Reply To: Is harry potter kosher?

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#2217811
SACT5
Participant

Based on the postings it seems everyone here has read and enjoyed the books so as an informal poll there you go. The first two books are probably okay if one is okay with reading secular literature. The characters celebrate Christmas and there is even a token Jewish student, Anthony Goldstein in Ravenclaw, who attends Hogwarts which is a multi-faith wizard school. The later books in the series get more questionable though as the subject matter gets darker and more mature in tone.

From a Jewish perspective my big issue would be the Christian subtext in the stories. I struggled a lot with the ending of the series. <Spoiler Alert> The intense betrayal and sacrifice of the main character seemed disturbing to me. So I did some research to understand it better and then I found out why this literary allegory felt so foreign to me. It is designed to parallel the Christian resurrection story (this has been confirmed by the author). The 7th book the Deathly Hallows even includes 2 direct quotes directly from the Christian bible which were listed on tombstones.