Portrayals of Jews in Literature

[Archie]

For those who are interested in the Jewish question and Jew-Gentile conflict throughout history, literature is an avenue that Jewish academics have explored with their characteristic obsessiveness, but critics have not shown the same level of interest, from what I have seen. I assume this is because these works are fiction and hence are easily dismissed. But I would argue that classic literature does reflect the perceptions of the times, often with more color and dimensionality than do strictly historical works. Not to mention many of these classic books and are very much worth reading in their own right.

In classic European literature, portrayals of Jews, as a rule, seem to be quite negative. The following three works are perhaps the most famous, most discussed examples.

• The Merchant of Venice, William Shakespeare
• Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens
• The Prioress's Tale, Geoffrey Chaucer (from the Canterbury Tales)

Shakespeare is generally considered the GOAT of literature and he is central to "the canon." The Merchant of Venice features an unflattering Jewish moneylender villain, Shylock. The "merchant" in the title actually refers to someone other than Shylock, yet the title itself remains evocative due to the associations with Jews.

The Chaucer story relates to Jewish ritual murder, and it has a legendary, religious flavor to it. The Canterbury Tales are very well known in general, but few people are probably aware of this specific story.

Oliver Twist features a Jewish villain, Fagin, who is referred to as "the Jew" repeatedly in the book. The Wikipedia page for Oliver Twist explains,

Dickens (who had extensive knowledge of London street life and child exploitation) explained that he had made Fagin Jewish because "it unfortunately was true, of the time to which the story refers, that that class of criminal almost invariably was a Jew."[21] It is widely believed that Fagin was based on a specific Jewish criminal of the era, Ikey Solomon.[22]

There are at least two of the Brothers Grimm stories that are relevant, The Good Bargain, and The Jew Among the Thorns.

I found a list on the website Goodreads that has some later novels. It's user created, so not necessarily the best quality control here. Some only have one vote and are not great picks. But it's still a useful starting point.
https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/103 ... iterature_

Interestingly, you still see negative portrayals of Jews up through the 1920s. The Great Gatsby (1925) by F. Scott Fitzgerald is listed. I read this in school (it is still commonly assigned in America), but I honestly did not recall anything anti-Semitic about it. I had to refresh my memory of the Meyer Wolfsheim character, a shady fellow who is said to have been involved with rigging the 1919 World Series.

By the end of WWII, this had changed dramatically (what a surprise). In 1946, for example, we see Laura Z. Hobson's Gentleman's Agreement (also made into a film), a heavily promoted book intended to explore the problem of anti-Semitism. This book is on the Goodreads list, and it does deal with anti-Semitism; however, it is from the Jewish perspective (Hobson was Jewish).

An additional factor here is the consolidation of the publishing industry. There are only five major publishers: Penguin Random House, Hachette, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, and Macmillan. You might see something like "Farrar, Straus, and Giroux" on the spine, but all this seeming variety is an illusion. Nearly all these publishing brands are now owned by the big companies. Self-publishing is dominated by Amazon and hence is also centralized.

Here's a relevant Wikipedia article with more organization and context. And there should be many academic articles about this stuff on Google Scholar, JSTOR, etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotyp ... literature

[Stubble]

When I watched 'The House of Rothschild', a documentary about Mr Red Shield, I was rather surprised with how he was portrayed by his fellow ethnics in Hollywood.

https://odysee.com/@AvaWolfe:d/The-Man- ... k-Pilled:f



https://odysee.com/@yngdeath:2/TheHouseOfRothschild:b

[Stubble]

Oh, I see this is 'literature', not film, my apologies.

The True Story of Hansel and Gretel
A Novel of War and Survival

https://tantor.com/the-true-story-of-ha ... urphy.html

Full Synopsis
In the last months of the Nazi occupation of Poland, two children are left by their father and stepmother to find safety in a dense forest. Because their real names will reveal their Jewishness, they are renamed "Hansel" and "Gretel". They wander in the woods until they are taken in by Magda, an eccentric and stubborn old woman called "witch" by the nearby villagers. Magda is determined to save them, even as a German officer arrives in the village with his own plans for the children.Combining classic themes of fairy tales and war literature, Louise Murphy's haunting novel of journey and survival, of redemption and memory, powerfully depicts how war is experienced by families and especially by children. The True Story of Hansel and Gretel tells a resonant, riveting story.

[Archie]

From George Orwell's 1945 essay "Anti-Semitism in Britain"

There has been a perceptible anti-Semitic strain in English literature from Chaucer onwards, and without even getting up from this table to consult a book I can think of passages which if written now would be stigmatized as anti-Semitism, in the works of Shakespeare, Smollett, Thackeray, Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells, T.S. Eliot, Aldous Huxley and various others. Offhand, the only English writers I can think of who, before the days of Hitler, made a definitive effort to stick up for the Jews are Dickens and Charles Reade. And however little the average intellectual may have agreed with the opinions of Belloc and Chesterton, he did not acutely disapprove of them. Chesterton's endless tirades against the Jews, which he thrust into stories and essays upon the flimsiest pretexts, never got him into trouble--indeed Chesterton was one of the most generally respected figures in English literary life. Anyone who wrote in that strain now would bring down a storm of abuse upon himself, or more probably would find it impossible to get his writings published.

