Every year, a great day dawns on Middle Earth: September 22, or Hobbit Day, for those who didn’t grow up on a steady diet of tales of rings, angry wizards, and small creatures with big feet.
Not all bearded, money-grubbing dwarves are evil, anti-Semitic stand-ins for Jews. As it turns out, J.R.R. Tolkien was something of a Judeophile.
What do fantasy writer J.R.R. Tolkien, Yugoslavian dictator Josip Broz Tito, Brazilian soccer star Pelé and financier George Soros have in common? They all share an interest in Esperanto, an invented language whose goal is to unite humankind.
Jewschool’s Ben Dreyfus notes a striking similarity between J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy masterpiece “The Lord of the Rings” and the Purim story: