#judaism parallels

[short-wooloo]

Jedi Chanukah

An idea came to my mind

I've seen a number of posts which highlight parallels between the Jedi and Judaism, even beyond the more obvious

being that we are around the time of Chanukah, it got me thinking

as I understand the origins of Chanukah in its most basic sense, the Holiday came about from the Maccabean Revolt, where the Jewish rebels defeated the Seleucid Greek empire and kicked them out of Judea

what does this have to do with the Jedi?

well aside from the basic concept of Rebels defeated an empire, there is something else I have noticed

During the Seleucids occupation of Judea, they attempted to quash Judaism in the land, outlawing the faith and trying to enforce Hellenization by converting the Temple of Jerusalem into one for Zeus, while also having pigs be slaughtered for sacrifice there, all and all very petty and cruel attempts to hurt those of the Jewish faith

there are some interesting parallels to this in SW

Now obviously Emperor Palpatine and his Empire made the Jedi faith/culture illegal, murdering and persecuting the Jedi (with help from Jedi traitors Vader/the inquisitors, another parallel as the story goes there were Jews who collaborated with the Seleucids), but it doesn't stop there

in the disney eu canon, Palpatine takes a page right out of the Seleucid handbook in his defilement of the Jedi Temple, not only did his forces assault this sacred place and murder its inhabitants, Palpatine turned this temple-a place of faith, learning, and knowledge-and made it into his personal palace

revolting, and considering how the sith narcissistically see themselves as gods, it nicely lines up with how the Seleucids took the Jewish Temple and made it an alter to their gods, Palpatine made the Jedi Temple into a temple of his own self worship

now what has happened to Jedi temple after Palpatine's death and the empire's fall has not been revealed as of yet (here's hoping for the Rey Jedi Order movie), but I believe there is a chance to further mirror the story of Chanukah here

as the story goes, after the Seleucids were kicked out, the Maccabees went about with some house cleaning, liberating the Temple in Jerusalem, getting rid of all the greek god stuff and rededicating the Temple to its original purpose, and along the way experiencing a miracle which would birth a central part of Chanukah

What if we get something similar in SW with the Jedi? After Rise of Skywalker, Rey and her reestablished Jedi Order reclaim and return to the Jedi Temple of Coruscant, cleansing it of Palpatine's dark influence/stain and rededicating it to its purpose as the Jedi's home and center of learning

and maybe along the way a new tradition develops in the Jedi Order, a commemoration of their return to their ancient home

So in short

Lightsaber Menorah

[zukkacore]

The funny thing is that I do characterize pre shatterstar Jace as basically a fantasy atheist but I do think worship of Cassandra would fix him

[hyperpotamianarch]

#350s#that's... not going to be good#provincea syria palestina and all that#though the byzantine/roman empire isn't christian yet#though oh dear#i just checked#the roman empire doubled down on judaism around this time#it's about the time the final version of the Jerusalem talmud was codified#and about when Hillel HaSheni finalised the Hebrew calendar#both of which happened due to persecutions#i better get to babylon ASAP or I'm screwed#but that means I beat you petewentz!#I get to maybe appear in the Gemara and study from Abayey and Rava'!#take that!#well#that is if I survive and managed to get into the yeshivahs#which at the time would require lots of memorization#and my quill penmenship is terrible#so I have a slight chance of being doomed#low chance of managing to get into the Talmud#and high likelihood of blisters from travelling the desert to babylon.#I"m not too likely to die in syria palestina#but it's not going to be fun#also thank goodness I'm semi decent in ancient jewish babylonian aramaic#at least I could talk and some people will understand me

Those are the tags I've put on a post about randomly being transferred to a decade. The post specified that ypu do not move in space, just in time, IIRC. So, I've made my assumptions on how being transferred to Provincea Syria Palestina of the 350s CE would affect me. However, I failed to remember the particularities of the geological location. Meaning, the area I live in wasn't Jew-friendly 1670 years ago.

