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Are Tolkien's Dwarves Really Based On The Jews?
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- Опубліковано 12 лип 2024
- In this video we explore the Jewish inspirations of Tolkien's Dwarves in the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, as well as debunking the existence of anti-semitism in Middle Earth!
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You guys are right on Gimli and the movies, I got them confused unfortunately!!
The tunneling Jews of NY were just cosplaying as dwarves
ua-cam.com/video/AOk3wBuQNcE/v-deo.html
Enough with the antisemitic and pedophilophobic remarks.
@@weeaboobaguette3943 pdf files deserve no such subscription to life. Don’t group those with actually targeted minorities
They delved too greedily and too deep… 😆
STOP NOTICING THINGS
"The dwarves dug too deep and too greedily"
People: are these jews?
This sort of shit always makes me laugh. Racists correlating one thing with a specific race and then saying “these purple dogmen from mars are Jews because they’re greedy” is really fuckin funny. Same shit happened with Star Wars and Trek, and sometimes it’s literally just the accent that sets them off. Like since when are Jamaicans idiotic clumsy rabbits? I don’t think that was ever a stereotype about them lmao
Ferengi of the mountain.
But who is Balrog then ? Adolf Hitler ?
@@petrklic7064 Roman Empire destroyed the Second Temple and displaced the Israelites.
@@sebastianb.1926 I was also thinking about this. BUT dwarves WORKED during their exile pilgrimage 🤣😆
Dwarves were a feature of *Norse* mythology many centuries before Tolkien was even born. They're actually one of the least creative elements of the Legendarium because they are so obviously derived from existing myths and Tolkien didn't bother to make changes.
It's literally just short people being made fun of by taller people.
He did establish the proper plural of Dwarves, which is cool. Could you imagine calling them "Dwarfs"
@@gregoryporch8395 i dont think so, no one is making fun of dwarves, quite the opposite people love dwarves. There are a bunch of games based on dwarves, metal bands and a bunch of other pop cultural things. Isnt it better that short people are also beeing represented in such a huge fashion instead of not beeing shown at all?
During and long before there were any Hebrews and their fantasy of a fake one false god Yahweh. Instead of The Many Trues Real Gods Creators/Destroyers of all.
@@charliejackson5492
Oh great, it's one of these jokers
It's important to keep in mind that greed is indeed a major theme in the world of Middle-Earth, wherein no race is immune. It plays into the overall theme of "Lord of the Rings" which is the alluring nature of evil. It plays a role, whether it would be the Ring of Power, the Palantir Stone, or even something as simple as Saruman speaking from the Tower of Orthanc in a grandfatherly voice. Once again, no race is immune. Not even Galadriel was immune to the Ring of Power as she explained to Frodo.
To say that fantasy races are based on the stereotypes of real-world races is completely reductive, especially when you consider how the Germanic myths of the dwarves, elves, goblins, giants, and ogres existed in the Germanic imaginations before any substantial contact with different ethnicities. Not only that, but many mythologies around the world already have their own versions of "little people," "big people," or "the mysterious people."
Thats because many of those have Indo-European roots. Btw. there are no Human "races" there is only one.
Tolkien writing an F you letter to the literal Nazis (at a time this posed a potential risk) is an amount of courage modern "activists" cant even dream of.
Indeed, modern activists like Heather Heyer, Salman Rushdie, Berta Caceres, Jamal Khashoggi, Malala Yousafzai and Stephane Charbonnier could never have mustered that kind of courage. Such courage was only possible long ago, during the Age of Heroes. The legendary men and women of that time, circa 1940, were built of different stuff than us late-living folk of today. We have no responsibility to be like them because we can't be blamed for the fact that we just don't have it in us and have no ability to live up to the towering examples they set for us. All the great larger-than-life Heroes are long gone, faded into misty memory, and their like will never be seen again. We shouldn't fool ourselves by believing too much in what we are capable of. It is far more reasonable to accept that we can never amount to much, so we shouldn't delude ourselves by trying. Who would we be fooling? Better and more reasonable to accept what evil comes our way, accommodate ourselves to it, and content ourselves with the lucky fact that the world is not even worse than how we find it. If we do not leave the world better than we found it, since we can't possibly do so, at least we can tell our grandchildren that we did not delude ourselves by acting as if we had a chance to improve the world when no such chance was really there. We can tell future generations that we were realistic and sensible when it counted, we were never foolhardy, we never allowed hope to get the better of us, and we never allowed our imaginations to run too far or ask too much of ourselves. We might have not been anything like those heroes of old, but at least we didn't have the audacity to pretend it was ever possible for such small creatures as ourselves to have followed in their giant footsteps.
