Letter: Irrelevant Jewishness

Gerda Redlich
Saturday 19 September 1998 23:02 BST
Comments

IN THE first column of the profile on Sir Jeremy Isaacs (13 September) the author, Gerald Kaufman, introduces the former director of Covent Garden as a bruiser "short and thick-set, with features and accent which confirm that he is a nice Jewish boy from Glasgow..." and adds his parents' Jewish names.

These words could fit any white, non-Jewish Glasgow lad. Surely they aren't the main characteristics of an average young Jew. It confirms nothing.

If that weren't bad enough, the headline to the article reads in large print: "The nice Jewish bruiser is coming round again", as if it were the most important statement in the article.

Why not call Gerald Kaufman "a nice Jewish politician?" The Jewishness, irrelevant here, applies to both Isaacs and Kaufman.

As a political refugee from Austria, I am particularly sensitive to everything that smacks of racism.

GERDA REDLICH

(nice Aryan woman from Vienna)

Withington, Manchester

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