RPGMemes

Tolkien's "inspiration" for Dwarves pulling from Jews is fascinating, as a Jew. I read that his thoughts were that Dwarves were a strong, resilient people who had been displaced from their homeland but maintained a strong attachment to their traditions and their craft. He saw this as a deferential depiction of Jews and was purposely trying to move away from European depictions of Jews as goblin-like monsters. What's fascinating is how it is still riddled with antisemitic tropes such as the obsession with gold, their "quarrelsome" nature, and also literally making them a different race of short-statured people who lived underground. It speaks to how deeply ingrained antisemitism was (and to an extent, still is) in the European mind while also lightly espousing Zionist ideas in how living in diaspora is somehow less than living in historical Judea.