@@sechernbiw3321 Rushdie et al are activists not "activists"
@@comentedonakeyboard Sure, but one of the most effective ways to demoralize, isolate and then ban real and sincere activists is by pointing at genuinely incompetent, counterproductive or insincere "activists", and then conflating "activism" with activism. This is what is happening when Putin for example successfully justifies banning all activists of any kind just by pointing at a few weird, crazy or foolish Western-funded "activists". The same story happens in nearly every country throughout the world, to varying degrees. The 1930s entartete kunst exhibitions were aimed at accomplishing the same tactic, and they worked. That's how it became possible for censors to have the authority, motive and popular support necessary to ban Tolkien in Germany.
Once "activism" becomes the problem (rather than incompetence, insincerity, or virtue signaling, etc. being the problems), it's a short step to muddy the waters between activism and "activism" and start constricting the rights of activists in general, regardless of their methods, goals, competence, sincerity or degree of courage or cowardice. There have always been incompetent, immature or insincere "activists", but there are also still competent and sincere activists today who are doing good and important work, and it's the latter that usually bear the brunt of sweeping campaigns against incompetent and crazy "activists", because people with power don't really care about incompetent and immature or cynical virtue signaling fools, they just want to use those people as an excuse to ban activists that might actually accomplish something worthwhile.
@@comentedonakeyboard Rushdie himself is a man of a different age at this point.
@@sechernbiw3321 ah a Theoden speech 😃
I’m Jewish and I really like Tolkien’s dwarves. I relate to several of their Jewish inspired traits - living in diaspora with unique linguistic elements, feeling kinship with distant relatives, pride in an ancient heritage, etc.
I think you did a great job showing that Tolkien did not intend any antisemitism in his dwarves, and I generally agree
Also, another really cool trait of Tolkien’s dwarves that we see through Gimli is their genuine love of geology, not just mining. In his poetic description of the beauty of the Glittering Caves, Gimli explains how he and his people will live there and basically turn them into a conservation project. Preserving the unique rock formations while living alongside the natural landscape
Edit: I’m sad to see some commenters here parroting all the negative antisemitic stereotypes that Tolkien himself stood against. Shame on you, and go meet some real Jews
I never saw the Dwarves as "egotistical schemers" those are the real stereotypes aren't they? The Dwarves aren't like that
@@GrosvnerMcaffrey Thorin became somewhat of an egotistical schemer when under the gold-lust in the Lonely Mountain.
Yes as a fellow Jew, I agree completely.
Because the Norse were thinking of Jewish people when coming up with the story of Fafnir. Honestly, this accusation feels like it comes straight out of a movie like Idiocracy.
This is so pathetic. Anybody who knows anything understands that Tolkien meant the Swabians, not the Jews. The PURELY German Swabians have the reputation of being a miserly bunch.
No, but Wagner, a very conspicuous anti-semite, definitely was when he made the dwarves into specific stereotypes of evil greedy Jews in the opera Der Ring des Nibulengunlied in 1876, and the 1924 silent film version by not anti-semitic Fritz Lang, which received 40 showings in the Royal Albert Hall in London in 1924.
I saw it in my Modern European class presented by my Austrian professor, who pointed out the very stereotypical Jewish-looking dwarves. I wonder if a certain Professor at Leeds University, who was extremely interested in Germanic mythology, popped down to London to see it
"Modern European History class"
Your conclusion says it all - an out of context quote can be used to justify anything
I was going to say that the hairy-footed hobbits reminded me of my own people - seemingly unconnected to the larger world, hidden out in their villages while the world of big empires do their thing…being clever and doing unexpected things. I doubt Tolkien would have thought of this in this way, it was my own feeling sympathy for the hobbit in my own origin story way. I’m sure that someone of Irish descent might feel similarly, given their history…
Another element often overlooked when citing the quotes around 7:00 is that the word "Semitic" has a specific, academic use within linguistics, referring to a family of languages stretching across the Middle East and North Africa that includes Hebrew, Arabic, Maltese, and Amharic, and dates back to ancient languages like Akkadian. When he describe Semitic linguistic traits as a philologist, Tolkien is referring to grammatic traits shared by many of these languages (e.g. the triliteral root system that Khuzdul seems to have inherited as inspiration), and not necessarily referring to merely just the Hebrew branch of the language family. However, the understanding of the word in the broader cultural is most often associated with the Jewish people because of the meaning of "anti-Semitic" or "anti-Semitism" has narrowed over time to specifically refer to this group. It's an unfortunate double meaning of the word for those unaware because, on the surface, it magnifies focus on Tolkien's Jewish inspirations, whereas the linguistic inspiration isn't necessarily limited to just that culture. The website Ardalambion has a good article on the Dwarvish language Khuzdul for those interested!
I find that people looking to find racist allegory in media are often, themselves, projecting their own racist perceptions onto the work. Especially in the case of Tolkien, who himself outwardly despised allegory and was openly against racism in every way you can imagine-to the point of telling off the Nazis in a personal letter in which he praised the Jewish people, and wishing himself to personally fight against Hitler in WWII.
