First a shofar and now a 20-year-old reference to a pogram? Despite pretty good reviews, Hogwarts Legacy continues to be plagued by problems with the franchise creator J.K. Rowling and her perceived antisemitic beliefs. Things are not looking great for Rowling as more evidence of it recently surfaced in the game.
Before we get into that, some context: Many, many people, including former Daily Show host Jon Stewart, have accused Rowling of including antisemitic tropes in her stories in the form of evil goblins. In the books, the goblins run a bank and are suspiciously similar to how Jewish people are negatively perceived.
Recently, an eagle-eyed early access Hogwarts Legacy player noticed a troubling Jewish reference: the goblins in the game have a horn that looks suspiciously like a ceremonial Jewish one called a shofar. It’s used to “annoy witches and wizards” in the game.
Turns out the anti-Jewish parallels go even deeper. The game, and books, reference a made up “1612 Goblin Rebellion.” Here’s where things get bad. It turns out there was a real, fatal riot toward Jews that started in 1612 and went on for years. It’s called a pogrom, which officially translates to “an organized massacre of a particular ethnic group, in particular that of Jewish people in Russia or eastern Europe….”
The shofar thing could maybe be explained away on its own, but when you put it together with the pogrom, it becomes really hard to not see a pattern here. On top of that, the 1612 reference goes all the way back to book 3 – Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
However this plays out, it’s getting harder and harder to ignore the blatant anti-Jewish ideas coming from the franchise as a whole.
Hogwarts Legacy releases everywhere tomorrow.
