geekandmisandry:

So, speaking of the Harry Potter Wizarding World and Judaism, I was on a Potter wiki the other day and I… There was so much. Because they have an entry on there for Judaism and it’s… Bad.

It starts with this blurry screencap

And the caption on it says “A sign advertising a Hebrew bookshop in New York in 1926, illustrating the city’s Jewish population”

Which, I mean, not a great start if your opening act is “Jewish people exist in New York in the 20’s” like… Well… Yeah? Obviously?

But it then goes into a picture of Anthony Goldstein from some Harry Potter video game:

It says that he is a Jewish student at Hogwarts, that there have totally been others and the source for that is just JK saying there have totally been others.

It jumps between listing the 3 Jewish characters in the series, all from the same family, and weird explanations of Judaism, including this part:

“During Biblical times, the Israelites, an ancient Semitic people who preceded modern Jews, went to war against the Philistines.[2] The Philistines hired a giant mercenary, Goliath, to fight for them, but he was ultimately slain by a young boy.[2]”

And I was like “slain by young boy??” And “young boy” had his own page so I went there and it was…

Ok, he’s boy here and Goliath’s Slayer but the part that actually made me laugh out loud was that they do mention David but it’s in a section called “behind the scenes” and something about that just really amused me, like, I dunno. Plus I had never heard a sling referred to as a catapult before.

The “behind the scenes” section mentions that in the book of Samuel David is the one who slays Goliath but in the Famous Wizard Chocolate Frog Card of Goliath (I bolded that because I’m just, Goliath was a wizard apparently, also a giant, also a mercenary) it states that he was killed by our old friend “young boy” and posits that it is possible that in the Wizarding Universe Goliath was not slain by David.

But it then also goes on to say that it could have been David but they changed it to avoid “offending religious sensibilities”, because nothing is more sensitive than… Erasing King David, I guess?

Like, I know the wiki isn’t written by Jo and I don’t know what kind of input she bothered to have on the games but it is pretty indicative that the entire wiki page is like “here are three Jewish people, there are totally more but we don’t know any and none of them explicitly mention being Jewish, also maybe King David didn’t kill Goliath… Did I mention there is at least one hebrew book store in New York??”

And that every entry under Appearances:

Says “indirectly mentioned only”.

So given this and the events that take place in the Crimes of Grindewald with one of the only Jewish characters, the idea some people are putting out there that Beasts 2 is actually an examination and criticism of antisemitism is… A farce.