J.R.R. (John Ronald Reuel) Tolkien (1892-1973) was an English writer and philologist best known as the author of the high fantasy cult classics, The Hobbit (1937), originally intended as only a children’s tale, and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, originally published in three volumes (1954-1955). After his death, his son, Christopher, published a series of works based on his father’s extensive notes and unpublished manuscripts, including The Silmarillion, which, together with The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, form a connected body of tales, poems, fictional histories, invented languages, and literary essays about a fantasy world called Arda and, within it, Middle Earth.
While many other authors had published works of fantasy before Tolkien, the tremendous success of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings launched intense interest in the fantasy genre that triggered a flood of new fantasy fiction and had a massive and continuing impact on Western pop culture. As a result, he has been popularly identified as the father of modern fantasy literature and he is broadly regarded as one of the most influential authors of all time. Although he was not comfortable with becoming a worldwide cult figure, his book sales were stratospheric and he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature (he did not win).
Tolkien sold the film, stage and merchandise rights of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings to United Artists in 1968, but UA never did make a film, an imprudent decision which it surely regrets. In 1976, the rights were sold to Tolkien Enterprises, and the first film adaptation of The Lord of the Rings was released in 1978 as an animated film directed by Ralph Bakshi, which covered only the first half of the trilogy. From 2001 to 2003, New Line Cinema released The Lord of the Rings as a trilogy of live action films that were filmed in New Zealand and directed by Peter Jackson, which achieved worldwide critical and financial success and won several Oscars, and several productions followed.
After his retirement, Tolkien served as a consultant and translator for The Jerusalem Bible (published 1966) but, due to other commitments, he ended up contributing only some criticisms of other contributors and a translation of The Book of Jonah.
Many authorities maintain that Tolkien’s fantasy writings are racist, and others argue that, although he was influenced by Victorian attitudes to race and to a literary tradition of monsters, he was anti-racist in peacetime and particularly during the World Wars. Against the late nineteenth century background of eugenics and a societal fear of moral decline, particularly amongst devoted Christians such as Tolkien, some critics saw the mention of race mixing in The Lord of the Rings as the embodiment of scientific racism and others characterized Tolkien’s orcs as a reflection of wartime propaganda caricatures of the Japanese.
However, the most obvious racialism and prejudice in Tolkien’s defining works is the dramatic similarities between his depictions of the dwarves of Middle Earth and antisemitic portrayals of the Jewish people. In fact, in a 1964 interview with the BBC, he discussed this connection between dwarves and Jews:
I didn’t intend it, but when you’ve got these people on your hands, you’ve got to make them different, haven’t you? The dwarves of course are quite obviously, wouldn’t you say that in many ways they remind you of the Jews? Their words are Semitic, obviously, constructed to be Semitic.
As I have noted many times in these pages, antisemitism was the prevailing social ethos of the day and, in this sense, many authorities argue that, Tolkien, no matter how genteel or unconsciously, did reflect the tenor of his times, although he did not have any specific antisemitic animus.
Some scholars contend that an important additional source of Tolkien’s rendition of dwarves was the medieval biblical texts with which he was intimately familiar. However, notwithstanding his claims that the similarities between his dwarves and Jews were unpremeditated, the weight of evidence supports the proposition that his characterization of dwarves was either intentional or motivated by an incredibly powerful subconscious.
Tolkien based his dwarves on the traditional mythological Germanic dwarves, as recounted in Old Norse sagas, where they were physically shorter than other races; had large, hooked noses, curly hair, and beards (note that Tolkien’s first mention of the dwarves in The Hobbit refers to them as “the bearded dwarves,” suggesting a racial epithet); and sported red hair, which was often used to indicate that a character was Jewish. But there is much more, as Tolkien’s comparison between dwarves and Jews extends not only to physical stereotypes, but also to their anthropology, language, psychological attributes, and history.
Echoing one of the oldest and most disgusting Jewish stereotypes, the dwarves are characterized as exceptionally materialistic, greedy, and obsessed with money. Thus, in The Hobbit, Tolkien describes dwarves as “not heroes, but calculating folk with a great idea of the value of money.” Thus, as Thorin Oakenshield, the leader of the Company of Dwarves who aim to reclaim the Lonely Mountain from the dragon Smaug, tells the hobbit Bilbo Baggins that the dwarves mission to the Lonely Mountain is less about defeating Smaug and more about recovering their stolen treasure. Moreover – while stroking the gold chain around his neck – Thorin makes clear that he lusts for the treasure even though the dwarves “have a good bit laid by and are not so badly off.” Thorin ultimately does the right thing, but only after almost starting a war because he was too greedy to give others their fair share.