Let's review the era, broadly: the 2nd Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed around 70 CE, 280 years prior to the era we speak of. The Bar Cochva' revolt occured around 140 CE, 210 years before said decade. Incidentally, this revolt had some consequences to the Jewish population of Judea. These consequences include: not living in Judea anymore (it was renamed); not living in Jerusalem anymore (both renamed to Ilia Capitolina and Jews were prohibited from entering); and Judea itself, as in the southern part of the land we now call Israel, including the area of Jerusalem and some area north of it, was devastated. Most of the Jewish population to remain in Syria Palestina went to the Galilee - Tiberias, Zippory, that area. That was where Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi lived and codified the Mishna around 200 CE, 150 years before the decade I got myself into.

So, as you can see, I've said that I could get to Babylon. Only problem is, going alone is a terrible idea - but there's no one I can really join from this far south. I think.

*

All right. So, I did some mpre digging, and I actually rescind my claim that I'm unlikely to die in Syria Palestina of that era. There was apparently a Jewish revolt starting at exactly this decade, against one of Constantine's successors. It happened mostly at the north, which is good for me (because I'm not there), but also bad (because I need to get there). There may be settlements around where I am, a couple of miles from Jerusalem, which don't prohibit Jews from entering, but they're very likely to be mostly non-Jewish, which will be a problem. It's probably best that I make the journey north through the Jordan river valley, but getting there... Well, it's going to be trouble. Especially since most of the local wild life that by now is no longer there was more present at the time. Bears might not be a thing until I get far north, but boars and wolves might be in the area.

Action plan, then: get to the closest village I can find, and try to figure out how can I get to Tiberias. That's going to be a huge problem because of my odd accent, the possibility of us not sharing a language, and I could be easily duped if anyone had an interest in doing that. I wouldn't have any of the local currency, and I doubt that anything I carry on my person might be invaluable enough to get anything, including food and drink.

Supposing I got over that, I might need to find a caravan to travel with, because the roads aren't all too safe. I need to get to Tiberias, hopefully finding it standing and well.

Suppose I manage that. It's going to take a couple of days. Depending on the particular year, the Romans may have sacked the city due to some participation in the revolt - but Wikipedia claims it wasn't too bad, so I'll probably reach to a decent city. There, I need to find Rabbi Yirmiya's Yeshiva.

Yes, you heard that right. Apparently, Rabbi Yirmiya was the major rabbi of the time. He may not have been Resh Metivta, the chief rabbi of the Yeshiva, but he was significant. I'm not looking for him, though; I'm actually looking for a couple of his students, who intend to go to Babylon.

Problem no. 2: convincing people I'm a learned man. That one is really problematic, because half my knowledge comes from a later era. I might find myself saying something as if it's already been decided and realize that it's still in debate among the rabbis. The fact I don't know large sections of the Mishna by heart will cause me trouble. Mentioning the bird-with-one-foot-within-fifty-cubits incident might be a bad idea, but that's just about the one thing I can currently remember of the time. Hopefully Rabbi Yirmiya will appreciate it. But without deep knowledge of the Mishna, I might be considered an ignoramus and not worth taking to Babylon. I'm also slightly old to start learning.

If I manage to convince them to pay to the caravan for me - unlikely, but they might be able to help me find a job to get money from - the next challenge is surviving the caravan journey to Babylon. The Romans and the Persians were fighting at the time, apparently (when are they not?), so it might be dangerous.

After I managed to get there... well, then it's time to settle somehow. Most rabbis of the era worked in the field or as merchants, with few privileges enforced by other rabbis. Actually, I mentioned before that Resh Lakish's death story wasn't the weirdest time Amora'im claimed to be responsible to someone's death due to being upset with them? The story I was thinking about occured around this era. It started with a rabbi being quizzed over his knowledge to confirm whether he deserved the privileges granted to a learned man. Maybe I'll tell this story later.

