,
make new friends and worry about Y2K. A longer novel, “Meet Isabel
and Nicki” is set for release in August as the fi rst in the Isabel and
Nicki historical series. It will take place during the same month as the
shorter journals, but will delve further into the time period. Readers
will get to spend the last night of Chanukah with the Hoff mans,
lighting the menorah and playing dreidel.

McGinity said she would have to wait until the new book comes
out to see what the girls’ representation looks like, given that the
journals are so short.

“I feel like we don’t have enough intel other than ‘OK, the authors
are Jewish, the characters are Jewish, they grew up in an interfaith
household,’” she added.

The crowded fl agship American Girl store in New York City has
already begun promoting Isabel and Nicki by showcasing the
twins’ diff erent outfi ts and bedroom and accessory collections, with
dozens of the dolls positioned throughout the store.

“While we’re not able to provide specifi c sales information, I can
say we’ve been happy to see the positive response for the new
characters,” a representative for the company said.

Roy and her sister have previously written a series of children’s
novels about twins, and Roy also authored “Yellow Star,” a 2006
children’s book about her aunt’s remarkable survival as one of the
only children to be liberated from the Lodz Ghetto. Roy said she and
her sister are grateful for the chance to tell their family’s story in a
new way.

“So we don’t know what cultures, faiths, religions are coming
beyond this,” said Roy, referring to future American Girl products.

“But what we did know was that if we were writing in the holiday
season, we really wanted to include parts of ourselves and that’s
what American Girl editors all said: ‘We’d love to have you remember
from your childhood.’ And this was our childhood.” ■
Top, right: Isabel and Nicki’s stories are loosely based
on the childhood experiences of authors and real-life
twins Julia DeVillers (right) and Jennifer Roy.

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