XPost: rec.arts.books.tolkien   
   From: Troels@ThisIsFake.invalid   
      
   In message    
   "eruvatar"  spoke these staves:   
   >   
   >  Did Professor equate the Dwarves in " The Hobbit " as being   
   >  Jewish like?   
      
   No. Tolkien did /not/ in any way equate the Dwarves in /The Hobbit/   
   with Jews.   
      
   Nor is there any evidence that he did, in any way, shape or form,   
   think at all of any Jewish or other Aramaic people when he wrote   
   about the Dwarves in /The Hobbit/ -- these Dwarves draw mainly on   
   Tolkien's own Silmarillion mythology and on Old Norse mythology.   
      
   /After/ Tolkien had written /The Hobbit/, he made some comments   
   (quoted by Stan in another follow-up) that equated the specifically   
   /linguistic/ situation of the Dwarves to that of the Jews, and, as   
   noticed by Raven, he also used an Aramaic inspiration for the   
   language of the Dwarves (Khuzdul). The first occurences of this is   
   considerably earlier than the 1955 letter Stan quotes, but still   
   /after/ writing /The Hobbit/.   
      
   Tolkien also made another comparison to Jews -- to the Númenóreans:   
       The Númenóreans thus began a great new good, and as   
       monotheists; but like the Jews (only more so) with only one   
       physical centre of 'worship': the summit of the mountain   
       Meneltarma   
    /Letters/ no. 156 to Robert Murray, November 1954   
      
   I am sorry if I am coming down very strongly on this, but I have   
   recently seen someone suggest that Tolkien was anti-Semitic because   
   of his description of the Dwarves, and I think that suggestion is   
   utter nonsense.[#] There is, in my opinion, nothing to suggest that   
   Tolkien's comparison is meant as anything but a linguistic and   
   philological comparison:   
       I do think of the 'Dwarves' like Jews: at once native and   
       alien in their habitations, speaking the languages of the   
       country, but with an accent due to their own private tongue   
    /Letters/ no. 176 to Naomi Mitchison, December 1955   
      
   The statement of 'at once native and alien in their habitations'   
   should also, in my opinion, be understood primarily lingustically --   
   it leads up to the next part about their speech marking them as   
   native speakers (in terms of vocabulary, grammar and idiom) and yet   
   alien speakers (in terms of accent).   
      
   Finally Tolkien also made a comparison between Dwarves and Jews in   
   1971 in an interview with Denys Geroult for BBC:   
       The dwarves of course are quite obviously, couldn't you say   
       that in many ways they remind you of the Jews? All their   
       words are Semitic obviously, constructed to be Semitic.   
   But again Tolkien narrows the 'many ways' to the specifically   
   linguistic ways by his following comment (this, too, is in 1971 when   
   Tolkien's views of his stories was in many ways different from what   
   it had been when he wrote them) with his confirmation of the   
   specifically Semitic derivation of Khuzdul.   
      
   > All the elements seem to be in place.   
      
   Albeit with very different roots.   
      
   > Exiled from their homeland. Living in seperated communities.   
      
   I am not sure what you mean by referring to separated communities --   
   this also applies to Tolkien's Elves (even in Beleriand) and his Men,   
   and seems more a result of inhabiting a world that is made up mostly   
   of wilderness and filled with enemies.  As far as /The Hobbit/ goes,   
   the apparent gathering of all Hobbits in the Shire appears to be the   
   exception rather than the norm.   
      
   The exilation came up as a necessity of the particular story of /The   
   Hobbit/, and as stated above, there is nothing to suggest that   
   Tolkien was in any way inspired by the Jewish people in any of this.   
   Later, as Tolkien was working with his legendarium after finishing   
   /The Hobbit/ and he 'discovered' the secret language of the Dwarves   
   he needed to explain the names of the Dwarves in /The Hobbit/ (which   
   are all, except for Balin, as you probably know, taken from the Old   
   Norse poem /Völuspá/, from the section 'dvergatal' -- the tally of   
   the Dwarves) which were clearly not in their inner language. It is, I   
   suppose, possible that these this accident with 'inner' and 'outer'   
   languages informed his choice of Aramaic as the inspiration for   
   Khuzdul.   
      
   > Great craftsmen.   
      
   This is a feature of the Dwarves that also marked the earliest   
   Dwarves in Tolkien's legendarium, although in the earlier tales (pre-   
   LotR) the Dwarves were in general allied with Morgoth in the wars,   
   and even when not, they were seen as conspicious and suspect.  The   
   trait of being great craftsmen -- and particularly as smiths -- is   
   certainly derived from the Dwarves of Old Norse myth, who were also   
   consummate craftsmen, and who made the most famous of the items used   
   by the gods (the Aesir) such as Thor's hammer, Sif's hair, Odin's   
   spear, Odin's ring Draupnir, Aegir's ship and other that I can't   
   recall off the top of my head ;)   
      
   > Is Erobor supposed to represent Jerusalem?   
      
   No.   
      
   Though of course I realize that such a question in theory cannot be   
   answered with absolute certainty, I do nonetheless not hesitate to   
   reject this theory as being too unlikely to consider. Apart from the   
   obvious mention of Tolkien's dislike for allegory, I'd first of all   
   mention that the conscious parallel between the Dwarves and the Jews   
   (which I insist was meant purely as a linguistic parallel) was not in   
   existence when the Lonely Mountain (Erebor) was invented, and   
   secondly, that when Tolkien finally became aware of this parallel,   
   the 'lost homeland' of the Dwarves had shifted to Moria, which in   
   many ways fits even worse as an allegory for Jerusalem.   
      
      
      
   [#] I don't mind criticism of Tolkien for the problems that really   
   are in his books -- both of the literary kind and of the ethical kind   
   (I shall refrain from adding a list here), but I will argue   
   persistently against the accusation of anti-Semitism, as there is no   
   actual basis for this in Tolkien's writings -- it seems to me rather   
   a deliberate attempt to see offensiveness where there was none from   
   the author, neither consciously nor sub-consciously.   
      
   --   
   Troels Forchhammer   
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