So, I need a profession. And I need to learn, and to be wary with what I say, because many people will not appreciate me saying that Abayey is right about Ye'ush SheLo' MiDa’at or that Rava' is right about just about anything else. I wouldn't want to anger any rabbi of the era, either.

This is possibly an interesting story idea. It doesn't qualify as Alternative Jewish History, though, so I'll have to keep it out of this tag. Anyway, it's interesting! And I didn't really dive deep enough yet!

[lefthorse]

my recent favorite thing to do with my free time is begin digging online for things pertaining to sephiroth. and i mean digging i mean i was finding fanart that was excavated from fansites before they died. anyways i found an article written pretty recently about ffvii and how sephiroth himself helped the author connect to judaism and im actually ill because this also happened to me.

he was always jewish to me

[quasi-normalcy]

.

[yardsards]

can i ask about your experience as a quaker (or growing up as one? i just saw you mention bein one in some tags)

i jus don't know much about them

so i was not raised quaker, i was raised baptist. which was. 0/10, do not recommend. all the guilt of catholicism with none of the stained glass lmaooo

like, i did resinate with the idea of there being some sort of higher power and i liked the idea of getting together with other believers to discuss spiritual matters but as i got older and started thinking for myself i realized i really didn't like a lot of things about the church. i hated the bigoted beliefs of its members. i hated the emphasis on blind obedience to authority. i didn't believe that the whole literal truth could be found within one book, specifically one group's interpretation of said book. and the idea that people were born inherently bad and sinful and that a supposedly kind and just god would condemn people to eternal suffering just for not believing the "right" things just did not sit well with me at all

when i went off to college i decided to try out a few different churches around town. i ended up settling on a progressive presbyterian church. the community was great and very accepting of queer people. i had some minor qualms with the theology but it wasn't like with my parents' church where every sermon made me feel increasingly nauseous, and i generally felt *good* during and after the services

and then covid hit and while they did stream their sermons, i lost that sense of community and just kinda... fell away

throughout all this i was researching different faiths online, both christian and non-christian. and one faith that kept popping up a lot that i liked the sound of was quakerism. like at one point i remember taking some online quiz of like "what religion do your values most align with" and quakerism was very in the lead. (before this, i'd only really been exposed to quakerism in history textbooks and assumed the religion died out alongside puritanism)

in the end what got me really interested was actually a video by a youtuber i liked, a queer/disability advocate and historical fashion enjoyer who also happened to be quaker

and after looking more into it, i decided to try attending a quaker meeting. which was easier due to covid cuz i could find a church online (located physically hundreds of miles from me) that did their sunday services over zoom

and so i attended and the people there were great and were doing actual good in their communities. and the way services were run, and their beliefs about what god *was* and all of that just hit me with an intense feeling of like. holy shit this is what i've always wanted from religion.

the video explains the sort of core beliefs and practices of quakerism better than i can but the main belief is that like. every person is godly. as such, it's our job to treat all living people as equally and kindly as possible. additionally, since we all have god inside of us, we need to look inwards and come to our own conclusions about our own religious beliefs and practices (and generally respect other people's religious beliefs even if they differ from our own, so long as they're not causing real tangible harm)

i haven't attended any meetings in a while, due to that group going back to semi in person (they still stream it out but it feels more like being a spectator than a member) and there being no quaker meetinghouses in the tiny town i currently live in, coinciding with me being too depressed to regularly attend anything. but i'm planning to start attending quaker meetings again once i move to a real city

[dindjarindiaries]

Because of Jon Favreau's Judaism, I wondered if he has personal reasons to have Din Djarin hold onto his religion, even while others question its relevance.

I’m thinking the very same thing

[moonlitcomet]

I don't know how people can stand making cultural characters without doing insane amounts of research on the cultures they represent, because I've spent the past couple hours doing a ridiculous amount of research so I can write a Jewish-coded character appropriately.

