On (mostly the absence of) Jewish fantasy

[nancylebov]

Why there is no Jewish Narnia is an essay I don't entirely agree with, but it's an interesting overview of the question of why Jews are notable among science fiction writers but write very little fantasy, and there's nothing as distinctively Jewish as Lewis and Tolkien are Christian.

Points of disagreement: Kabbalah and Chasidism both have very lively fantasy elements, and I think the Midrash does as well, but the article writes them off as not normative. Well, they aren't part of the Judaism I grew up with (Conservative, which I think might be viewed as very toned down Misnaged (non-Chasidic) Orthodox Judaism. However, there are a fair number of Chasidic Jews (I don't know how many Jews are connected to the Kabbalah well enough to want to use it as fantasy elements but loosely enough that they'd be comfortable doing so) who could draw on their traditions, but either they aren't writing fantasy or it isn't getting to where the rest of us can see it.

Also, there's a substantial secular Jewish tradition, but it doesn't seem to be generating fantasy either.

I don't think the Holocaust has put a damper on the Jewish ability to write fantasy. "Where was the magic during the Holocaust?" might be in the back of potential authors' minds, but it's possible to write fantasy in which magic is discovered post-Holocaust, or set in a world which isn't connected to real history.

Speaking of fantasy where the rest of us can see it, the article reviews a contemporary Israeli fantasy which sounds like a lot of fun. I hope it's translated into English.

Sentence which might generate discussion: To put it crudely, if Christianity is a fantasy religion, then Judaism is a science fiction religion. If the former is individualistic, magical, and salvationist, the latter is collective, technical, and this-worldly. I'm not sure this is fair to either religion, but it'll probably stay in the back of my mind where I can see if it connects to anything.

Favorite sentence: As it happens, though, the author of these lines, Hagar Yanai, has recently attempted to fill this gap, along with a few other Israeli writers who have in the last few years begun to produce fantasy books—not magical realism or surrealism or postmodernism, but serious fantasy. Yay, us! The real fantasy, the serious fantasy, is the kind where the magic is unquestionably and literally part of the characters' world, and the world is at least intended to make logical sense.

Link, with a few comments about fantasy the article has missed, and a major contemporary Jewish fantasy writer.

Addendum: Many more Jewish fantasy writers are mentioned in the comments. The explanation for the lack of Jewish fantasy hitting it really big may be as simple as that very few writers manage it and Jews are a minority, so it could just be statistics.

Comments

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

I find it bizarre to think of fantasy as individualistic and science fiction as collectivistic. On one hand, there is at least an important minority tradition in science fiction that is resolutely "American" and individualistic, exemplified by Heinlein and Anderson among others. On the other hand, the default mode in fantasy is the spectrum from feudalism through aristocracy to monarchy—and all of those are collectivistic ideas; the virtuous man in such a society is the one who knows his place in a hierarchy. This is true even in the relatively free-spirited world of Middle-Earth, where the relative status of Aragorn, Theoden, and Denethor and the fitness of Aragorn to marry Elrond's daughter are critical to the plot.

[avram]

Not just a major contemporary Jewish fantasy writer, but one who's used Jewish myth and folklore in his work. Most obviously (I think) the reference to the lamed-vav tzadikim in the Emperor Norton story in Sandman.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I'm not at all sure what the author had in mind with "collectivistic"-- it's plausible that larger issues hang on single choices in fantasy because it's easier to set up the world to do that, but characters with merely realistic ability to affect the world is hardly collectivism.

[vr-trakowski.livejournal.com]

Does Jane Yolen's Briar Rose (http://www.amazon.com/Briar-Rose-Jane-Yolen/dp/0765342308/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1266973300&sr=8-1) count as fantasy?

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I think it depends on your definition. Does Byatt's Possession count as fantasy?

