Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the Jewish angle

As "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" opens to mostly stellar reviews, the title itself evokes why the book and film series have so resonated with Jewish audiences.

Like all the Potter films - based on J.K. Rowling's best-sellers - "Prince" is rife with metaphors for racism and ethnic cleansing, including characters who refer to wizards as "pure-bloods," "half-bloods" or "mudbloods" (a racist slur meaning mixed or non-magical parentage).

In the new film, flashbacks reveal how the evil Lord Voldemort grows from a troubled child into a genocidal maniac bent on annihilating non-magic folk (muggles) and those with mixed heritage.

"Voldemort and his followers, the Death Eaters, are obsessed with the preservation of blood purity," Potter producer David Heyman told the Journal last year. (Heyman is the British producer who bought the rights to the Harry Potter books in 1997 and steered the film franchise to become the highest grossing in cinematic history.)

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