Michael Weingrad, director of Judaic Studies at PSU, has an essay up at Jewish Review of Books discussing why he thinks Jewish authors are well-represented in most genera except for fantasy.

To put it crudely, if Christianity is a fantasy religion, then Judaism is a science fiction religion. If the former is individualistic, magical, and salvationist, the latter is collective, technical, and this-worldly. Judaism’s divine drama is connected with a specific people in a specific place within a specific history. Its halakhic core is not, I think, convincingly represented in fantasy allegory. In its rabbinic elaboration, even the messianic idea is shorn of its mythic and apocalyptic potential. Whereas fantasy grows naturally out of Christian soil, Judaism’s more adamant separation from myth and magic render classic elements of the fantasy genre undeveloped or suspect in the Jewish imaginative tradition.

Several other blogs seem to have picked this up as a “Christians write fantasy and Jews write science fiction” dichotomy, which I’m not really getting from the actual article. It seems to explore more why it may be easier for Christians to feel comfortable writing fantasy, not why they would shy away from writing SF. It’s kind of an interesting argument; I hadn’t really considered cultural mythic structure as a basis for writing fiction before.

(via 42 Blips)