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Fagin No Reflection on Jews, Dickens’s Son Says

October 15, 1928
See Original Daily Bulletin From This Date
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(J. T. A. Mail Service)

“It is amazing to me too that anyone of the Jewish race could have entertained the idea that the fact of Fagin being a Jew was intended to cast a reflection upon the Jewish race in general,” Sir Henry F. Dickens, son of the famous noveli t, writes in a letter to the “Jewish Guardian” this week.

“It might have been said,” he goes on, “with equal truth tha the English people might have felt ndignant at Bill Sikes being introduced as an Englishman. There are villians in every path of life, whatever religious body or persuasion they may happen to belong to. Fagin was introduced as a Jew, not because the Jewish race were more likely than any other to be criminal, but because he was an old rogue who happened to be a Jew. There is no doubt, however, I think, that there was some feeling among members of the Jewish persuasion that the introduction of Fagin as a Jew was a slight upon their body.

“With regard to Riah, although I never heard my father say anything on the subject, I always had an idea myself that my father, in depicting that beautiful and lovable character, did so in order to give a description of a Jew at his best, as he had before painted a Jew at his werst. But this is purely surmise on my part.”

The semi-annual meeting of the Board of Managers of the National Council of Jewish Women will be held in New York City, on Wednesday and Thursday. November 21 and 22. at the Waldorf-Astoria, at the call of the President, Mrs. Joseph E. Friend of New Orleans, according to an announcement made by Mrs. Estelle M. Sternberger. Executive Secretary. The sessions will be preceded by a meeting of the Policy Committee. The Executive Committee will convene on Monday and Tuesday, November 19 and 20.

At these meetings, preliminary plans for the Twelfth Triennial Convention at Los Angoles in November 192?, will be discussed. Reports will be presented on the activities of the Department of Immigrant Aid and immigrant Education, of the Department of Farm and Rural Work, and of the Department of Vocational Guidance and Employment.

The Brooklyn Federation of Jewish Charities will launch Federation’s Twentieth Anniversary Appeal for 81,035,000 tomorrow night at the Unity Club, Brooklyn.

Supreme Court Justice Mitchell May, President of Federation, will address the five hundred volunteer workers who will attend the gathering tomorrow night.

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