The Jewish Roots Of Asterix

The four Roman camps on the periphery of the village likely represent the four Arab countries surrounding Israel – Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. So, Romans are conflated with both the Arabs and Nazis, two groups which gave Jews a hard time in the 20th century. Asterix and the Great Divide (1980) portrays a Gallo-Roman culture, a reference to Nazi collaborators and the puppet Vichy French regime or maybe Hellenized Jews – the source of the tale of Hanukkah! The Great Divide is also based on the Berlin Wall that separated East and West Germany. 

In Asterix and the Goths (1963) the novel does not portray the Goths (based on Germans) positively at all. Goths wear German World War I helmets and chief Metric is a caricature of Otto Von Bismarck. The authors later claimed to have regretted portraying Germans entirely negatively and subsequently, in the 1967 Asterix the Legionary, portrayed some German characters in a more positive light. If you understand French, the comics are funnier in their original, untranslated format. In fact, much of the humor in the initial books was so French-specific that translation releases were constantly delayed out of concern that they would lose in-jokes and flow in the storyline. 

In Asterix and the Black Gold (1980), Saul ben Ephishul (sounds like so beneficial), is a Jewish guide who escorts Asterix and Obelix from Jerusalem to the Dead Sea and is a caricature of Goscinny. Their voyage is full of Biblical references, such as spending the night in a Bethlehem stable and the mention of David and Goliath.

In Uderzo’s memoir, he reminisced: “Not very long before René left us, his wife and I spent several days in René and Gilbert Goscinny’s apartment in Cannes. And one morning I astonished René, telling him about how I had dreamt that I was hovering and flying over Jerusalem, bathed in golden sunlight under a brilliant blue sky, even though I had yet to visit this city. When I later visited for real, it was as if I recognized everything.”

When Druid Getafix sends them to get oil, an ingredient for the magic potion, they travel to the Middle-East but return empty handed. Getafix subsequently realizes that beetroot was a worthy substitute to make the potion. This is a nod to the aftermath of the 1973 Suez war when the Arab world’s oil embargoes were countered by the West diversifying their oil sources, resulting in new sources being extracted in places such as Alaska, the North Sea and Caucasus.