If dwarfs are Jews, how come they're usually said to hate magic? Judaism is full of mysticism...

>sumthin sumthin shekels

They live alongside humans but seperate from them because their homeland was destroyed and they were scattered, the have their own secret language they use only amongst themselves, and generally make a living doing skilled labor or professional stuff as smiths or jewelers. Also, Khuzdul is intended to be based on Hebrew and other Semitic languages.

That's all only in Tolkein though, so it doesn't really matter for modern stuff.

Also the pointy hat make a good yarmulke equivalent.

I've been tempted to make the Dwarves in my personal setting a hard analogue to Roman-Era Jews, right down to worship of a single god, dietary practices, naming conventions, and blood sacrifices to their God.

Go listen to the Martyrmade podcast, the "Fear and Loathing In The New Jerusalem" miniseries.

If you can't turn the creation of modern Israel into a campaign, you are a terrible GM.

>Dwarves
>Jews

They're stout and strong and sometimes resist disease.

Ever hear the one about the book of famous Jewish athletes?

If the gnomes aren't being sold enormous amounts of arms by the largest human mercantile empire to establish a sphere of influence in an area filled with religious zealots funded by a small human kingdom with a ridiculous amount of wealth due to exclusive access to huge amounts of a rare but integral and ultimately corrupting resource, you're doing it wrong.

It's not a 1:1 equivalence. Dwarves are just judaism inspired not jew jews.

They're the great jew jews up the mountain

>If dwarfs are Jews, how come they're usually said to hate magic

"A sorcerer shall not be allowed to live." (Exodus 22:17)

"For you are coming into a land that God is granting to you; do not learn the ways of the abominations of the native people. There shall not be found amongst you ... a sorcerer, soothsayer or engager of witchcraft ... or one who calls up the dead. For it is an abomination before God, and it is on account of these abominations that God is giving you their land." (Deut. 18:9-12)

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baal_Shem

But Solomon regularly dealt with demons.

If the goal is to set it up like the creation of Israel, then you're the one doing it wrong, because literally none of that was what happened between 1895 and 1949.

Tolkien's dwarves use magic more than humans do in universe.
Wagner's dwarves use FUCKLOT of magic
Both are actually based or jews, the former in positive, the latter in negative way.

Other fantasy dwarves aren't based on jews, they are based on pre-existing concepts of dwarves, often being deliberately picky and/or undelibverately ignorant.

I raise you this retarded cultural anecdote with an actually relevant article: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Practical_Kabbalah

a lot of jews in new york and throughout the US don't even know hebrew

He's talking a bout more recent events.
Large mercantile empire = 'Murica

Good to know, but Tolkein wrote the Hobbit 80 years ago in England, so it's not really applicable.

So you'd rather the gnomes be the survivors of a genocide at the hands of a human empire that was defeated by several other empires and as penance they tore a piece of land from their stretching imperialist sphere to give them, simultaneously setting up puppet regimes in neighboring territories that fall apart and end up controlled by said zealots?

Better have a small set of gnomes that had lived there for thousands of years and had good relations with the future zealots and dislike the current regime then.

That's because Hebrew was until very recently a dead language. Not dead like Latin, but actually dead, as in 'no one speaks this or can write this language, we only think we know what the Torah says because of the oral tradition surrounding it not because we actually understand the grammar and words used.' For centuries the closest they had was Medieval Hebrew, which was bastardized Classical Arabic and even the most hardcore rabbis and scholars stopped using it in the 1700's.

Eliezer Ben-Yehuda led a team in the early 20th century to try and rebuild Hebrew, as he was one of the Zionists who felt that the Jews needed a new cultural identity to make the Nation of Israel actually be a nation. Modern Hebrew is nothing like that which was used to write the books, but it's creation is an incredible story.

Obviously. I'm saying that his analogy is not about the 'set up' stage that mentioned, but jumping ahead some 60 years.

Jews fear the Witches

>Dwarfs lean a bit too heavily on runic magic
>elf tribes

done.

Wait, what is Yiddish then? Besides fucked up German?

