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Hymie Potter

Is Harry Potter a Jew? So intends to argue one presenter at an upcoming three-day conference on the popular series in Britain later this summer. Ynet reports,

One of the presentations will focus on the question of whether Harry Potter is, in fact, a nice Jewish boy.
Presenter Amy Miller believes the wizard created by JK Rowling has created “has a yiddishe neshama” – a Jewish soul.
“That Harry Potter could be called ‘a nice Jewish boy’ makes many people laugh, including me. He doesn’t wear a skull cap, or go to Hebrew school, or keep kosher,” she said.
“But he cares about how others are feeling, he is kind, and he defends his beliefs; these are a very few examples of proper Jewish behavior.”

So acting like a mensch makes you a Jew? If only being a Jew made you a mensch.

12 thoughts on “Hymie Potter

  1. Oh god not askmoses.com….Moshe rabbenu in a black hat, and professional question-answerers who can never give a straight answer beyond the Lubavitcher Rebbe (in m experience)…
    Reference the Gemara quote (Yevamot 79a): “The Jewish people have three qualities: They are compassionate, they are humble, and they are generous.”
    Of *course* it’s not a racial statement. Just look around. The Rabbanim are saying that your identity’s worthless if you don’t live up to it. And Jews are supposed to be mentches.
    Now as to whether Harry Potter is a mentch, I recommend you read the last HP book.

  2. That may be true, though unlikely. You have a problem with homophobia perhaps?
    “Al tisneh et achicha bilvavecha” is in the Torah too.

  3. Yes I have a problem with homophobia. What…are you pro-homophobia? That’s a pretty weird position.

  4. Philo-semitism has the smell of its brother. Jews, we find, are often quite insensitive, because the problem of alienation forces them into a starting position something like narcissism, and because most we knew or read were American Jews and had, Jewish or not, an American’s idea of self-esteem. From this illusory presupposition of their innate uniqueness, they often proceed to great generosity and morality, but that’s not the point. This is an old, irritating sophomoric trick, a worn pedantic sport. Ask yourself if it’s annoying to hear us list the reasons why Hillel was a Cannanite qadishtu (priestess-whore) posthumously recruited by rabbis to give their own religion more oomph. Come on. Potter’s a red-necked transparent-skinned brat Brit, that is what he was written as, that is what he remains after dissection unto nausea.
    Now Dr Who, that’s a Jew. The “wandering” thing, the not always successful quest to be moral in a land where men are not moral, his origins in a small but important minority, in some cases the hair.

  5. L.J.N.
    Homophobia is of course a bad thing. Just checking up on your intentions using the word “queer”.

  6. Don’t you think “checking” someone’s intentions when they use the word “queer” is a little bit of a step back (in the context above, anyway)?

  7. 🙂 Sometimes people use it because they are LGBTQ-aware, and sometimes people use it because it’s a slur. I wanted to find out what way it was being used, and I did. Sorry to disturb you.

  8. Unfortunately I had just been over in Bloghd trying to defend some lesbian brides from some vicious disparagement, so I may have been in a more militant mood.

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