Tolkien was clearly not an antisemite. Remember that he turned down the Nazis when they asked about his Aryan heritage., He said that if they meant did have Jewish ancestry, he replied that he did not have the privilege of having members of that talented race among his forebears. As a Jew, I would be proud to be numbered amongst the Khazad!
I tend to compare the Jews more to the Elves myself. In ancient times, both made a lot of trouble for ideological reasons, suffered unnumbered tears as a result, especially after one act of rebellion caused them to be expelled from their homeland, and when they were finally able to return to that homeland many generations later, both races had become very different people from what they were when they had been exiled.
🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸
Didn't he write a letter to some high level Nazi and basically called him an asshole and said their racial ideology was disgusting? Modern retconning aside devout Catholics of the era where diametrically opposed to Nazism and one of it's most implacable opponents and Tolkein was nothing it not that.
@@ladymacbethofmtensk896 I've got a chunk of a derivative setting with a heavier dose of parody in my head when I think of Elves. (pre-setting nuke Warhammer Fantasy)
In that setting, Elves are out-of-touch failed imperialists who dress like Hittites and live on an island between the main continents, hold on to archaic military traditions, and guard an arcane vortex which while it balances the presence of chaos in the universe, also literally sucks the magic out of the world.
They even had an evil version of themselves lead by their rightful king by Salic law who as an evil bastard was rejected by the Elf god and forced to journey across the water.*
So I sort of have a hard time keeping the lens of Elves as a British college-educated parody of the British upper and middle classes in history from causing Tolkien's Elves to come off to me as the idealized mythologized English aristocracy to the Hobbits as an idealized mythologized English yeomanry.
plus I am pretty sure I remember Isaac Asimov's old essay where he read it the same way and I didn't feel smart enough at the time to disagree with Isaac Asimov
*From analytic philosophy to Jacobite history, Fantasy Battle's OG lore really was one long joke told by Rick Priestley about his college education, which is why, for having been a rush job cooked up on the fly to sell more miniatures, it feels like an awesome Easter egg littered landscape to North American audiences.
@@williaminnes6635 Wizards?
It's the same with the myth that Orcs are Africans or Asians. Just jealous people failing to disgrace Tolkien.
Very true indeed
Except that Tolkien himself compared Orcs to East Asians: "...squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes; in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types". It's not that we're saying Tolkien was trying to make people fear the Yellow Peril by writing about Orcs. We're only pointing out that tropes derived from racial animus found their way into the text.
And Tolkien himself was aware of that, hence the "(to Europeans) least lovely".
Just because someone points out prejudices within the legendarium doesn't mean they're trying to call Tolkien a bad person or deny him his legacy. You can point this out while still loving Tolkien. Your unnuanced view is overprotective.
Disgrace him? No, it's makes him very fucking based. LoTR is filled with truth that the establishment has tried denying since 1945.
Russians
Asimov had a theory that the orcs represented newly urbanized English plebeians.
I’ve always found Tolkiens parallel from the dwarves to Jewish people as a massive compliment to the Jewish people!
His Dwarves are skilled, faithful, brutally honest, brave, and honorable in all of their actions and in their respect of tradition and truthfulness with their words. ⚒️ I strive to be like Tolkien’s Dwarves! 😁
@@magnumdog5464Found another antisemitism.
@TheSuperDuperLS they're more like evil wizards.
@@TheSuperDuperLSCool
That's the later version of his dwarves. In the first stories, the dwarves were just greedy and unreliable, with no particular crafting skills.
@@ErikBramsen Not sure where you are putting the dividing line. It is certainly the case that Sauron tried to corrupt the Dwarves with the 7 rings by way of their greed, and it didn't work.
You mean its not Goblins?
Nope, that critique in good faith only really applies to the work of Rowling, in which case, that paralel is not incorrect.
dont worry they are
The khazad are a lot more than each of their tiny inspirations stemming from real life, they're not only jewish,but germanic, celtic, nordic and most important of all, dwarvish. An old solemn and tradition focused people who's been thrown under the worst middle Earth has to offer and still managed to survive and eventually retake their homeland. They're my favorite interpretation of the race in fantasy, using a few out of context phrases and characteristics to frame Tolkien as an antisemite isn't only insulting him but his entire life's work. This video is great, keep up the good work, my friend.
Germanic and Nordic are the same thing, more over the Norse where subculture of Germanic culture.
Another point of Jewish inspiration for Dwarvish culture is the calendar. Like the Jewish calendar, the Dwarvish calendar is lunisolar: “The first day of the Dwarves’ New Year is as all should know the first day of the last moon of Autumn on the threshold of Winter,” says Thorin, explaining the reference to Durin’s Day.
Tolkien said it himself and had many jewish friends which is why, he did not mean it in a harmful way.