They're not "supposed to be" anything. When asked about it, Tolkien did compare them to Jewish people, but it's not a 1 to 1. They're not fantasy Jews, they're dwarves

As a jew who actually does beleive in mysticism and the supernatural, I can tell you that this is patently untrue. Even the most religious Jews think quite lowly on Kabbalah and other mysticism.

not him but Yiddish is a combination of Hebrew and Germanic

actually judaisim has specific clauses built in that if the rabbi doesnt know what to do or isnt around that its perfectly acceptable and even advaisable to visit any local magical practitioner from witches to sorcerers or anything

judaisms weird and kinda cool

there are rabbinical provisions from three hundred years ago about the morality of sex robots and how that would differ between a robot with strong or weak ai

Are dwarves jews or no?
simple question.

You're still missing the history, and the opportunities within. Instead say that the gnomes were not persecuted once, but repeatedly for centuries in waves. In recent past, it seemed that a wave had crested and they were being freed from archaic restrictions and allowed to participate more freely in common society, with a combination of gnomish cultural traditions and the spring-like ambition of an oppressed minority unchained sending them disproportionately to the top.

Then a new wave of persecutions, more viscious than any in living memory, reminded them that they are still outcasts and others. Mix in a resurgence in worldwide gnomish culture (and some fears of death by assimilation) and some powerful gnomes with the ears of important statesmen in the world empire, and you have the groundwork for an alliance. Help the gnomes set up a homeland in what is known to the Empire to be uninhabited scrubland, and in return get electoral support now and a pliable community (but not nation) in that area. The rich gnomes don't want to go and start this community, but fortunately there's a bunch of poor, unmarried young males to the East who are tired of getting kicked around and want something new.

Turns out there are natives in that place, who aren't super happy about what looks to them like another identical round of colonization from the Empire. Fortunately, there's going to be a war (during which the natives will turn against their current rulers and side with the Empire) and an absolutely devastating famine that will kill about half of them, ruining what civilization and organization they had and making colonization easier. Add in gnomes fighting amongst themselves, but still being organized enough to continue moving indespite strife, and you're there.

>Better have a small set of gnomes that had lived there for thousands of years and had good relations with the future zealots and dislike the current regime then.
There are (or at least were) Jews like that.

Halflings are West Country English/Cornish people.
You will now give all your halflings West-country accents Oooh arr, oooh arr!

>actually does beleive in mysticism and the supernatural
aren't jews supposed to be clever

>actually dead, as in 'no one speaks this or can write this language
Not quite the case. We knew how to read and write hebrew, and in medieval ages it was used to communicate between two Jewish communities that didn't speak the same language.
That being said, it had always been primarily a language of prayer, not a language of communication or even of study. Don't know where you heard that BS about it being based on Classical Arabic, but that's BS.

pic

>Not quite the case. We knew how to read and write hebrew, and in medieval ages it was used to communicate between two Jewish communities that didn't speak the same language.
>That being said, it had always been primarily a language of prayer, not a language of communication or even of study. Don't know where you heard that BS about it being based on Classical Arabic, but that's BS.

not him, but there's lots of basic misinformation about Judaism throughout the internet. I wonder what causes it, even simple things like "Judaism is just Christianity without Jesus" or "What is the Jewish view on the afterlife?" get repeated a lot. I'm not jewish at all, I just have a jewish friend and a lot of this seems like basic information

It's either Hebrew that took a bunch of Germanic and Slavic loanwords and structure until it became an autonomous language, or a hybrid Germanic-Slavic language that was adapted to use some Judeo-Semitic grammatical structures.

Either way, it was only used by certain populations of Jews in Eastern Europe.

Medieval Hebrew was a language in use, but it's far removed from Classical Hebrew. was only really used as a written language by scholars, poets. and rabbis and was not a complete linguistic system that could be used for independent communication. As for the influence of Classical Arabic on it's structure (which is especially evident in the poetry and philosophical texts, which were a major facet of it's usage despite you saying it wasn't primarily a language of study) I recommend Sáenz-Badillos.

>there are rabbinical provisions from three hundred years ago about the morality of sex robots and how that would differ between a robot with strong or weak ai
Wow, so they were waifuing robots before Japanese? That's impressive.

Well, keep in mind that there's a lot of misinformation on all religions on the internet, largely because theologic experts are the kinds of people who don't tend to use the internet that much. I'd say that the issue is further compounded for Judaism because of lack of numbers.
If you want the answers to those specific questions, by the way, they're "no we're very different from christianity" and "we know/care very little about heaven, and non-jews get to go to heaven" respectively.

Okay, I see what you're trying to say; I got confused with what you meant when you said dead language.
Suffice it to say that we know enough about biblical hebrew to revive it as modern hebrew without any issues.

