Letters to the Editor

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Sticking with Mel Brooks

Dear Editor,

Don Anderson’s review of Howard Jacobson’s memoir, Mother’s Boy, had some very funny lines (t/rope!), and I’m all for a final flourish, but it is unclear what the last sentence is implying (ABR, July 2022). Is it a joke insinuating that Jews are over-sensitive about anti-Semitism? That Jews are allowed to be over-sensitive if they are witty and artful in their paranoia? That Jacobson construed any disagreement with him during his time at the University of Sydney as anti-Semitism? That they are too many Jews in academia? Or that academics hate Jews?

I’ll stick with Mel Brooks for my Jewish jokes.

Gabriella Edelstein (online comment)