It seems that what confuses people is the so called "applicability" of those stories, meaning the story of the dwarves in particular is a story is structured as to follow a pattern, that of a wandering people with an ancient heritage that yearn for their ancient kingdom and glory to come alive again, a thing that will happen only when a "long lost" noble king will appear again as if from the dead. This can obviously be tied to the Jews because their story follows precisely that pattern in their latter history. But that doesn't mean that they are the only people that can have such a story. To give an example from personal experience, I am of Greek origin and part of my lineage comes back from Anatolia Greeks. Those people, being the descendants of the last byzantines and retaining that memory, thought of themselves -many of them still do- in exactly the same way as the tolkenian dwarves. They hold to be an ancient people of noble heritance, having lost their homeland to invadors, and ever yearning to restore their ancient glory (which would mean reviving byzantium in some sence). Accompanying this yearning is the legend of the marble king (more accurately translated, the drowsy king), that is the story that one of the kings of old is not dead, but preserved in a comatose state under the golden gate of constantinople (which used to stand atop a hill, or a "mountain" if you will). The story goes, that when the time's ready, the king shall be awaken, to reclaim his kingdom. So when I first encountered the story of the dwarves and "the king under the mountain", it just clicked with all of those stories that I grew up with. And it clicked because it was structured in such a way that if one views their story from the same lense, they become connected with the dwarves through sympathy.
Come on, there were people who accused My Little Pony cartoon series in racism, simply because some of the horse-guards were black!
There are individuals that will cry and accuse everything in anything simply because they want attention and they feast upon it. And the only way to deal with them - to ignore them utterly and completely. You cannot counter every single thing they say simply because accusing takes them no efforts and it will take you a lot of efforts to provide an explanation or counterargument, and in some cases it would be pretty impossible (try to prove that LotR isn't anti-feminine (there are way more male heroes than female heroes, and all the central heroes are men), anti-gay (there isn't a single one in the book!) or anti-something-else-you-name-it).
As a Jew myself I can testify that at least 5 of my "Top 10" characters in Tolkien's work are dwarves including Dane at the top by himself. In my head, it was way more easy for me to ralate to dwarves knowing they were partially inspired by my own people (both the good and the stereotypical) then to despise them for that.
weird.
It's Actually Hobbits That Were Inspired By the Hebrew People.
and the Dwarves Aren't Really of the Jewish Faith.
Maybe They're sort of Like the Israeli Nation Before Consolidation?
but None of These Have Ever Been Known For Miners and Smiths.
I dunno.
What About Dwarves Do You Relate To?
@@tempestwolf067 Dwarves as a placeholder for Jews IIRC was a thing from Wagner.
@@williaminnes6635
That Doesn’t Appear To Be True.
and Feels more Related To other commenters than What I Had To Say.
Anyway. From a quick google search:
Brener notes that the dwarves in Wagner's works (such as Alberich and Mime in the Ring), frequently interpreted to be (negative) representation of Jewishness, were not seen as such by Wagner himself, as evidences found in Cosima's diaries show. Alberich represents "the naiveté of the non Christian world".
@@tempestwolf067 well the similarities were enough to get Jews who bought the first edition of The Hobbit to complain about the dwarves in that book.
To his credit, Tolkien, having apologized to the people, refused to ret con his setting at all, and created Dwarvish as a language according to Semitic rules of grammar and word structure.
@@williaminnes6635
OK, then That’s Jews saying, “We’re like dwarves!” and Getting upset About it. That Really Doesn’t Mean Anything.
That’s Like saying, “I KNOW WARCRAFT TRYNA SAY ORCS IS BLACK FOLK! HOW DARE YOU!” or Asians saying, “It’s very rude of you to assume I’m good at math”
Semitic Is a language. Not a People. Not a Faith. Not a nation. It Does Not Belong To Anybody.
What Is Your Goal Here?
Why Is It Important To you To Maintain a Relationship Between Dwarves and Jews?
That's the stupidest thing I have ever heard. He was influenced by dwarves. Dwarves are a major part of norse mythology. In the stories, the dwarves are smiths who put curses on things and are usually pretty cheap. Not everything is about Jews.
well....Wagner does sort of stand between Tolkien and Germanic myth, now, doesn't he?
Except Tolkien himself said they were.
As a jew, if this were true i'd be flattered. Of course. Our beards aren't as glorious as theirs, so its hardly true.
you are a goblin at most based on fantasy tropes, oof
@@nerdragexx1069The Talmud readers, sure. Torah readers? Zero problems with them.
As the video says Tolkien said in a letter "I think of Dwarves as like the Jews." I'm Jewish and proud of the Jewish people, and I think Dwarves are overall positive and beloved characters in Tolkien's work, even if portrayed as being "greedy" for material things. Dwarves were also directly based on existing legends of Dwarves in Northern Europe. Tolkien showed no contempt for Jews or Dwarves and as the video notes he spoke against anti-semitism in writing to a German publisher. Tolkien gave most of his heroes and peoples faults, since perfection is boring. Also, I felt that the Dwarves' longing for their homeland in the Hobbit was touching and reminiscent of the Jewish dream of returning to our ancestral home in Israel.