[shithitsmynipples]

Okay this is random and a little off base rn but I’m up at 6:45 am so here goes.

As a Jew, I kinda hate when a group of people is experiencing systematic discrimination and posts start going around like “friendly remember that it’s extremely disrespectful to compare this to the holocaust” like obviously it’s not cool to be like ‘omg this is just like that!!’

But genocide doesn’t start as genocide. It’s starts as excluding people from public life, it starts as labeling them, segregating them, dehumanizing them. When we see that writing on the wall I actually think it’s important to go “hey you know what this reminds me of..” especially cause it’s probably the only genocide a lot of white people give a fuck about.

We weren’t the first, we won’t be the last and I don’t believe it cheapens our history or our pain to say that. I think coming from a cultural history of persecution and genocide makes it our duty to call out oppression when we see it happening to other people. Never again doesn’t just mean us it means anyone.

[trendfag]

its just so annoying being in a class being taught stuff you know is wrong because you were taught the correct information in previous classes

[tigerlilypurr]

“The Last Unicorn” as a Reflection on Jews and Judaism after the Holocaust

April 16 2019

Peter S. Beagle, who turns eighty on Saturday, has behind him a six-decade career as a novelist, and is still writing. A native of the Bronx with literary aspirations, who was born into a family of Jewish artists and rubbed elbows with Ken Kesey, Beagle, as Michael Weingrad puts it, “could have ended up an American Jewish novelist trailing belatedly after Saul Bellow and Philip Roth or an occasional surrealist like Bernard Malamud or Cynthia Ozick, an observer of and sometime participant in the counterculture.” But while he experimented in a number of genres, Beagle stands out from this group by writing several works of fantasy, most importantly the 1968 The Last Unicorn, for which he is best known. Weingrad comments on this book’s subtle, but inescapable, Jewish themes, which go far beyond the fact that one of its main characters is a wizard named Schmendrick:

[In this novel] Beagle does not ironize evil; he treats it mythically. He introduces villains, above all the Red Bull, an implacable, destructive force that has been unleashed against the unicorns. Beagle’s depiction of the [titular] unicorn’s melancholy quest for the rest of her kind borders on secular post-ḥasidic parables of God discovering what has become of His Jews in the wake of the Shoah. “Wherever she went,” Beagle writes, “she searched for her people, but she found no trace of them.” Though the novel cannot be reduced to allegory, its language is infused with suggestive parallels to God and the Six Million. The unicorn repeatedly refers to the other unicorns as her “people.” “How terrible it would be,” she says ominously, “if all my people had been turned human by well-meaning wizards—exiled, trapped in burning houses. I would sooner find that the Red Bull had killed them all.” Beagle’s unicorn resembles a god who has been living apart from the world. When the unicorn leaves her timeless forest, she enters into history and is shocked and saddened by what she discovers, not least that human beings are no longer able to recognize her. “There has never been a world in which I was not known,” she muses, surprised when a farmer takes her for an ordinary mare.

Read more at Jewish Review of Books

More about: American Jewish literature, Fantasy, Holocaust, Judaism

[spidermanifested]

another black sails fantheory ive seen around a lot is that silver is jewish, usually specifically sephardic, but despite its prevalence i havent been able to find anybodys actual thesis statements about it. so if there are Essays out there (especially by somebody with more historical-slash-judaism knowledge than i with my meager wiki-crawls) i would love Links

however once again ive pondered a bunch of the stuff ive noticed personally, about mr john "if thats even your real name" silver. and honestly at this point id be kind of surprised if it Wasnt the actual context the writers shaped his character around. everything just seems to come together really neatly

hes impressively literate for his circumstances/time period, and really good at quickly memorizing large amounts of text. a solid religious education could very well explain this

specifically– and this is one of the things that feels like a huge bit of intentional subtext to me– the scene where hes hiding with the lepers and memorizing the urca schedule REALLY seems to evoke someone reading scripture under a prayer shawl

