#pratchett

[dandeidolon]

anghammarad

[shirmart]

The Glorious 25th May

[thesustainedworldatransverse]

I am loving the localised onomatopoeia in these international editions of Thud!

While the Chinese go for the triple-whammy of Peng! Peng! Peng!

[terrypratchettestate]

Welcome to the Year of the Luminous Lemur.

[is-the-thing-actually-jewish]

Ok so, goy here, & I don't even know what the question I'm asking here is but I'll give you at least something to work with.

I've recently finished rereading Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett, & it's a very good story about personhood if I do say so myself.

The book is about Golems, & a few of the names of the Golems are derived from Yiddish words so obviously there's a lot of Jewish influence but how Jewish is it?

Rating: Jew-ish

First of all, everyone should go read Feet of Clay because it is a fantastic book. Second, golems are always Jewish the way that leprechauns are always Irish— they come from Jewish folklore (look up “the Golem of Prague”) and cannot be truly separated from that context. Third, the golems in Feet of Clay are also definitely fantasy-Jews. 

From my perspective, the golems in Feet of Clay are a good example of cultural appreciation as opposed to cultural appropriation. By giving the golems Yiddish names, Pratchett explicitly recognizes the origin of golems in Ashkenazi Jewish culture, unlike various RPG golems where they are simply co-opting the word to mean “construct” or “fantasy robot,” and where the creator is usually evil. (Don’t get me started on what DnD does with “phylactery.”) It’s fundamental to the golem folktale that it is originally intended for protection, and while the golem of legend does go off the rails, it begins with the best of intentions— which Pratchett pays tribute to in the plot of Feet of Clay. 

One of the in-world broadly known facts about Pratchett’s golems is that they occasionally have holy days on which they won’t do any work but no one else really knows when those days are, which, as I carefully hoard my vacation time to make sure I’ve got enough to take the holidays off, I find hilarious. 

Another moment in Feet of Clay that felt extremely Jewish to me (under the cut as this as it is at the end of the book)

is when Dorfl declares that he’s an atheist, gets hit with a lightning bolt, survives unscathed since he’s made of fireproof clay, and tells the priests that he hardly considers that to be a compelling or logical argument. It bears a striking resemblance to the Talmudic tale of the Oven of Akhnai in which one rabbi’s appeal to divine power for miracles to “prove” he is correct is deemed invalid because miracles are not source-based evidence, they’re just miracles. Truly, a deeply Jewish moment.

Pratchett himself was a staunch atheist who was extremely critical of organized religion, particularly state-sponsored religion. Jewish readers can reasonably have a range of reactions and opinions to his fantasy-Jews (we have another ask about his dwarves in the pipeline), but we sure come off better than his fantasy-Catholics— please see Small Gods for more on that.

[nikoiscreative]

“The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to the presence of those who think they've found it.”

Terry Pratchett, Monstrous Regiment

[creatrixcymraes]

That was always the dream, wasn't it? "I wish I'd known then what I know now"? But when you got older you found out that you *now* wasn't *you* then. You then was a twerp. You then was what you had to be to start out on the rocky road of becoming you now, and one of the rocky patches on that road was being a twerp.

- Terry Pratchett (GNU), Night Watch