More about “meek Jews”.
Maybe she called them “ugly Russians” because of their slightly slanted eyes, which today seem attractively exotic but in the olden days just made them look strange and different in her eyes.

It is sad isn’t it, that the most prominent thing that she sees about European Jews of the time was their meekness (at least it wasn’t their noses!). Their meekness didn’t really help them much, in the long run, did it?

And if we’re on that subject, New York Times Book Review has interviewed Iain Pears about his latest book “The Dream of Scipio”, which looks much too heavy for my liking (more Bish’s sort of thing - I wonder if it’s been translated into Hebrew yet). It’s a philosophical novel that among other things discusses anti-Semitism, through the ages.

“Anti-Semitism is like alcoholism,” says Pears, “You can go for 25 years without a drink, but if things go bad and you find yourself with a vodka in your hand, you can’t get rid of it. It’s an emotional inheritance, a social inheritance.”