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RedditWaban, Mass.
Despite Tony Kushner and Alisa Solomon's heroic efforts to redeem Caryl Churchill's good intentions ["Tell Her the Truth," April 13], I can't help but read the penultimate speech of her play as an invitation to anti-Semitic stereotyping. What human being is not moved and sorrowful at the death of any child? Only a monster reacts to a bloody child with the cold calculation of the speaker. And Churchill leaves her audiences with that portrait of the Jew, undoing any sympathy created by her earlier dialogue. This is Shylock, without the humanizing gesture of the "hath not a Jew eyes" speech, devoid of even the capacity for empathy. One can criticize a war without dehumanizing a people.
DAHLIA RUDAVSKY
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