More grumbling about how the fans treat JKR...

[sweettalkeress]

I recognize that this is several months after the fact, but as a Jew, I can't help but be a bit miffed by the fact that people felt the need to ask Rowling if there were Jewish students at Hogwarts. Surely that's something they could have inferred themselves, if they so chose? Yet, they were so thrilled to learn that Anthony Goldstein was Jewish

Comments

[dungeonwriter]

How horrible do you have to think of Hogwarts when you think they wouldn't allow Jews, unless it's confirmed by author?

[attilathepbnun]

Perhaps they simply think nothing in the series is 'real' unless specifically confirmed by the author?

Some people are precise like that

[dungeonwriter]

It's frightening. I mean, why wouldn't there be? Are there people with earrings at Hogwarts? We shouldn't need to confirm that a place that supposedly lets in anyone with magical talent would not allow Jews.

Or are Jews just not able to be wizards?

[hwyla]

Not to mention that IF it were that important to someone in particular, then you think they would have noticed when a jewish name came up. It isn't as if Goldstein was added on. He was in the book all along.

Personally, while I am not jewish, I was more upset about the way the goblins seemed to have been given what would amount to presumed jewish stereotypical characteristics of the past. It wasn't quite as bad as say the medieval period, since no one accused goblins of eating babies (honestly believed once of the jews in medieval christian europe)

[sunnyskywalker]

Hm, well, there could be more than one issue at work here. I recall that a few years back, the producer of the show Midsomer Murders replied to a similar question by saying that he WASN'T planning to cast any black actors in the show because it was about a quintessentially English place or something like that. (I guess he decided that black people can be really English since because there are like six black people in the county now.) So the question might not be "are there Jewish students even if we have not seen them?" But "given the old timey feel with all the treacle tarts and no curry ever, is it still the 13th century at Hogwarts with no Jews allowed? You wrote black and Asian students in so maybe you are not opposed to Jews in your English boarding school fantasy?"

Also I have read more than one aacount of kids who concluded from never seeing their own groups in fantasy that it could not happen. Might have been Pam Noles in her essay "Shame" who remembered telling her dad that black people could not be wizards. And my own

[hwyla]

Except that Goldstein was there from the first book. He's the same year as Harry. He's even in the DA. So, if a young kid was looking for specifically jewish wizards as some sort of role model, I think he would have been noticed. True, he's not a main character - he's barely mentioned, but he is there.

[sunnyskywalker]

Easy enough to miss a name while skimming the crowd scenes to get to the action. Not everyone knows the names of chars who never do or say much backwards and forwards! Add that to the impression the goblins give and I can see how someone could miss the solitary clue, get the bad vibes subconsciously, and wonder.

[jana_ch]

It's not just the goblins. Can you think of anyone in the Potterverse with a large hooked nose and long greasy black hair who is persecuted and almost killed for no better reason than because he exists and who yearns "greedily" after a pure white woman who is altogether too good for him?