#pratchett

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

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)