Fagin

We must have been three-quarters of the way through “Oliver!” when we got to one of Fagin’s dialogues, and I realized that there was vaguely klezmer-ish music playing in the background… and I finally put together that Fagin, the miserly old crook who exploits the pickpocketing boys, is Jewish! I was astonished, as were the kids. In subsequent research, I learned that Fagin is one of (Western) literature’s archetypal Jewish villains; I'm embarrassed to have gotten this far in life and only be learning this now, but what can you do. I also learned that the anti-Semitic content had been greatly toned down for this movie; the 1949 production (!) was protested in postwar Germany and banned in (brand-new) Israel because of the depiction of Fagin, and (thanks to the Anti-Defamation League and the New York Board of Rabbis) wasn’t released in the US until they cut out seven minutes’ worth of big-nosed profile shots. Look at the schnozz they pasted onto Alec Guinness!

Yowza. As I say, the version we saw toned down the Jewish content, but even this version had devil references. For example, here is Ron Moody threatening Oliver with a miniature pitchfork. 

The book apparently was recognized as grotesquely anti-semitic even at the time; a Jewish newspaper asked why "Jews alone should be excluded from the 'sympathizing heart' of this great author and powerful friend of the oppressed.” Dickens said he was just being realistic about the nature of street crime in that era, but he did revise the book to remove some of the offensive content, and wrote a sympathetic Jewish character into a later book. That’s good to know… but I think for family reading time, I will choose a different Dickens book.