Much as the Bible’s later Jewish kings so familiar to Tolkien, the dwarf kings are highly corruptible and gold-obsessed, and he makes clear that their unending obsession with the accumulation of wealth fuels the antipathy of the neighbors and ultimately brings on Smaug. Even after the dwarves’ hard-earned return to Erebor and Lonely Mountain, as they fight off various enemies, including elves, men and enlarged spiders – apparently mirroring the various obstacles that the Jews had to overcome and the enemies that they had to defeat during their forty years after the Exodus traveling from Egypt to the Promised Land – they refused to share their recaptured gold with Bard, who had killed Smaug, neighboring elves, and the men who had been devastated by Smaug. Driving the point home, Tolkien describes how, when they recover their treasure, the dwarves actually caress the jewels, as one would a beloved; Thorin spent many days in the treasury, and “the lust of it was heavy on him.” Thus, Tolkien’s unambiguous definitional trait of both dwarves and Jews is their money lust.
Not only are the dwarves described as “a wandering people,” they were driven by a fiery Balrog from the lost stronghold of the Mines of Moria (a name reminiscent of Mt. Moriah in the Bible?), an ancient subterranean complex comprising a vast labyrinthine network of tunnels, chambers, mines and halls under the Misty Mountains, and they were evicted from Lonely Mountain for creating a treasure so great that it attracted Smaug. Thus, both Jews and dwarves live in a Diaspora and in the shadow of larger, foreign communities, and, much as the Jews were exiled from Eretz Yisrael, their beloved homeland, the dwarves were evicted by dragons from their national homeland in Erebor; much as the Jews lived in the Diaspora while retaining their own peoplehood and culture, so did the dwarves live in the various lands of Middle Earth; and much as the Orcs waged various wars against the dwarves for Khazad-dûm, Jews analogously later faced a deadly and formidable enemy in the Crusades. Some commentators even see an analogy with respect to the destruction of the prevailing power over ancestral homes, making it safe for the displaced to return, with Gandalf, who renders the land safe for Dwarvish occupation, being analogous to the British Empire, which destroyed the Ottoman powers, leading to the Balfour Declaration and a great Jewish immigration.
Tolkien’s Christianity played an important part in both his life and his work. Describing The Lord of the Rings as “a fundamentally religious and Catholic work,” he declared that “I am a Christian (which can be deduced from my stories).” The story of Tolkien’s faith is fascinating in itself. Raised as an Anglican, his mother converted to Catholicism and, when she died soon afterward, he was left to the guardianship of a Catholic priest. The death of most his close friends in World War I deepened his reliance on his faith, and many authorities argue that the challenges and triumphs in his religious life are reflected in The Lord of the Rings, an epic tale of endurance that, much as Tolkien’s life, is an improbable story of prevailing against long odds.
Much as for centuries the Jews have remembered their traumatic past with mournful songs about the loss of their nationhood and the destruction of Jerusalem – “How can we sing the songs of G-d while in a foreign land?” wailed King David in Psalms 137 – the dwarves often sing of their lost realm. Much as the Ark and implements of the Holy Temple are believed to be buried beneath the Temple Mount, hopefully to be retrieved in Messianic times when the Temple is rebuilt, the dwarves hope to recover a divine self-glowing “Arkenstone” gem, called “the heart of the mountain,” buried at the Lonely Mountain and hidden somewhere beneath the dragon Smaug’s treasure mound. It is no stretch of the imagination to compare the Arkenstone to the Ark of the Covenant and Lonely Mountain to the Har Habayit (the Temple Mount). Moreover, just as most dwarves have assimilated and generally ambivalent about regaining their lost homelands, most contemporary Jews are assimilated and care little about regaining lost Jewish glory.
In The Silmarillion (published posthumously in 1977, but writing had begun as early as 1914, well before The Hobbit and the trilogy), Tolkien describes how the dwarves were not created by the omnipotent creator/deity Eru Ilúvatar as one of the good races, but by Aule, a mere servant of Ilúvatar and, as such, the dwarves of Middle Earth are clearly inferior to the elves and the humans, who were created by Ilúvatar after them. When Aule offers to kill all the dwarves that he had created, Ilúvatar permits their continued existence, but only out of pity. He declares that the dwarves shall not “come before the Firstborn of my design” and he advises Aule that “often strife shall arise between thine and mine, the children of my adoption and the children of my choice.” Thus, while the dwarves were the first race in Middle Earth, they were not the “Children of Ilúvatar,” the chosen people.