Always thought Dwarves are Vikings. Ancestors of Vikings.
I expect that one's from jogging backwards through Tolkien to Wagner then back up the other fork of Wagner's setting.
I often had the impression that rather than the Jews, the Armenians could have been a much better real world inspiration for Tolkien's and other Modern Fantasy dwarves : they are very similar socio economically the Jews, speaking a cryptic language with its own alphabet, part of a diaspora spanning multiples empires and realms, being often prosperous tradesmen, crafsmen and bankers, but add-in to that more prominent ancient realms and empires of their own, being distinctly mountain people, with their most important places being the massive volcano towering over everything to its West, as well as large inland lakes, and being renowned for their intricate stone architecture and carvings.
Them being removed from their homes and massacred by the millions had happened just a little prior to Tolkien writing the LotR, for the Jews the worst was yet to come.
...and they have good examples of women with facial hair...
Well said. And you brought proof. Great work.
jews: known worldover for their amazing craftsmanship
More like lies and greed
Out of my ass I think Tolkien would subconsciously have associated Jews with dwarves because Wagner had used the dwarves as a more deliberate placeholder for Jews in The Ring Cycle.
If you speak Hebrew, you will recognize the Dwarves' battle cry as being Hebrew and most likely is based on one of the common prayers. In Hebrew it translates as "Praised is Khazad, Khazad is our people".
They are like a strange amalgation of jews and vikings.
In the Tolkien world there are a lot of people that happily jump to conclusions and equally happily claim that Tolkien intended such. I find this so incredibly ridiculous, but not a whit enjoyable, it rather makes me want to scream insults to those people.
Even when Tolkien himself says so? You know better than the Professor?
I've used a similar line many times myself, "If you go looking for monsters, you are bound to find them."
When I’ve written, I believe that I took splintered aspects of my personality, and wrote those into characters my nobility, my insecurity, my love many other things, and made them lesser or greater aspect of the personalities in my disappointment in my failure and celebrated my virtues. I’m sure he did the same.
But in the movies nobody complains the Dwarves are rowdy, uncouth, drunk... and with a Scottish accent!
Or if the Orcs have a Cockney accent. In every movie, if you want someone to look low class, unprincipled and vulgar: Cockney!
But don't even touch those who own our purse and whose name must not be said (and who are in no way vengeful, wink wink). The media have made people stupid.
Did you know that the cockney accent actually originates from British Jews lol.
Hey! The trolls in the Hobbit have a Northern working class accent.
toliens dwarfs are not children of iluvitar. they were created by one of those that deceded to arda without ivluvatars knoledge that had no free will before iluvitar discovered them and ordered them destroyed before changeing his mind when they tried to save their creator without order.
They don't even have anything in common apart from being the greediest race of their worlds. Dwarves are the polar opposite, they are strong, honest warriors and labourers who have immense honor
Jews are not strong or honest and have no honor?
People are way too concerned about associations with negative traits. And yet are perfectly happy with associations with positive traits. You must always take the bad with the good. To eliminate everything negative is to make them completely unrelatable.
Is everyone forgetting the Silmarillion? Middle Earth theology is a hybrid of Norae and Christianity, with the Borae gods funcrioning as arxhangels under Iluvatar, the One God
4:00 to be fair, a lot of eastern cultures have a saying "Like it were made by a Jew" in regards to something being of high quality craftsmanship
Anyone who thinks the Dwarves being inspired by Jews is an insult don't have their heads on straight
Oy vey!
He did sort of give them a Semitic grammar and word structure and a recent history of little Masadas after having received a set of complaints about how The Hobbit's versions of the character types Wagner associated with Jews a bit more directly just happened to be cowardly, greedy, vengeful, and clannish.
We have them in Norse mythology, they are described as man-like people who live in halls of stone and are great smiths, they made magical items like Thor’s hammer and Odin’s spear. All the names of the 13 dwarves in the Hobbit plus Durin and Gandalf are taken from the Völuspa poem.
What I have read from some criticisms, it is not just about Tolkien but dwarves in general in European mythology and folklore, Norse mythology included, because dwarves are often depicted as creatures who are greedy for money, treasures and wealth, which has also been a harmful stereotype and negative trait associated with Jews. So it's not hard to wonder that a parallel is drawn between them, although it's hard to say whether they have a direct interdependent link or not.
Just one nitpick (had to pause the video at 5:24) - the dwarves are not really the children of Ilúvatar (Aulë created them on his own; though it's true that Eru gave them the spirit and autonomy, on the condition that they won't be awakened before his actual children - elves and humans). That doesn't really take away from your point, though.
109 mountain holds for no reason whatsoever
And if Galadriel was inspired by the Blessed Virgin Mary, her welcome to Gimli, in the face of Celeborn’s age-long prejudice that he had brought from Doriath, might be seen as a foretaste of Nostra Aetate.