Judaism is a very anal religion; it measures holiness by seconds and millimeters, so rabbis will tend to argue about topics that are obscure and will probably never be important

>Judaism is a very anal religion; it measures holiness by seconds and millimeters, so rabbis will tend to argue about topics that are obscure and will probably never be important

Wow, they really are dwarves.

I already knew the answers to those questions. I was asking them rhetorically because I see them asked all the time in YT comments

>Suffice it to say that we know enough about biblical hebrew to revive it as modern hebrew without any issues

No, in fact quite the opposite. Modern Hebrew and Biblical Hebrew are two different languages with marked similarities. It's like if Latin had truly died and gone unspoken for a few hundred years and unread except for rote memorization of Ovid, eventually someone came along and tried to rebuild it, and we ended up with English. Ben-Yehuda did some excellent scholarship and used as many sources as he could, but just didn't have enough examples of Hebrew grammatical structures and ended up borrowing large parts of European languages to create syntax rules (he and his team were European Jews, so naturally that was their bias).

A colleague of mine described learning to read the Torah as a youth vs. going to Israel and learning Modern Hebrew as the difference between riding a bike and riding a unicycle - you can see what's the same, but try going about it the same way and you'll fall on your face.

Would an apt comparison between modern Hebrew and biblical Hebrew be the difference between Linear A and modern Greek?

The grammar is artificial (this was on purpose, as biblical grammar and conjugation is overcomplicated), but the vocabulary is incredibly similar if not almost identical. I only know a handful of modern hebrew words myself, but I can still find and understand their biblical equivalents without issue.

I'd say a better comparison is Modern English to Early-Middle English.

I can't speak to Linear A (as it's still undeciphered as far as I know) but between Linear B and modern Greek is not the worst comparison. The classic analogy in English is modern English to Early English.

The stylized Biblical structure is the most noticeable difference, but even such basic elements as א ֹנ ִכי to אני can throw people off.

...

>blood sacrifices
Mostly burn-sacrifices, actually. Blood is considered unkosher in Judaism, and isn't used ins sacrifices.

Hopefully works now.
Hill fortress that the romans conquered during the uprising.

>Not dead like Latin, but actually dead, as in 'no one speaks this or can write this language, we only think we know what the Torah says because of the oral tradition surrounding it not because we actually understand the grammar and words used.'
That's quite mysterious, given that as a modern day Hebrew speaker I can understand quite a few of the words written on the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Most rabbinical thought also permits magic if used for a good purpose by a good person, on the basis that Job clearly used magic (gave the visiting angels tokens of good luck which actually worked, a.k.a magical talismans) and we know for a fact the guy was a saint.

Rabbinical discourse is wacky. I don't remember which one is it, but one of the recorded conversations in the Talmud, IIRC, segues (one of the reasons they're so hard to comprehend is that they're literally word for word recordings of conversations people had - they weren't edited or anything. Oftentimes they just change direction in the middle) into the important subject of whether or not God, which had no mother and thus couldn't have had a Jewish mother, could be considered Jewish. The reason? To know the likelihood that his household has Kosher utensils, because if it doesn't then when the rabbis die and go heaven, should they be invited to have dinner with God, they'd be forced to limit themselves to the salads and it would be in poor taste.

I shit you not. I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried.

>fears of death by assimilation
See, that's one of those places where you fuck up trying to make a "real world culture in fantasy" 1:1. They're gnomes, not a fucking religion. They're a different SPECIES to humans, assimilation isn't a risk because it's not possible. Nor is there an issue of gnomes disguising themselves as humans because it's pretty fucking clear they aren't. And much of the tearjerking holocaust argument about humans being dicks to other human beings breaks down because shit, they literally aren't human beings.

Stuff like that, and even more ridiculous, can be found all over the Talmud.

But, the rabbis are aware of this, and often make fun of themselves and the whole thing in stories. There's one I really want where the rabbis are arguing, and everyone agrees this one rabbi, yet the other rabbi keeps on disagreeing. They ask other smarter, more famous rabbis, who all agree with the first rabbi, while the second rabbi keeps disagreeing. Eventually, God himself comes down and agrees with the first rabbi; this still doesn't convince the second rabbi.

Using basic D&D rules, gnomes are the moral equivalent of human beings, even if they're not the same species.

And you can still have death by assimilation, if the gnomes stop holding in their hearts the idea that being gnomes is something special. Instead of being gnomes that live in Waterdeep, they're Waterdhavian.

