Hatzola attack
Following the horrific attack at Hatzola early on Monday, Sir Keir Starmer has assured us that his “thoughts are with the Jewish community”. Would the Machership please inform the Prime Minister that we do not need or even want his thoughts. What we want is for the police to arrest people who chant “death to Jews”, and the authorities to stop the hate marches and the hate rallies and for him to stop giving a free pass to his MPs who encourage Jew hate. It really isn’t that difficult!
Shimon Cohen,
London N2
Iran war
I know it is currently fashionable to pour scorn on Sir Keir Starmer, but some of our Trumpolaters really take the biscuit.
Eda Spinka (Letters, March 20) says President Trump acted decisively to go to war with Iran when faced with the evil of radical Islam. However, he was negotiating with the Iranians just over three weeks ago, and over the years (notwithstanding last year’s attacks) has condemned American involvement in foreign wars, notably in his first election campaign. Did he inform our prime minister before taking to arms? Yet he and his admirers deride Starmer for not jumping to Trump’s support, as if he were some sort of subordinate.
Spinka says that Iran’s fanatical regime is hell-bent on destroying Western civilisation. It is certainly hell-bent on destroying Israel, but I have to ask what exactly it is that Spinka sees as Western civilisation. Traditionally, I think it is seen as going back at least to the time of ancient Greece and of the Roman Empire, with the Middle Ages involving the crusades, then the Inquisition. Add in antisemitism, the pogroms and the Nazi massacres, and you don’t get a picture of something that has been entirely positive for the Jewish people, or indeed many others.
Maybe she has more recent ideological alignments in mind, such as the those of us who have a generally democratic form of government – though this does involve a commitment to human rights, a term which I see Ms Spinka uses in quotes in her condemnation of governments such as our own.
Jeffrey Lewis
Whitefield
Jewish family trees
Jonathan Agnew, whose death has just been reported at the age of 84, was known in the City of London as chairman of the Nationwide Building Society and chief executive of the bankers, Kleinwort Benson, and for updating the London Stock Exchange.
Jonathan was a member of the family-owned London art gallery Thomas Agnew and Sons, who were well known as art advisors to the Rothschild and Wertheimer families. It is perhaps, therefore, not surprising that Jonathan was, in fact, halachically Jewish.
His mother, the Hon Doreen Maud Agnew, nee Jessel, was a granddaughter of Sir George Jessel, the first Jewish Master of the Rolls and first Jewish Queen’s Counsellor, through her father, Herbert. Through her mother, Maud Goldsmid, she was a granddaughter of Sir Julian Goldsmid, Member of Parliament for Honiton and Rochester.
Both families originated from Frankfurt and played leading parts in Jewish English history.
Doreen Berger
The Jewish Genealogical Society
of Great Britain
I was fascinated to read the article by Serena Kutchinsky (How I cracked the mystery of my father and the biggest jewelled egg in the world, March 20).
I am part of the same family, as my mother’s mother’s maiden name was Kutchinsky and indeed my grandfather is the tall man in the photo featured in the article. His wife was Frumet Kutchinsky.
We regularly used the services of Kutchinsky Jewellers, originally in the East End, and later in Knightsbridge, near Harrods. My wife’s engagement and wedding rings were, of course, bought there.
Barry Landy
Cambridge
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