not only does he not know how to cook pork, but does not even seem to know what pork looks like when finished cooking

the pretext flint used to get his crew to hunt down the hamiltons' ship was that it was carrying sephardic riches. this is a completely throwaway detail we learn secondhand, in a story where there are very, very few completely throwaway details

silver speaks at least some spanish. this comes up Once and goes totally unquestioned by everyone around him, likely because they think he just picked it up as a sailor. he almost certainly has not been at sea long enough for this to be the case. speaking ladino as a first language on the other hand would give him a huge leg up (so to speak.) in that department

further point. around the time period of the show, the biggest sephardic community in the world lived in thessaloniki in modern-day greece. it was:

a) one of the most major seaports in the ottoman empire

b) a famous center for learning, which boasted 100% literacy of its jewish population

and c) despite its long and prosperous history under ottoman rule, beginning to decline along with the rest of the empire, for many interconnected reasons, including but not limited to: Problems With the Governments Handling of the Textile Industry (where have we heard that before)

lotta unrest. religious schisms and doomsday prophecies. reactionary groups of overempowered soldiers attacking civilians for stress relief (again. where have we heard that before). people, unsurprisingly, started leaving

so if you did want, against john silvers express wishes. to theorize a backstory for a surprisingly educated stowaway of Mystery Origin, who has Mystery Trauma and doesnt want anybody to know who he is or where he comes from, and which would give a new level of relevance to all the greek stuff that permeates the show (down to the actual name of the thing!), along with containing parallels to several other backstories and events in the show proper,

Well this one make sense i think 👍

[bijoumikhawal]

thinking about how Sisko is a Moses-figure, not a Jesus figure

He is in some way culturally foreign to the religion he's connected to

He isn't a "Savior", the epithet commonly given to Jesus, but an "Emissary"- a messenger, something closer to a Deliverer

He doesn't die to cleanse Bajor of sin, but is told he will not find his rest there- he us kept from the Promised Land because of a violation in his relationship to the divine

"Idris this is nitpicking" no, the persistent confusion between Moses and Jesus parallels in literature is ignorant and often erases important cultural nuances. In Supermans case it erases the Judaism of it all and in this case there's a VERY specific importance Moses has to the Black diaspora in the Western Hemisphere, and I can't help but think that was possibly intentionally invoked

[skydaemon]

so we (and by we, i mean the very specific overlap of jews and nerds among whom i make my home) talk a lot about how tolkien's dwarves, in both the books and movies, were likely influenced by certain jewish stereotypes. obsessed with gold/wealth, secretive (especially about their language and religion), refugees from their ancestral home, portrayed with big, sometimes hooked, noses and interesting facial hair, and most specifically: the favourite little meow meows of one particular god, causing them to be shunned and persecuted by other races and creeds. this is likely unintentional, coming from the subconscious of tolkien in the same way orcs were "based on mongols" (ew colonialism) and activating subconscious biases/stereotypes in the people who designed the dwarves for the movies. it's subtext, albeit subtext that influenced the next eighty years of fantasy.

but what i don't see much discussion of is the fact that in terry pratchett's discworld, it's intentional. terry pratchett's dwarves are, more or less, jews.

carrot is a human adopted by dwarves, based on human standards. but within dwarf culture, he IS a dwarf. specifically, he has undergone specific rituals and memorised certain passages, making him LEGALLY a dwarf. this is basically how conversion works in judaism. indeed, as in judaism, it's considered rude to even mention that carrot is six feet tall and obviously wasn't born into the culture he has adopted.

the dwarves also have internal rifts - there are a group of 'orthodox' dwarves who consider the dwarves in ankh-morpork (who have adopted other customs and don't follow traditional roles) not to be dwarves at all, and don't recognise carrot as a dwarf for the same reason. they believe that the way to be a dwarf is to live in an all-dwarf community and follow their traditional rules, while other dwarves believe they need to change with the times and integrate (at least somewhat) with larger society. jewish as fuck.

