Jews in fantasy

[polaris_starz]

I know people have been posting links to their own Jewish-themed fanfic, but I didn't seen a post for recommending other people's-- if there is, please point it out to me. But anyway, today I was looking through my bookmarks and stumbled over this: Kaddish, by copperbadge, which is a HP fic about Remus and Harry saying Kaddish for James, Lily, and Sirius

Comments

[mamadeb]

Most fantasy novels (other than those specifically set in contemporary Earth) seem to take place on medieval/Renaissance/European worlds, where the people all practice some form of paganism, often with very active/present gods and goddesses. There's clearly no room for Judaism on such a world, and even worshiping just One God would be odd.

There's a much smaller subset of Catholic worlds - Katherine Kurtz, C. Dale Brittain and Christopher Stasheff come to mind. Here we have a clear Medieval Europe world with maybe some variation in the names of the countries, where there is no doubt about Catholicism. It's one of the basics of the fantasy world. Here, too, you can't have Jews, because their existence is a problem, and there's no way of getting around it without being antisemitic, something I'm sure the authors themselves don't want to write. Better to not have the problem at all. (Brittain has a universe where the Temple still stands. And yet, all are Catholic. *shrug*)

Misty Lackey has it both ways in her Bardic Voices series, where there is both a functional paganism and an all-powerful Church (guess who are the bad guy?) who worship a Sacrificed God. (This, I believe, is a bit of Christian privilege. All monotheisms resemble their own monotheism. Since Christianity is based on a sacrifice, so must all be. It's annoying.)

That said, there *is* a Jewish element that pops up a lot in novels set post-Renaissance times - the golem. People love the Golem, which itself originated in an 18th Century fantasy story.

[lomedet]

There was a short story in on of the Deryni collections about Arilan's relationship with a rabbi in Rhemuth. I can't remember now if the story was by Kurtz herself or a fan, but I remember her saying that the Deryni themselves function in a lot of ways as the Jews of the Twelve Kingdoms, but that (at least in her head) there were also Jews in that world.

The other book of hers that comes to mind is Lammas Night. It's a story about the magical protection of Britain during WWWII, and while the main character is a pagan, there are some interesting appearances by practicing kabbalists.

And The Lions of Al-Rassan is one of my favorite novels, not least because the analogues to real-world history are so clear. The Kindath are Jews in lots of ways, and the story rings emotionally true to me as a story of the Reconquista.

[technocracygirl]

Though the first of Misty Lackey's Talia books has the "People of the One" or somesuch, embodied in the cook, who only has a few lines. He seemed to be coded more Jewish than Christian to me.