Do stereotypes usually have a grain of truth?

..but apparently I am, and even right now part of me is yelling, "Don't you know you might accidentally start an Internet argument with this?"

But somehow I want to know what everyone else thinks of the question "Do stereotypes usually have a grain of truth?" The reason I'm asking is because I've been googling stuff about the various portrayals of Fagin, for obvious reasons, and there is still quite a lot of controversy over this character and his Jewishness. I've been thinking over this for quite a while. (Here goes. Jewish tropers, prepare to be offended but hear this non-religious, not Jewish, no religion whatsoever but culturally Buddhist, troper out.)

Fagin is depicted as a red-headed hook-nosed old miserly fence who sends snitches to the gallows.

I have a fence character in my novel modelled on Fagin and sharing the same name, who's very unlike the Dickens character except that he's Jewish and has a gang of kid pickpockets/scrap collectors, but does have a very pointy and bent-looking hooked nose, like this guy and actually more of his character comes from Ikey Solomon rather than Dickens. Like Ikey, he'd rather go legit than be a fence (in steampunk future New York, not London) but does it because he doesn't want to starve, and like Ikey he loves the children he's taken in. In the Alec Guinness 1948 Oliver Twist, Fagin is also portrayed with a hugely exaggerated fake nose and Eastern European accent which screams CREEPY IMMIGRANT. That portrayal, IIRC, was so controversial that Polish refugees rioted.

The reason I'm asking this is that I'm fairly sure there are Ashkenazi Jewish people who are and were involved with organised crime, have pointy noses, and speak with Yiddish accents. Of course I'm not dumb/racist/religiously bigoted enough (in fact I'd prefer to think I'm none of those) to think that all Jewish people look like Ikey Solomon, but my question, especially to Ashkenazi Jewish tropers, is: Would you still consider a character like that to be a religious stereotype, no matter how complex he is?

• sits back and waits for the harsh responses*.

There's no way this is gonna go anywhere good.

Yeah, I don't think this thread was a good idea. Maybe if it were in OTC and a bit more carefully worded, but even then, not exactly the best idea.