there's also the interaction of dwarves with gender. when cherie comes out as female (which isn't a recognised gender by dwarvish society) she is ostracised for taking on the feminine roles common to other discworld races. however, she could never THINK of cutting off her beard, because she is still a dwarf. i see parallels with women in judaism taking on roles traditionally considered 'masculine' (e.g., as rabbis, wearing tallit and kippot) and the acceptance of queer people into jewish communities. there's lots of great discussion about cherie as a trans character on tumblr, btw.

finally, something that particularly strikes me is the line from carrot in tfe, where he says that the biggest dwarf city on the disc is ankh-morpork. obviously all diaspora communities can relate, but it's really something to know that new york is the city with the most jews in the world (960k to jerusalem's 570k. btw, 3rd is LA!).

i just love that, again, consciously or unconsciously, pratchett incorporated more positive elements of jewish culture into his portrayal of the dwarves.

[cryptotheism]

so if angels are probably derived from babylonian religion, does that make other divine messengers, like hermes/iris/arke, examples of convergent, divergent, or parallel evolution?

Judaism and Hellenic religion/philosophy influenced each other a lot!! I would not be surprised if conceptions of Hermes had some angel in him and vice versa.

[nobodysuspectsthebutterfly]

This post was recently reblogged, and it struck me that it was originally written 11 years ago 😥 before TWOIAF came out (let alone F&B), so I ought to update it with the few relevant topics that have appeared in the worldbuilding since then.

So, @bitchfromtheseventhhell, an update: Eastern Europe inspo is at last a thing! In TLOIAF/TWOIAF, we have the land of Mossovy at "the ends of the earth", far to the east... so far that it's east of Yi Ti, east of Asshai.

And yet with a name like that and its great northern bear shape, it's for sure an expy of Russia. With quite an interesting description: "Beyond N’ghai are the forests of Mossovy, a cold dark land of shapechangers and demon hunters." And, um, that's all. welp. At least it's there?

Also in TWOIAF we have a little bit more about the Orphans of the Greenblood, that they speak the original Rhoynish language in secret, after it was banned by the Red Princes. I think this leans far more to the Romani inspo of the culture, with their private language, but I could see an argument for the use of liturgical Hebrew among medieval Jews. It's an argument I'd disagree with, but I could see one!

But the most notable thing, finally a situation where I was looking at the book like 🤔 hmm, was in F&B with the Lyseni Spring. Now... the Rogare family of Lys are very much not physically or even culturally inspired by medieval Jews. They're of Valyrian descent, silver-gold hair, purple eyes, the works. And Lys is, well... it's awful. The Rogares' primary historical inspiration is the Medici family and the Medici Bank of Florence, with Lysandro Rogare "the Magnificent" about as obvious a parallel with Lorenzo the Magnificent as you can get. But I was wondering where were the stereotypes of greedy bankers and blood libel, and well...

All this the court and kingdom might have come to accept in time, had Lady Larra not also insisted upon keeping her own gods. [...] Her ladies, her servants, and her guards would join Lady Larra at certain times in performing obeisances to these queer, ancient deities. [...] Darker rumors soon arose. [...] every time a child went missing, the ignorant would look at one another and talk of Saagael’s insatiable thirst for blood.

Drazenko’s ties to Sunspear and Lysandro’s to the Iron Throne made the Rogares the princes of Lys in all but name. By the end of 134 AC, some feared they might soon rule Westeros as well. Their pride and pomp and power became the talk of King’s Landing. [...] Yet the brothers were no more than puppets in the hands of Lady Larra; it was her and her queer Lysene gods who held their strings.