[vr-trakowski.livejournal.com]

I would say no, not in my mind. Briar Rose only comes to mind because it's a deliberate retelling/reworking of a fairy tale. But I suppose "fantasy" is fairly slippery to define in the first place.

[chomiji]

I find it odd that he invokes Earthsea and quotes Le Guin, and then proceeds carry on about how important knights/feudalism etc. are to fantasy. Hello? Doesn't the existence of Earthsea (and some of Le Guin's more recent fantasy, for that matter) prove that you don't need the feudal European trappings for it to be fantasy? And where does Hughart's "Master Li" series fit into this argument, for that matter?

Also, I think Michael Chabon could write a Jewish fantasy anytime he felt like it. Gentlemen of the Road is already halfway there.

[madfilkentist]

Tom Shippey referred to science fiction as "collectivistic" in the sense that SF writers tend to build on one another's worlds, but that seems like an odd usage of the term.

[shweta-narayan.livejournal.com]

...Jane Yolen seems rather badly missing from lists of major contemporary Jewish fantasy writers. As is her Very Scary book Briar Rose from discussion of Holocaust fantasy.

On an entirely different note, I'm currently reading a scholarly book on Jewish magical practices from the second temple period to the Rabbinic period (Ancient Jewish Magic: A History, by Gideon Bohak, University of Tel Aviv*). The author makes the point that actual Jewish magical practices have been widely ignored by scholars -- partly in reaction to the anti-semitic stereotypes of Jewish magicians.

Might this cultural pressure have some effect on Jewish writers of fantasy too?

(Recommended by grayrose76 for story research. I trust Rose on these matters, and the book is fascinating.)

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

I have no idea of his religion, but Peter S. Beagle's fantasy feels very Jewish to me - not in a religious-allegory sense like Narnia, but very culturally Jewish.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Single useless point of anecdata: my Hebrew school library had a book that was a collection of stories about King Solomon and the magic he did. (Summoning demons, using them and a worm that could cut stone to build the Temple, etc.) Ignored by scholars, but if stories about Jewish magicians were available in a kids' format I'm guessing they were pretty well-known in popular culture. Though I'm not sure if by "ancient Jewish magical practices" you mean stories like that or actual practices meant to cause change in the world.

[redbird]

He's either a New York Jew, or grew up around/knows a bunch of people who are, certainly.

[redbird]

If the Chasidim are writing fantasy, they're probably writing it in Yiddish.

[shweta-narayan.livejournal.com]

Prof. Bohak at any rate means practices which were, at different periods, intended to change the world. Including pracitces that claimed links to King Solomon.

michael vassar

[(Anonymous)]

I think that worlds intended to make sense aren't "real fantasy" but are rather the specific result of Tolkein's influence. Gaiman, Douglas Adams and MANY others of the highest caliber would claim that there's more to 'real' fantasy than that.

[avram]

And I've read Jewish fairy tales and folklore stories, but they're generally stuff that's filed in the Judaica section of the bookstore.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

One wonders how familiar the reviewer, Michael Weingrad, really is with modern fantasy.

Tolkien and Lewis’s gentility

(A use of the word which is new to me, though I'll bet it is not rare in the pages of Jewish Review of Books. I should get out more.)

would hardly bear comment were it not for the fact that they are not isolated examples in this regard, but only the most well-known figures within an entire literary genre—perhaps the only such genre—in which Jewish practitioners are strikingly rare. I cannot think of a single major fantasy writer who is Jewish, and there are only a handful of minor ones of any note. To no other field of modern literature have Jews contributed so little.

It is unwise to make this kind of statement if you mean "I cannot think, sitting right here at my keyboard right now, of a single major fantasy writer who is Jewish" rather than "I cannot think, having devoted years of research to studying the question, of a single major fantasy writer who is Jewish." I don't know which one is the case with Prof. Weingrad, but some of his assertions, sitting right here at my keyboard right now, fail to ring true. They are enough to carry an interesting barroom discussion, but may not withstand academic rigor.

