Where are the jews in medieval fantasy?

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?( Read more... )

What I've been reading (and watching)

I've been feeling sick a lot recently, and thus have read/watched a bunch of stuff.
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On the inventiveness of teenagers

So, I don't drink, never really got into it, and it's been nearly ten years since I was a teenager.

But while adding a tax to pre mixed drinks may cut down on teens drinking, wouldn't the logical solution just be for them to...mix their own drinks?

If I was a bottleshop owner I'd start selling value packs of fanta and vodka.

EDIT: Cam has pointed out that if any of you were dumb enough to go "Oh well, guess I'll have to stop drinking" I've just set you back on the path to drunkenness and ruin. Eh, I don't think any of you are teenagers anyway :)

EDIT 2: So apparently they're just making the tax more consistent, since it used to be cheaper to buy premixed drinks than the raw ingredients. That makes sense then, but the article is still dumb.