Orwell could have added himself to that first list considering the politically incorrect passages in his first book Down and Out in Paris and London. See this thread from the old forum.
https://archive.codohforum.com/20230609 ... ml?t=14438

It's also interesting that he cites Dickens as his example of a pro-Jewish author when Dickens wrote one of the most notoriously anti-Semitic novels in English literature. The reason he says this is because Dickens, in one of his late works, Our Mutual Friend, attempted to make it up to the Jews with a much more favorable portrayal. Chesterton remarked that Our Mutual Friend was essentially a public apology and like most public apologies it was stiff and unconvincing. It seems Orwell had a similar trajectory.

Orwell acknowledges that WWII marked a major shift to the point where portrayals of Jews prior to that date tended to be negative but by 1945 you could not get anything critical of Jews published.

[Archie]

As there have been some discussions coming up regarding the source of enmity between Jews and Gentiles, in modern books (really anything published after WWII) you tend to get very pro-Jewish spin. The explanations invariably excuse Jews and place the blame squarely on Gentiles. But if you read older literature, you will hear "the other side," the Gentile perspective.

A passage from Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott, written in 1820, set in the 12th century.

His doubts might have been indeed pardoned; for, except perhaps the flying fish, there was no race existing on the earth, in the air, or the waters, who were the object of such an unintermitting, general, and relentless persecution as the Jews of this period. Upon the slightest and most unreasonable pretences, as well as upon accusations the most absurd and groundless, their persons and property were exposed to every turn of popular fury; for Norman, Saxon, Dane, and Briton, however adverse these races were to each other, contended which should look with greatest detestation upon a people, whom it was accounted a point of religion to hate, to revile, to despise, to plunder, and to persecute. The kings of the Norman race, and the independent nobles, who followed their example in all acts of tyranny, maintained against this devoted people a persecution of a more regular, calculated, and self-interested kind. It is a well-known story of King John, that he confined a wealthy Jew in one of the royal castles, and daily caused one of his teeth to be torn out, until, when the jaw of the unhappy Israelite was half disfurnished, he consented to pay a large sum, which it was the tyrant’s object to extort from him. The little ready money which was in the country was chiefly in possession of this persecuted people, and the nobility hesitated not to follow the example of their sovereign, in wringing it from them by every species of oppression, and even personal torture. Yet the passive courage inspired by the love of gain, induced the Jews to dare the various evils to which they were subjected, in consideration of the immense profits which they were enabled to realize in a country naturally so wealthy as England. In spite of every kind of discouragement, and even of the special court of taxations already mentioned, called the Jews’ Exchequer, erected for the very purpose of despoiling and distressing them, the Jews increased, multiplied, and accumulated huge sums, which they transferred from one hand to another by means of bills of exchange—an invention for which commerce is said to be indebted to them, and which enabled them to transfer their wealth from land to land, that when threatened with oppression in one country, their treasure might be secured in another.

The obstinacy and avarice of the Jews being thus in a measure placed in opposition to the fanaticism that tyranny of those under whom they lived, seemed to increase in proportion to the persecution with which they were visited; and the immense wealth they usually acquired in commerce, while it frequently placed them in danger, was at other times used to extend their influence, and to secure to them a certain degree of protection. On these terms they lived; and their character, influenced accordingly, was watchful, suspicious, and timid—yet obstinate, uncomplying, and skilful in evading the dangers to which they were exposed.

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/82 ... tml#chap06

Scott actually seems somewhat sympathetic to Jews in this book, but he nonetheless describes well their high-risk, high-reward strategy which is optimized for wealth extraction and mobility.

Here is passage from Nikolai Gogol's Taras Bulba (chapter 10).

The Jew Taras had come to see was none other than Yankel. He had already managed to set himself up in Uman as a leaseholder and tavern keeper, and gradually managed to get all the surrounding Polish landowners and noblemen under his thumb, sucking them dry of all their money and firmly establishing his Jewish presence throughout the region. Every house within three miles was derelict, destitute, sold for drink. Poverty and rags were everywhere. The whole region was devastated as if ravaged by fire or plague, and were Yankel to live there another ten years the whole province would doubtless have been laid waste.

This highlights the theme of exploiting people's vices for gain.

I should add that both of these books suggest Jews were persecuted, but they don't present this persecution as occurring in a vacuum.

[Stubble]

A collection of literature compiled by Dalton titled 'Eternal Strangers'.

https://odysee.com/@WaltherMauser:b/Tho ... trangers:7

Written format

https://odysee.com/@Lebensraum:6/Dalton ... gers5150:9

Audio format