Clearly echoing Christian theology regarding the Jews, this parallels Christian “suppression doctrine,” pursuant to which Judaism was supplanted and replaced by Christianity and, after the arrival of Jesus, the Jews were no longer G-d’s Chosen People. Moreover, much as antisemites characterize Jews as being in perpetual conflict with the rest of the allegedly respectable world, including particularly Christians, the dwarves are eternally in conflict with the elves, whom Tolkien generally portrays as a near-perfect people. In this context, Tolkien explicitly drew on antisemitic tropes in characterizing the dwarves’ interactions with the heroic figures of his stories.
In an interview, Tolkien, while not specifically characterizing the Jews as warlike, nonetheless spoke to an explicit connection with biblical characterizations of the Jews, with the biblical narrative describing many wars of conquest, much as Tolkien does in The Return of the King, the third book of his trilogy; in a BBC interview, he referred to “the immense warlike capacity of the Jews, which we tend to forget nowadays.” Similarly, the dwarves are a warlike people, and, although Tolkien apparently believed that courageousness and gallantry in warfare are positive qualities, he was known for generally being anti-war and disdained battles for emotional reasons. Moreover, the Jews are repeatedly described in the Bible as an “am kishei oref” (a stubborn people), and no one is more stubborn that the dwarves, who can hold grudges forever. (On the other hand, Tolkien has stated that dwarves are not “naturally evil” and that they are very difficult to corrupt with evil.)
Although dwarves have their own language, Khuzdul, Tolkien tells us that they were “obliged to use other languages, except for entirely private conversations.” Similarly, Jews have a “secret language,” Hebrew, which they have maintained for millennia and which they use only amongst themselves, mostly as a ritual language. (Recall that in Tolkien’s time, almost no one spoke Hebrew; he wrote his books before Israel was born and before Eliezer Ben Yehuda turned Hebrew into a reborn language used by millions as a national language and for everyday non-ritual purposes.)
As Tolkien acknowledged in a December 8, 1955 correspondence to Naomi Mitchison, “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…,” and, as he wrote to W. R. Matthews, “The language of the dwarves…is Semitic in cast, leaning phonetically to Hebrew (as suits the dwarvish character).” In an unpublished September 1947 letter, which was quoted in The History of the Hobbit, he wrote “now dwarves have their secret language, but like Jews and Gypsies use the language of the country.”
Moreover, much as dwarves have uniquely dwarven names, which they used only among themselves while publicly using names drawn from the cultures in which they lived, many Jews with Hebrew names use those names only amongst themselves or on ritual occasions, such as weddings and bar mitzvahs, and otherwise use secular names when out in the world. However, unlike Khuzdul, Hebrew was never intended to be exclusionary and has never been kept secret, and some commentators suggest that Tolkien making Khuzdul exclusive to dwarves suggests an antisemitic belief that Jews distrust other cultures and are unwilling to fully assimilate. It is also interesting to note that, much as Rosh Hashana takes place in the fall, the Dwarvish new year begins in late autumn.
Tolkien himself knew some Hebrew; according to scholar John Rateliff, author of a 2007 two-volume Hobbit history, Tolkien drew inspiration from Hebrew texts and Jewish history in developing Khuzdul as the analogue of a Semitic language influenced by Hebrew phonology. As craftsmen exiled from a bountiful homeland, the dwarves spoke both the language of their adopted nations and – among themselves – a Hebrew-influenced tongue invented by Tolkien.
Much as antisemitic depictions of Jews portray them as isolated and detached, the dwarves are a highly insular people who pay little heed to matters outside their own nations. Much as Jews, who generally live in smaller communities near or around other communities, Dwarvish communities also tend to live in smaller communities near or around communities of elves and men. Finally, recalling that The Lord of the Rings is already in a pseudo-medieval tale, it is reasonable to conclude that Tolkien probably drew on widespread medieval views of Jews as noted craftsmen working in stone and metal and excelling in the trades, including particularly the construction of well-crafted and beautiful artifacts, for his portrayal of dwarves manifesting similar skills.