It’s important to understand Tolkien was inspired by many real life races and cultures during the writing of lotr. That does not mean he intentionally made these inspired races with the intention of putting their real life counterparts in any derogatory light.
@2Hot2
0 seconds ago
The Simarillion clearly shows that Tolkein was not a racist, because the Orcs (probably the worst creatures) are corrupted versions of the Elves (the noblest creatures), so it's all a question of "nurture, not nature". The orcs were originally Elves or Men who were corrupted and bred by Morgoth into their hideous and evil form. All the creatures are greedy on some level (even Bilbo,, Boromir, etc.) or the rings wouldn't be able to bind everyone in darkness.
Everyone knows that goblins are the ones based off of Jews
Tolkien said his goblins were inspired by George MacDonald’s from The Princess and the Goblin “…except for the soft feet which I never believed in…”
Letter 144
Very good video
5:32 Gimli only tries to destroy the ring in the movies, not the books.
Thank you for doing this.
. . . and Scots and Welsh, all peoples Tolkien liked and admired.
they live in the mountains, are expert craftment, make intrincate jewelry, drink beer, are red haired, they hoard wealth and are fierce warriors...
Dwarves are a mix between the Swiss and the Irish
Js are more (in)famous for profitting from both sides of every war, not really famous for winning wars by themselves, just look at their perpetual relianc on Anglos for their survival
I had never heard of this accusation before, so your title initially confused me. Honestly, I always thought of Jews more like elves. It’s already been said that Tolkien’s writings were strongly influenced by his Christian/Catholic faith, which means that our Bible and its Old Testament stories undoubtedly inspired some of his works. The way that Jews in the Old Testament are the original chosen people of God makes me compare them to elves, the original children of Illuvitar. I’m a real simpleton on both the Bible and Tolkien books, unfortunately.
And now there corrupt and a goblin like people
When comparing the Bible to Tolkien’s works, the Elves definitely make a better substitute for the Jewish people, that’s a good catch. Though Tolkien himself hated allegory and always maintained his stories were not referential to any sort of real-world events or peoples.
Dwarvish as created by Tolkien has a Semitic grammar and word structure. He wrote the language after having received numerous complaints from Jews about The Hobbit.
All those ideas about somehow "Jewish" dwarfs are nonsensical products of some individuals, who do not know anything about Scandinavian sagas from the times Scandinavia did not even have a Jewish diaspora yet.
Wagner
@@williaminnes6635 End of 19th century.
Gimli trying to destroy the Ring is only in the movie.
These are the same people who have recently been saying that orcs are racist depictions of black people. If you see orcs and you immediately think of black people, you need to take a long, hard look at your own prejudice. Same case here with the dwarves. If you see a negative character trait in a fictional race and your immediate reaction is to draw parallels to real-world groups, you may want to take a look at where those views are coming from. Is it something in the text that the author intended, or maybe it's a stereotype that you hold.
Goblins: I thought we were...
Dwarves love gold, Jews love gold. I’m not a Jew and I love gold. Everyone loves gold.
The real question is: If the Dwarves are the Jews of Middle Earth, is the Lonely Mountain the Land of Israel, and is Smaug a metaphor for invading armies that have occupied the Lands of Israel like the Romans, Arabs, or the Ottoman Turks or even the Palestinians? Is The Hobbit a pro-Zionist story?
This actually has strong basis, at least metaphorically. AFAIK tolkien never made loud public statements in support of Israel, but I struggle to believe he would be anything other than sympathetic to Israel.
No, because once again, Tolkien did not like allegory. It's not a metaphor for any real world politics. Also, the Hobbit was written a decade before the state of Israel was founded
and still, the best arguments for Israel would need fantasy to seem morally justified...
@@Shashu_the_little_Voidling Tolkien himself said he didn't like making direct comparisons to anything in the real world, yet I wonder if he did so unconsciously. Every book is a product of the cultural context and events going on around it.
@@Shashu_the_little_Voidling Also, the State of Israel was founded in 1948, but it should be noted that there were already many Zionist Jews living in the British Mandate of Palestine decades before WW2 even began. Zionism itself was even around in the 1890s which is before the publication of the Hobbit.
I always thought of them as a Scottish/Viking hybrid.
Just because he wasn't antisemitic doesn't mean no antisemitism of any sort seeped its way into his work. Especially in his earlier work, it seems not that he hated the jews, but that he didn't quite understand them or how misinterpretations of his characterizations could fuel real antisemitism. The Hobbit was written in 1937 and it's going to happen. The point is that he tried, not that he got everything perfect.
Well if it was frankly it's quite a flattering portrait compared to what They're doing today.