Phyllis Eisenstein is one Jewish novelist who, it would seem, writes the sort of fantasy Weingrad is talking about. Perhaps she is within his umbrella of minor fantasy writers; perhaps he thinks she lives in Poughkeepsie-rather-than-Elfland (I would disagree); perhaps he has forgotten her; perhaps he has never read her.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Indeed, there's sadly no shortage of libertarian SF, and it's been one of the mainstays of US SF for at least the past 60 years.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

I don't think the Holocaust has put a damper on the Jewish ability to write fantasy.

Indeed, Lisa Goldstein's The Red Magician is specifically about Jewish magic and the holocaust.

I can't think of that much Jewish fantasy that's set in fantasy worlds (other than, of course, some of Jane Yolan's work), but there's a moderate amount of urban fantasy.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Phyllis Eisenstein is one Jewish novelist who, it would seem, writes the sort of fantasy Weingrad is talking about.

I'd forgotten about her.

I did the most minimal bit of looking on google and turned up this rather extensive list, which includes both SF and fantasy authors. Including only fantasy authors that I've read, that's looking like Peter S. Beagle, Cory Doctorow [[1]], Phyllis Eisenstein, Esther Friesner, Lisa Goldstein, Ellen Kushner, & Jane Yolan, which is a pretty darn good list.

I'd say more that we have an abundance of Jewish fantasy authors, but a distinct lack of any who have created a really big hit fantasy novel or series (although The Last Unicorn comes very close)

[[1]] Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town is most definitely fantasy

[smallship1.livejournal.com]

I'm amazed nobody's mentioned Avram Davidson. Not even in that extensive list.

[osewalrus.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link. It feels like the author is more concerned with why certain major authors from his childhood are not replicated in style by Jews, which is a rather different question.

Lewis was actually writing a parable. Tolkien was trying to create his own world where he could retell certain themes he found attractive in Old English and Christian fantasy. Both creating towering myths rooted in their cultures and spawned a host of imitators. Jews attracted to writing fantasy have found many of the elements copied by others less attractive.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

That's interesting, but I don't know what he was thinking. There might be more explicit franchises in science fiction, but genre fantasy writers are affected by each other's ideas, too. One definition of genre is that the writers are in dialogue with each other.

I have a notion that grouping "collective, technical, and this-worldly" is the sort of left-wing thinking which led once to the kibbutzes and which leads to the Israeli anti-fantasy bias described in the article, but I'm just guessing.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

The tech/social level in Le Guin's Gifts trilogy (does it have a group name?) strikes me as possibly ancient Roman, rather than medieval, though the aggressive monotheistic religion in Voices is later.

I don't know if the Earthsea books map onto any specific historical period, or if they're just generic past. In any case, you're right, neither are specifically medieval.

I was thinking about Chahon-- Kavalier and Clay somewhat addresses the magic and the Holocaust question, but handles it through superhero comics written by the characters rather than directly.

That one is fantasy in the same sense that Possession is-- offers imaginative pleasures to the reader without having them be the world of the characters.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

My feeling on this is that it was more a matter of modernity. the kind of Judaism I grew up with was simply too dignified and sensible for magic. This may have had some roots in the fear of being accused of being magicians, but it didn't feel that way.

There's something about Judaism I only found out about relatively recently-- some (most? all?) Orthodox Jews don't believe it's right to do individual petitionary prayer-- it's ok to pray for the community.

I'm so soaked in Christian culture that when I first heard about the rule, I assumed it was the person telling me being neurotically unwilling to ask for help, but later I found out it was a doctrine. And this goes back to identifying Judaism with collectivism.

In re "too sensible and dignified for magic": The Trickster and the Paranormal is written from the point of view that the occult is real, but is incompatible with organization. The more powerful and organized a religion gets, the more magic and miracles get forced to the edges. Miracles can be part of the tradition, but the possibly that they might still be happening is resisted.