FEEDBACK

Thank you for your article on how Jews are portrayed in movies. It is a thoughtful piece. However, Lewis Beale describes Paul Newman as “half Jewish.” Judaism is a religion, not an ethnic group or race. No one can be “half Jewish”. My father was Catholic. Does this make me “half Catholic”?

Nancy Hoover

Apple Valley

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On the one hand, Lewis Beale states that the more or less complete assimilation of certain male Jewish film and TV characters is sometimes felt to be “particularly empowering because their religion is essentially irrelevant.”

On the other, he laments that Jewish female characters in the mainstream media “exist outside of any Jewish cultural context.” Yet Beale made no attempt to reconcile these conflicting views and succeeded not in making any particular point on the subject but only in constructing a double standard.

James McCarthy

Granada Hills