It's harder but not impossible to still see the death of culture as a legitimate fear.

It's actually stupider than that. The particular story you're talking about has the rabbis on one side of the argument (whether or not a certain type of oven is kosher) invoking various MIRACLES to prove they're right. Like, they go "If I'm right, then may the carob tree uproot itself and travel a hundred feet to the left", and it does. River flows backwards, walls of the house around them flatten, shit like that. The kicker is that whenever something like this happens, the guy on the other side of the argument just goes "Doesn't count for anything, a miracle isn't an argument". Eventually they invoke God himself and He comes down and tells the guy "DUDE, YOU ARE WRONG, LET IT GO" but the rabbi just crosses his arms and goes "If I'm wrong, give a proper logical argument, all this miracle shit doesn't prove dick."

And then it mentions that years later one of the first rabbis went and met the Prophet Elijah, and asked him how God reacted to the whole thing in heaven, and Elijah's like "oh, he was rolling on the floor laughing out loud 'my children have bested me! My children have bested me!'".

I would have add that both Jews ans dwarves have a true name fetish where words are power, but everything in Tolkien have that so it doesn't really set them out.

>which had no mother and thus couldn't have had a Jewish mother
Couldn't God make himself a Jew just because he is omnipotent being and can do anything and skip that part?

Have you learned nothing about rabbis? The tiny little technical details and rule anecdotes matter way more than stupid shit like "omnipotent deity".

It's less "words have power" and more "words are math and math has power," which is still pretty Dwarf-ish.

I don't know, could he? :^)

>They're gnomes, not a fucking religion. They're a different SPECIES to humans, assimilation isn't a risk because it's not possible.

This depends on if the gnomes can interbreed with humans (without overt magical interference) then they are, by definition, human beings.

Technically most DnD 'core races' are just phenotypes or subclades of the species as evidenced various instances of hybridization.

To the chart!

What do you know, they actually can't breed with humans.

The rules of the Talmud are considered immutable in Judaism. Not even God is allowed to just change the rules like that. He gave commandments to the Jews and they agreed to follow them, that was the deal no take-backs. Jews worship God but they follow the Talmud.

If Dwarfs were exactly like Jews in everyway, then they wouldn't be Dwarfs they'd be Jews wouldn't they.

>The rules of the Talmud are considered immutable in Judaism.

No, not really. In fact, the "Rules of the Talmud" themselves are the product of arguments between Rabbis.

> Jews worship God but they follow the Talmud.

This statement isn't even wrong, it's just sans meaning. The Talmud is itself an extension of the revealed scriptures; the closest analogue I can think of is it's a corpus of common law, something akin to what the Supreme Court does in the United States.

That is my favorite Jewish story.

On that day, Rabbi Eliezer put forward all the arguments in the world, but the Sages did not accept them.

"Finally, he said to them, 'If the halakha is according to me, let that carobtree prove it.'

"He pointed to a nearby carob-tree, which then moved from its place a hundred cubits, and some say, four hundred cubits. They said to him 'One cannot bring a proof from the moving of a carob-tree.'

"Said Rabbi Eliezer, 'If the halakha is according to me, may that stream of water prove it.'

"The stream of water then turned and flowed in the opposite direction.

"They said to him, 'One cannot bring a proof from the behavior of a stream of water.'

"Said Rabbi Eliezer, 'If the halakha is according to me, may the walls of the House of Study prove it.'

"The walls of the House of Study began to bend inward. Rabbi Joshua then rose up and rebuked the walls of the House of Study, 'If the students of the Wise argue with one another in halakha," he said, "what right have you to interfere?'

"In honor of Rabbi Joshua, the walls ceased to bend inward; but in honor of Rabbi Eliezer, they did not straighten up, and they remain bent to this day.

"Then, said Rabbi Eliezer to the Sages, 'If the halakha is according to me, may a proof come from Heaven.'

"Then a heavenly voice went forth and said, 'What have you to do with Rabbi Eliezer? The halakha is according to him in every place.'

"Then Rabbi Joshua rose up on his feet, and said, 'It is not in the heavens'.

"What did he mean by quoting this? Said Rabbi Jeremiah, 'He meant that since the Torah has been given already on Mount Sinai, we do not pay attention to a heavenly voice, for You have written in Your Torah, 'Decide according to the majority'.

"Rabbi Nathan met the prophet Elijah. He asked him, 'What was the Holy One, Blessed be He, doing in that hour?'

