The Jewish Daily Forward has published a piece by Elsa Solender called ‘The Secret Jewish History of Jane Austen’ and you’d be forgiven for thinking it was a serious article on the subject of Austen’s views.
The only two paragraphs that really relate to Austen’s views on the subject are:
‘As far as we know, Jane Austen never met a Jew, although “Jewry Street,” memorializing Jewish moneylenders and merchants before the expulsion of Jews from England in 1290, runs through the city of Winchester, where she breathed her last before her 42nd birthday, probably a victim of Addison’s Disease.
Austen gives us one vulgar character (in “Northanger Abbey”) who is churlish enough to characterize another as “rich as a Jew.” Otherwise, Jews go unmentioned in the Austen canon, which includes, besides the six best known works of fiction, one unpublished epistolary novella (“Lady Susan”), two uncompleted novels (“Sanditon” and “The Watsons”) letters, prayers, poems and juvenile works.’ (1)
This is accurate enough as far as it goes, but as you can see; there is no actual jewish connection to Jane Austen other than that single negative reference to jews in ‘Northanger Abbey’.
Solender rather dishonestly tries invent one by warbling about how jews have ‘reimagined’ Austen’s works and have been prominent among the official Austen enthusiasts in the United States, but that doesn’t have any relevance or reference to Austen herself, because they were alive one to two centuries after she died.
That is like saying Hegel was jewish, because many of his Young Hegelian followers and disciples were members of the tribe. It just doesn’t make any sense to anyone with an ounce of brains.
It doesn’t stop Solender or Talya Zax – in a companion article – (2) arguing that because the jews wish to appropriate Austen for themselves that she is some kind of spiritual jewess though.
Oh well.
References
(1) http://forward.com/culture/books/376312/the-secret-jewish-history-of-jane-austen/
(2) http://forward.com/culture/377207/jane-austen-200-jews-clueless/