I like to think he used Jewish and Irish for the dwarves, and I love it because that’s my heritage
Arabic is a semetic language. As a linguist Tolkein should have been aware of that. So him dividing hebrew from other semetic languages is odd. Anti-semitism is a term that specificaly refers to Jewish people. But linguistically Arab is a semetic language just like Hebrew is. So I don't know why he would differentiate hebrew and Arabic with the term semetic.
But his letter makes clear his view.
But a thing that people often forget is that Norse mythology is fairly sparse. Limited to 2 sagas (Edas; might be using the wrong term). Wagner's Ring Saga effected the view of Norse mythology much in the same way that Dante's inferno influenced the popular view of hell.
Interesting thing I've heard about Tolkeins Dwarfs a while ago (and pleese correct me if wrong on this), is that in his earlyest writings in the 1910's and 20's, dwarfs were in fact counted among the evil races of Middle earth. The least bad of other races like goblins and trolls curtainly, but still characterized as emensly greedy, cunning and cowerdly, laking much of the honour, warrior culture and masterfull craftsmanship that deffined later Dwarfs.
If true, then this has interesting inplications about the developmentn of dwarfs and the whole jewiah thing.
It basicly means that the Petti Dwarfs that play a significant role in the first age of the silmarilian and nowhere else likely the original draft of there whole race, and they along with there story's were reworked and made the exiled degenate breeds of all the other Dwarf clans.
This would also explain where the concept of the anemosity between the two races probably comes from, and forms a dicotamy between the tall beautifull Elfs and the short ugly Dwarfs.
Knowing this its somewhat possible ( though I can be compleatly wrong about this) to make the conection that Tolkeins initial Dwarfs were partly influaced by Jews and in a negative way, but as time passed and Tolkeins view on this subject changed, he keeped developing the Dwarfs more and more, while also giveing them more pisitive and noble traits.
Crazy idea: they are based on the mithologycal beings of European folklore
Tolkien's Gimli did not attempt to destroy the One Ring. That was Jackson's Gimli.
My main problem with this take is that it has no nuance.
Tolkien did not have the intent to be antisemitic, that part is true. And he did take heavy inspiration from the Jews, and was open about it, which is also true.
However, bias is a powerful thing, and despite not intending to create an allegory for the Jews, and despite not intending to be antisemitic with said allegory, he did both. This does NOT mean that Tolkien was antisemitic, it means only that he had antisemitic bias. And after WW2 and the Holocaust, we can see that he examined his bias and corrected his mistakes, as evidenced by his descriptions of the Dwarves in The Hobbit vs in LOTR.
Tolkien was a fierce ally of the Jewish people, and was most certainly against the very idea of racism, but bias is deep-rooted and often invisible until you look for it. I imagine that, if he was still alive today, his descriptions of the Orcs, the Harad, and the Easterlings would all be vastly different than they are.
Why can't we all just accept that we each hold ambivalent attitudes, towards our own group and all other groups? Evil exists in all people.
More so in Jews and sub saharans
I am one who tends to think of the Jews as having more in common with the ELVES in Tolkien's world than with the Dwarves. Of course, that would make little sense unless one is familiar with The Silmarillion, and one notices that the Elves who return to Valinor at the end of The Lord of the Rings are not the same Elves who had been exiled in the First Age, rather like the Jews who returned to Israel in 1947 were not the same people who had been expelled by the Romans. Indeed, the ancient Jews have much in common with the exiled High Elves.
Dwarves are a Germanic staple of myth, going right back into pre-history. They were used by later authors and composers (see Wagner) as a slight against Jews, see Mime, Klingsor and Beckmesser. As Tolkien was a Professor with a broad knowledge of Germanic language and myth, it is far more likely he used the earlier view of Dwarves as miners, stone workers and smiths.
and ones to which he gave a Semitic grammar and word structure with his talents as a linguist, having received complaints of his subconscious echoing of Wagner's tropes in The Hobbit, as well as a few references drawn from Jewish folklore and preJewish history
You have to keep in mind, UK libel laws are no joke.
@@williaminnes6635 so Tolkien managed to be anti-Semitic in such an esoteric manner that it is virtually impossible to discern without having a degree-level understanding of Semitic language, Wagner, and Jewish folklore? It’s hardly Der Sturmer is it?
@@alundavies1016 He subconsciously picked up a preexisting package of tropes for Germanic mythology dwarves as mediated through the popular understanding of Wagner, got a stack of complaints about it, then rather than damage the integrity of his setting, went about fleshing out his dwarves along those lines.
It's like a more epic version of when a piano player fucks up a note, improvises a bit for the rest of the bar, then returns to the melody.
@@williaminnes6635 different times. I think anti-semitism was so prevalent that it would be hard not to be impacted by it.
@@alundavies1016 Of course.
I may not have worded thing in a way that allowed me to emphasize that the point of that anecdote from the perspective of a casual Tolkien admirer is that in that situation, he was 1) a good guy about it and 2) rolled with the criticism in order to conserve setting integrity.