On the other hand, while there is considerable evidence that Tolkien may have held antisemitic tendencies, his writing was apparently not intentionally racist, nor did he consider himself to be an antisemite. A vociferous opponent of the Nazi regime, he unambiguously condemned Hitler’s racial theories and he refused an invitation to visit Germany in 1938. Thus, in a 1941 correspondence to his son, Michael, he wrote:
Anyway, I have in this war a burning private grudge… against that ruddy little ignoramus Adolf Hitler, [who is] ruining, perverting, misapplying, and making forever accursed, that noble northern spirit, a supreme contribution to Europe, which I have ever loved, and tried to present in its true light.
Moreover, when he was engaged in negotiating a German language adaptation of The Hobbit with Berlin publisher Rütten & Loening, he was furious when the publisher, presumably because of Goebbels’s regulations against Jewish participation in German cultural activities inquired whether he was “Aryan.” In a letter to Stanley Unwin, his British publisher, he expressed his rage about the German publisher’s preoccupation with his Arianism:
I must say the enclosed letter from Rütten & Loening is a bit stiff. Do I suffer this impertinence because of the possession of a German name, or do their lunatic laws require a certificate of arisch origin from all persons of all countries?
Personally, I should be inclined to refuse to give any Bestätigung [confirmation] (although it happens that I can), and let a German translation go hang. In any case I should object strongly to any such declaration appearing in print. I do not regard the (probable) absence of all Jewish blood as necessarily honorable; and I have many Jewish friends, and should regret giving any color to the notion that I subscribed to the wholly pernicious and unscientific race-doctrine.
In one of his most famous correspondences – there is some dispute regarding whether this letter was actually sent – Tolkien answered the German publisher:
…But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people…
My great-great-grandfather came to England in the eighteenth century from Germany: the main part of my descent is therefore purely English, and I am an English subject – which should be sufficient. I have been accustomed, nonetheless, to regard my German name with pride, and continued to do so throughout the period of the late regrettable war, in which I served in the English army. I cannot, however, forbear to comment that if impertinent and irrelevant inquiries of this sort are to become the rule in matters of literature, then the time is not far distant when a German name will no longer be a source of pride.
Your enquiry is doubtless made in order to comply with the laws of your own country, but that this should be held to apply to the subjects of another state would be improper, even if it had (as it has not) any bearing whatsoever on the merits of my work or its sustainability for publication, of which you appear to have satisfied yourselves without reference to my Abstammung [ancestry].
At the end of the day, the proposed deal with the German publisher was never consummated, and The Hobbit was not translated into German until 1957. The Hobbit has been translated into at least sixty languages, but perhaps more interesting than the story of its German publication is how it first came to be translated into Hebrew.
The first translation of The Hobbit into Hebrew was undertaken by four Israeli Air Force pilots who were captured during the War of Attrition and were imprisoned in Abbasiya Prison in Cairo from 1970 to 1973. After several months isolated in separate cells far away from each other, where they were tortured by the Egyptians, they were moved to the same cell with other prisoners. When pilot Yitzchak Fir received a copy of The Hobbit from his American brother, he and his three fellow incarcerated pilots, Avinoam Kaldes, Rami Harpaz, and Menachem Eini, decided to translate the book for their compatriots who could not read English, a project which took them four months. Tolkien’s distinctive and original poetry presented a particular challenge, and the pilots later admitted that they had not entirely succeeded in communicating the flavor and brilliance of Tolkien’s poetry.
The pilots always intended the Hebrew translation only for the benefit of their companions, never expecting that it would ever see the light of day outside their cramped prison cell. However, when they were released from their captivity after the Yom Kippur War, they took their worn copy of The Hobbit along with seven full notebooks of their Hebrew work, and, upon completion of their translation in 1977, it was published by Zmora Bitan Publishers, with funding from the Israeli Air Force. Other translations were subsequently published which are considered superior to the pilots’ version, but the “original” Hebrew translation may nonetheless be of interest to Tolkien fans fluent in Hebrew.
Finally, in my favorite category for these articles – “who would have suspected any Jewish connection?” – Tolkien’s grandson, Simon, married an American Jew. Their son (J.R.R. Tolkien’s great-grandson) is the religiously observant Nicholas Tolkien, who wrote Terezin, a play about the notorious Czech concentration camp told from the perspective of two young girls, which premiered in New York on June 13, 2017. Nicholas’s Jewish grandfather prepared him for his bar mitzvah, introduced him to Judaism, and regularly read the Torah to him, and he particularly identified with Moses, who was raised in a non-Jewish environment yet continued his identification with the Jewish people.