"Said Elijah, 'He was laughing and saying, "My children have defeated me, my children have defeated me."

It's an almost perfect demonstration of what Judaism is as a religion. Stubborn, argumentative, anal, eminently logical, willing to tell God himself that humans are the arbiters of his law and he has no place in discussions of scripture, then believe that God was fucking laughing about it and proud of them for it.

I've always been of the belief that the world, being imperfect, is a test for mankind. So I really like that ending, with god laughing in joy at Mankind's achievements.

...

Basketball used to be considered a Jewish sport before it was a black sport.

thesocietypages.org/socimages/2013/11/25/when-jews-dominated-professional-basketball/

I know that there've been a fair number of Jewish strong-men in the past.

Kender are Halfings as played by people who don't know they're supposed to be Hobbits.

Tolkien wrote multiple drafts of a stern letter explaining to German censors how Dwarves weren't intended to be Jews.

>Witcher elves
>gypsies
...I don't see it at all

For the same reason we don't bring up rule 0 when we argue about D&D rules. the DM can do whatever they want, but that just shuts down the entire discussion.

>We knew how to read and write hebrew, and in medieval ages it was used to communicate between two Jewish communities that didn't speak the same language.

I've heard this is one of the things that led to the 'rich jew' stereotypes. Basically jews from all over Europe had any easier time communicating past language barriers because they shared a language, making it much easier to get information on the best markets, prices, exchange rates etc. which gave jewish merchants an advantage. As labour was heavily regulated and jews excluded from most jobs they often found themselves in the role of merchants and entrepenurs, where having information from far away lands was worth a lot, leading to many succesful jewish merchants and bankers. Naturally other people decided to attribute such succes to jewish being greedy and stingy.

>the rabbi just crosses his arms and goes "If I'm wrong, give a proper logical argument, all this miracle shit doesn't prove dick."
That's a man I can respect

And yet even in Biblical times there was a heavy belief in magic and its use throughout Palestine. That's like saying "Modern Americans don't use prostitutes or commit murder because those two things are against the law, and condemned by the Bible."

Do it like redwall, every race has its own British accent.

Dwarves are Scottish because fuck you. Halflings cornish. Humans cockney. Half Orcs Australian and real Orcs and goblinoids high caliber strine/bogan.

Dragons upper class london, kobolds are chavs.

Elves speak welsh.

Book of Job is pretty solid too but I'm definitely biased towards that

Didn't Tolkien actually say he imagined a couple of elven languages sounding like welsh

>even nowadays they believe in sorcery
No we don't.

>We
You fool, OP made this thread to expose the jews

You played you hand, he's coming for you

You don't need to believe when you know

user, that's the campaigns minimum.
>Not Jews emigrating by foot ask the way from Russia, complete with hostility at every turn and more hostility once you reach not Palestine.
>A criminal campaign focused on the actions of fantasy mossad and haganah. Smuggling, terrorism, Arms deals, set during one of the largest wars the world has ever seen and it's immediate aftermath
>Campaign during fantasy war for Independence, surrounded by hostile on all sides and facing a hostile colonial power, you need to arm and defend your settlements, break sieges, and come up with creative force multipliers

Dwarfs are Neanderthals.
Elves are Nazis
Humans are Jews.

So basically, Talmud is just ancient forum archives, including the flamewars and other shitposting.

Pretty much.

>tfw you will never understand how some of the idioms behind Talmudic insults developed.

which ancient scriptures aren't? Jews are just more up front about how much we argue about interpretations of holy texts.

I've never heard that one before. I'd say that it has more to do with jews getting better at business over time, rather than some minor advantage regarding language barriers.

From what I've heard, a lot of Talmud insults go "I heard a story from so-and-so about this-and-that..." and then proceed to describe an unflattering story.
Like, off the top of my mind, there's this one story a rabbi tells about the Emperor of Rome's brother, who was a sorcerer, who summoned ghosts from the underworld to ask about the punishment they were facing, and the ghost of this one specific guy said he spent eternity chin-deep in shit.
That's how Talmud insults are.

An archive of an FAQ/RPG forum for debating the RAW and RAI? If we consider the Torah to be the rulebook, then basically, yeah.

It also compounds with high Jewish literacy, and that some skills like medicine, law skills, comedy and trade a) don't need a load of land, and b) are very similar the world over

You're right, no gnomes are jews, whereas all of the dwarves are jews.

"Millionaires don't use astrology, billionaires do."