In his provocative review-essay, “Why There Is No Jewish Narnia”, Michael Weingrad attempts to explain why Jews dominate in so many areas of literature yet produce few works of fantasy:
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. Judaism’s divine drama is connected with a specific people in a specific place within a specific history. Its halakhic core is not, I think, convincingly represented in fantasy allegory. In its rabbinic elaboration, even the messianic idea is shorn of its mythic and apocalyptic potential. Whereas fantasy grows naturally out of Christian soil, Judaism’s more adamant separation from myth and magic render classic elements of the fantasy genre undeveloped or suspect in the Jewish imaginative tradition.
Let us take two central examples: the magical world and the idea of evil.
Christianity has a much more vivid memory and even appreciation of the pagan worlds which preceded it than does Judaism. Neither Canaanite nor Egyptian civilizations exercise much fascination for the Jewish imagination, and certainly not as a place of enchantment or escape. In contrast, the Christian imagination found in Lewis and Tolkien often moves, like Beowulf or Sir Gawain, through an older pagan world in which spirits of place and mythical beings are still potent. Nor is this limited to fauns and elves. This anterior world can be dark and frighteningly alien, as Tolkien has Gandalf indicate in The Two Towers. “Far, far below the deepest delvings of the Dwarves,” the wizard says, “the world is gnawed by nameless things. Even Sauron knows them not.” Lewis sounds the same note in Perelandra when, far below the surface of the planet Venus, his protagonist catches an unsettling glimpse of alien creatures, and wonders if there might be “some way to renew the old Pagan practice of propitiating the local gods of unknown places in such fashion that it was no offence to God Himself but only a prudent and courteous apology for trespass.”
Contrast this with the treatment of the great and symbolic monster of ancient Judaism—the sea-creature Leviathan, whose terrifying pagan majesty as the personification of the watery depths the rabbis were determined to strip away:
Raba said in the name of R. Yochanan: The Holy One will make a feast for the righteous
out of the flesh of Leviathan, and what is left will be portioned out and made available as
merchandise in the marketplaces of Jerusalem. (Bava Batra 75a)To subject the primal abyss to the forces of commerce is to demythologize with a vengeance—and to do it wholesale at that.
(Via: Arts and Letters Daily)
March 1st, 2010 | 12:41 pm
Up to now, I hadn’t been keeping score, but this seems kinda nuts. The line between science fiction and fantasy has always been blurry, both overtly – Star Wars and Star Trek are 98%+ fantasy, for example – and more subtly – faster than light travel, a staple of thousands upon thousands of sci fi stories is as much a fantasy as fairies and unicorns – an exercise of pure imagination unencumbered by facts.
To call, for example, Asimov, a science fiction writer is correct, but to say that means he’s not writing fantasy is not. Weingrad attempts to define fantasy as a blend of imagined medieval culture and pagan myths, which, it seems to me, gets it kind of backwards – for Tolkien and Lewis and their legions of imitators, their imaginations fly towards knights, myths and legends as a bee to the flowers that feed it. For Asimov, fantasies are less about conquering ancient evils than about bopping about a heavily populated galaxy with robots more human than we are – knights and myths have more basis in reality.
March 2nd, 2010 | 5:05 am
An addendum… In contrast to the lack of interest by Jews in writing fantasy, note the extreme interest by Gentiles in writing science fiction, fantasy and science fantasy that draws heavily on Hebraic allusions.
From Tolkien’s portentous Old Testament chronicles-of-the-kings style (“And then spake Dol Amroth unto him…”), to the popularity of OT cities in SF/fantasy (Babel for Madeleine L’Engle, Gene Roddenberry and Samuel R Delaney; Ashkelon for Harry M Harrison; Gilead for Margaret Attwood, Stephen King and Christopher Pasolini), to Liam Neeson’s bearded, sackcloth-clad Qui-Gonn Jinn seeking the chosen child among a village of mud huts in Palestine, Gentiles want to drink thirstily from the well of Moses, King David, and the Prophets.
So CS Lewis, then, borrows Lilith; while his arch-nemesis Phillip Pullman borrows Enoch/Metatron. The demon Sammael turns up in “Hellboy”, a deeply Catholic film.
Which makes it especially striking that Abraham’s own descendants don’t draw from their own well.
Maybe it’s the principle that Leslie noted in “Bridge to Terabithia”, after she attended a church for the first time: “You think it’s true but you hate it… I think it’s a myth, but a wonderful story.”
I suspect Weingrad’s identified the reason with his line about “the wrong end of the medieval sword.” You can certainly enjoy reading about, or watching, a churchless, priestless quasi-Byzantium like Gondor even if you know little or no mediaeval history… but to actually create a convincing Tolkienesque world, you would have to study in detail an era that is as distasteful for Jews as, saying, watching the Elizabeth movies is for Catholics.
March 2nd, 2010 | 4:21 pm
[...] First Thoughts, here’s a great essay on Jewish faith and fantasy writing. One of the authors featured, Lev [...]
March 2nd, 2010 | 11:47 pm
(warming to this theme) Considering Ms Yanai’s statement (“Faeries do not dance underneath our swaying palm trees, there are no fire-breathing dragons in the cave of Machpelah…”), (a) I would be very interested to hear her thoughts on The Passion of the Christ, which – although not, of course, conceived or marketed as a work of fantasy fiction – can be viewed as Mel Gibson coming very close to turning first-century Palestine into Middle-Earth. (b) Many cultures have tales of a hero slaying a dragon, but Judaism must be unique in that the hero accomplishes this by over-feeding the dragon with flour and water… (c) To Gentiles, names like Golgotha or Sinai or Jericho have a numinous Biblical resonance (which is why we name missiles after them), but I would imagine that if you live in Israel these are prosaic, everyday places in your neighbourhood… (Caveat: this wouldn’t apply to Diaspora Jews outside Israel?).
For Jews, the world has been gradually been getting better over the last 400 years or so (apart from the Holocaust 1944-45, which was therefore a terrible shock). To Christians – especially those of the more traditionalist, high churches, who are on balance more likely to be writing fantasy – the world, or at least Europe, has been getting worse for the past 400 years. Both sides can agree that Luther was the worst person ever, but otherwise they will evaluate, say, Cromwell, Voltaire and the French Revolution in starkly irreconcilable terms.
Also, add J Michael Straczynski to the “Babel/ Babylon” column.
March 4th, 2010 | 11:31 am
[...] Joe Carter at First Things [...]
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