Or so the stories went. Like all such tales, they had some truth to them, well mixed with fear and falsehood. That the Lyseni were proud, grasping, and ambitious cannot be doubted. That Lotho used his bank and Roggerio his brothel to win friends to their cause goes without saying. Yet in the end they differed but little from many of the other lords and ladies of Aegon III’s court, all of them pursuing power and wealth in their own ways. Though more successful than their rivals (for a time, at least), the Lyseni were only one of several factions competing for influence. Had Lady Larra and her brothers been Westerosi, they might have been admired and celebrated, but their foreign birth, foreign ways, and foreign gods made them objects of mistrust and suspicion instead.

Nothing at all could be proved against his brother Roggerio, but Lord Manderly sentenced him to seven lashes all the same. “For what?” Roggerio demanded of him, aghast. “For being a thrice-damned Lyseni,” Torrhen Manderly responded.

Mind you, without an actual strong parallel to medieval Jewish culture and customs, this can just read as generic xenophobia, exacerbated by a shady business practices and an economic crash. But to me, I see the overlap of a banking family refusing to worship the Seven or take on Westerosi customs or wear Westerosi clothing, being accused of kidnapping and murdering children, being accused of secretly controlling the country (or conspiring to), being put on sham trial, and I go, well, hmmm.

crossingwinter asked:

I’ve been having a long series of discussions with a friend of mine about the analogous bodies of Europe that can be found in Westeros, and one of the things that I keep finding to be true is that there don’t ever seem to be Eastern European analogies at all.

While that’s fine, because lord knows GRRM can’t do everything, the one that my friend keeps hitting me with is an analogy to Jews and Judaism. He likens it to the Red Priests and their faith to Judaism(which I agree with your posts is definitely more based on Zoroastrianism than on Judaism) but I’m looking much more at a socio-historical angle. I see the Orphans of the Greenblood as being much more like the Roma (complete with unfortunate prejudices from those who don’t understand that culture); as far as we’ve seen in Dany’s experience in Slaver’s Bay, there doesn’t seem to be much (beyond the obvious Exodus comparison) to an analogous Jewish people so much as an amalgamation of slaves from different cultures much like what the Egyptians or Persians had. I just don’t find anything remotely comparable to the historical experience of either Sephardic or Ashkenazi Jews with Westerosi or Essosi society.

I guess this is a a wonk question that’s basically a “am I being an extreme dolt and missing something obvious” question, but it’s eating me up. Am I being an extreme dolt and missing something obvious?

Nope, you’re not missing anything obvious because there’s really not anything there. As you might imagine, noticing references to Jews and Judaism is something I’m pretty good at, and, well, I got nothin’.

Well, almost nothing. The closest religion to the basic core of Jewish beliefs is that of the Lord of Harmony (minus the butterflies), but the vegetarian pacifist golden-skinned Naathi are not really comparable to Jews as such. You also point out the Orphans of the Greenblood being similar to Roma, and I agree that’s what they’re drawn from; but they do have one small parallel with Jews, and that’s those who return to Mother Rhoyne, “making aliyah”, so to speak. And there’s a teeny-tiny thing re the cloaking ceremony of marriages, but that may just be a coincidence.

But from what we’ve seen, there’s really nothing comparable to the historical experience of Jews, their outsider culture in the Middle Ages, nor anything strongly resembling antisemitism (stereotypes of greediness, pogroms, blood libels, etc). (There is xenophobia re the Dornish, but not in the same way.) Mind you we haven’t seen all of the Free Cities yet, there could be something there that GRRM has yet to illustrate. (And if we don’t see any other Free Cities in the books, maybe TWOIAF will mention something?)

Note, it’s possible that this… comparative historical lacuna… could be because of the major inspirations for Westeros – the Wars of the Roses, the Hundred Years’ War, that general era of the Middle Ages in England – almost entirely took place when the Edict of Expulsion was in force, when Jews were officially banned from England (1290-1657). So GRRM may not have any major analogies to the historical experience of Jews because they’re just not there in his sources at all. Or it could just be a parallel he’s not interested in writing. (Which could be a reason why Eastern Europe isn’t especially referenced either.) Nevertheless, it’s something that might be interesting to ask him about one day, perhaps.