Both of which were qualities sadly missing during a certain hopefully recently passed era of movies, television, and video games.
I wonder if part of the reason why people read antisemitic vibes in Tolkien's dwarves is due to their association with Norse mythology, and the use of Norse dwarves as antisemitic caricatures in other works, such as Wagner's Nibelungen saga. Now, Wagner's antisemitism was undeniable, and perhaps people suspect Tolkien by assosiation, given his extensive inspiration from Norse mythology.
But the antisemitism is not present in the sources themselves; it's just that different people read the same material very differently, based on their own preconceptions. The Nazis themselves used Norse and Germanic mythology as a vehicle of racism; it is clear by the excerpts you read what Tolkien's stance on the matter was.
Where is your foreskin sir
As a Jew I definitely think the dwarves are very much similar to Jewish history and culture
People have often accused Tolkien’s Dwarves of being Jewish stereotypes; short in stature, large noses, obsessed with gold, hairy, etc… if this is true, then why do Dwarves always have Scottish accents (and red hair too for that matter)? And that’s not just in LOTR, pretty much every Dwarf in every fantasy series has a Scottish accent. Is there a faction of Scottish Jews I’m not familiar with…? 🤔
It might literally be because of Warcraft II.
Dwarves as short Norsemen is running with Tolkien's dwarves back through the reason they would have been Jew-coded in the first place - Wagner - and coming out with the horned helmets and alpine carvings.
However, to a North American ear, a modern Scandinavian accent sounds sing-song, which didn't really fit, and orcs had been allowed to take the southern UK working class accent.
It’s clearly always been mainly of nordic origin, the dwarves are nearly 90% equal to those of the source, so attribute some main characteristics to jews seem both wild and inaccurate. It’s the clear case of one’s own prejudice being projected onto another individuals work.
Or, in this case, Tolkien's own prejudice, as he is the one who said it.
(11:12) Agreed, this is why it is good to get a second opinion.
If there's people who actually thought this, then I'd say they're being ridiculous.
The dwarves are cool. What is the problem?
May the dwarves indeed become the sons of Illuvatar and come home to the true Moria, the City on the Hill.
At least Dwarves don't enslave Middle Earth with debt.
5:10 the Dwarves were not "the Children of Illuvatar." That honor is reserved for Elves and Men alone. Not the Ents, not the Dwarves, not the trolls, spiders, or Eagles, not the Maiar, nor even the Valar.
They are considered adopted children of Iluvatar, blessed with the Flame Imperishable!
Theyre like the Jews in that theyre a wandering people driven from their homeland-that's it. Its just a superficial, broad comparison.
Also they love gold, and hold grudges.
@@LordVader1094 so does everyone else, rofl
and have a Semitic grammar and word structure
and elicited enough complaints from Jews in their first published appearance in The Hobbit for representing a bit too many of the tropes with which Wagner associated them
Dwarfs in this case are based on Norse mythology from Norway…
The dwarves from the Witcher are more a Jewish caricature than the Tolkien ones
Reveal our secrets. Thats a grudging and its going in the book.
Is a gunjan a caricature of a jamaican?
If they were, Jews should be proud.
The Dwarves and the Humans in my fantasy setting are very much based on the Jews, specifically inspired by the events of the Old Testament.
People looking for outrage where there is non.
Aren't they partly inspired by dwarwes in nordic mythology?
If it was talking about the Ashkenazi, they would be Orcs
From what I understand the largest source ofnDwarves = Jews as far as tropes comes more from the fact that Tolkein based them heavily off Wagner's. And when he was told that they embodied antisemetic concepts he worked to differentiate them.
Honestly, you can make better Asciatic racist claims with the Orcs and Easterlings.
For his time, Tolkein was fairly progressive on racial views.
Though I would argue that his discust with the Nazi's doesn't inherently mean henhad no views that overlapped ornbordered. A good example of that is Huxley's brother and other eugenicists letter to Germany.
Not that I think that Tolkein meant for any of these groups to be meant to ve read as real people.
Like I said, the biggest source for Dwarves was because he lifted a bunch of the basis, from Wagner. Who held beliefes of Jewish people for the time.
In general, the people who look at fictional characters and say that they are based off of a given race of people because of x stereotype, are usually people who believe those stereotypes to be true. Though they won't admit to harboring such feelings.
In Tolkien's case, the people who wrote the letters complaining about his first twelve dwarves' characterizations were themselves Jewish.
Tolkien to his credit didn't retcon anything, apologized to everybody who wrote, and doubled down on the Jew-coding in LOTR by giving them Semitic grammar and word structure in their language and a recent history riddled with little Masadas.
Khazad vs khazars
Tolkien took inspiration for the dwarves from the Jews, but that does not mean he was in any way antisemitic.
Short answer … yes
They look more like vikings or north people
...........bro how can you "accuse" a dead person?
All stereotypes are somewhat true-Hence why they persist.