Where are the jews in medieval fantasy?

[sqbr]

Disclaimer: fantasy is not my favourite genre, so I may simply be missing a whole swathe of books which disprove my argument. Also, I'm pretty ignorant about history, so may be spouting crap. My apologies if so :)

A lot of fantasy novels are set in Europe, or region which is obviously meant to represent Europe, set roughly during the medieval/renaissance eras. As well as analogs of european countries like England or France there are also analogs (or straight depictions) of the countries/ethnic groups which interacted with europe in this time ie Asia (Carthak in "The Emporer Mage"), the middle east (the Roknari in the Chalion books), Roma (gypsies) (the Tsingani in Kushiel's Legacy) etc. These depictions are often very stereotypical and exoticised, relying largely on the rather racist and essentialist attitudes of the time rather than modern understandings of what those cultures were/are actually like.

But it suddenly struck me recently: where are the jews? Jews played an important part in european history, and (as far as I can tell) were present in fairly large numbers in most european countries. Yet I can't think of any fantasy which has a non-nomadic discriminated against group which lives within multiple "european" countries and identifies as a separate subculture/religion(*). The closest I can come up with are non-human races (like the ghemphs from "The Isles of Glory"), which gives a biological reason for them to keep to themselves and be treated with suspicion by the locals. I think that's a bit creepy when you think about it as a direct metaphor.

So, have I just been reading the wrong books? Or is this a real blindspot in fantasy? Some googling found me Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon, about "a fabled kingdom of wild, red-haired Jews on the western shore of the Caspian Sea", a list of sff by jews, and a bunch of anti-Semitism.

If I'm not imagining it, would people say it's because people aren't comfortable using the racist stereotypes of the time (good!) and don't want to accurately depict how nasty the antisemitism was? (The same way a lot of authors shy away from accurate depictions of the classism and sexism etc) Or is it just because a lot of these stories are based on England, which expelled it's jews from 1290-1656, pretty much exactly the era these stories are set in? In any case I think it's a pity, but I guess my desire for imagination and originality is one of the reasons I tend to avoid fantasy :/

(*) these seem like the most signifiant qualities, at least the ones which lend themselves to telling a different sort of story to the usual fantasy fare.

Comments

[seaya.livejournal.com]

I read somewhere that the dwarves are supposed to represent the Jews in Tolkien. Shrug.

I'm kinda glad though that it isn't obvious that we are in there, because it *would* be disgustingly stereotyped.

[leecetheartist.livejournal.com]

The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon could be interpreted equally well as fantasy or historical fiction. It's pretty cool. It's by Richard Zimler. http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/07/19/bib/980719.rv122549.html

[oliverm.livejournal.com]

I always considered the Styrics in the Elenium/Tamuli to be at the very least reminiscent of the Jews. (Yes, I know it's Eddings)

That's all that springs to mind offhand.

[violetsquirrel.livejournal.com]

I'll be back when I've figured out just why my reaction to this post is "Huh? Why would anyone do that?"

[nicholii.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure that I have seen Jews in lots of historical fantasy, but it seems that you are asking about fantasy in general which is inspired but not set in medieval/dark age Europe.

To which I would ask "How is the presence of Jews a necessary part of the romance of the period?" What authors, in my opinion, have been inspired by are the ideas of feudalism, chivalry, paganism, and the heroic epic, which populated our modern romantic conceptions of the time.

One must not forget the fact that fantasy is fantasy, and I do not think that maligned racial minorities are a necessary part of fantasy (unless they happen to be of the magical or crazy cult varieties). There is, indeed, a lot of racism in fantasy, but it is usually rather heroic.

Or perhaps it is that "essentialism" that you spoke of. Fantasy often portrays different groups as being different in their very essence, rather than for arbitrary reasons. Thus the "Jews" of such worlds are not humans.

But that is just my opinion, which may be somewhat biased since I personally don't actually see what the fuss is really about.

[evil-megz.livejournal.com]

I would imagine it's largely due to fantasy racial/social groups that could be interpreted as metaphors for real racial/social groups being used because it adds something to the story, and Jews aren't as 'exotic' as most of the other groups you identify so don't add as much to a fantasy genre, and thus there are less identifiable fantasy-Jew-metaphors.

I also think there are actually quite a few (though my fantasy literature knowledge is limited) cases that could be interpreted as metaphors for Jewish groups but they are less explicit than other groups, due to less obvious physical differences between Jews and Default White Race.

[pedanther]

I see it's on the sf-by-jews list, but I immediately thought of Guy Gavriel Kay's The Lions of Al-Rassan, which has Jewishish characters along with the Christianish characters and Moorishish characters. But (reflecting on your 1290-1656 comment) it's based on a specific time and place in medieval Europe where there were Jews around.

[kadeton.livejournal.com]

In all the medieval sources I've read (I'm studying medieval history at the moment) the Jews are presented only as the people that everyone beats up constantly when they're not fighting real wars. Crusaders, in particular, would generally make a point of raiding every Jewish community in their path to Jerusalem in order to 'recover' the wealth that the Jews had 'stolen' from good Christians. 'Jewish' seems to have been used to describe a set of attributes such as greed, cowardice, low cunning and a propensity for lying, such that, for example, the Greeks were accused of becoming 'too Jewish' in their manner as a justification for the Fourth Crusade sacking Constantinople.

My impression is that anti-Semitism was a pretty fundamental part of medieval Christianity (and the Muslims didn't like them either). It's genuinely puzzling how they managed to survive, actually - when every account is of Jewish villages getting massacred or having all their material wealth stolen, it's a wonder that there's always more (seemingly prosperous) Jewish villages for the next lot of itinerant thugs to smash to bits.

As far as fantasy literature, I would say that most authors probably just don't think of it. Given that the majority of medieval fantasy is based much more heavily on the established genre tropes than an understanding of the wider context of medieval history (and since fantasy publishers seem to be incredibly conservative), there's a lot of regurgitation, and the inclusion of Jews simply hasn't been established. That, and it would be quite hard to reconcile modern sensibilities about race with the actions of authentic medieval characters (without making the Jewish analogue one of those inherently evil non-human races that it's okay to oppress and still be heroic). The lack of Jews in England during the later medieval period is also definitely something to consider.

[nico-wolfwood.livejournal.com]

I suspect you didn't read the second book of the Kushiel's Legacy series (Kushiel's Chosen) because she writes a very thinly disguised Jewish community in it (the Yeshuites). Yeshua, the fictional equivalent of Jesus is mentioned in the first book and (spoiler warning!) half the Yeshuite community takes up arms and goes off in search of a holy land (paralleling the founding of the current nation-state of Israel). In the third book she delves even more into Jewish myth and writes about the finding of one of the lost tribes and the ark of the covenant.

Also, the Lions of Al-Rassan mentions the Jewish people in a equally undisguised manner (the Kindath). I'd argue that the book is not quite fantasy (not much supernatural stuff) but it's different enough that it's definitely not an alternate history. I class it with fantasy simply because of the tone of the writing and because it's set in the same world as several others which do have supernatural events.

I don't think authors deliberately avoid writing about Jewish characters so much as they see no reason to include the religion/people unless they're going to contribute something to the story. If no one was writing them it would be unusual but as it is I suspect it's more that stories in which Jewish people would be written about/in to aren't that prevalent.