J.R.R. Tolkien’s Jewish Dwarves and Their Yearning for Zion

By J.R.R. Tolkien’s own admission, the dwarves are the group in his novels most similar to Jews, and in constructing their language he even drew upon Semitic models. Meir Soloveichik explores Tolkien’s attitudes toward Jews, his friendship with the Jewish historian Cecil Roth, the story of The Hobbit’s translation into Hebrew, and what, if anything, these “short, bearded beings exiled from their homeland, who have dreamed forever of returning” can teach actual Jews about their own experience: