O pinion
Distressed by Sally Rooney? Read How a Jewish Fan
Once Schooled Charles Dickens on Antisemitism
BY ERIKA DREIFUS
AS A WRITER, literature
professor and one of the 82%
of U.S. Jews who report that
“caring about Israel” is either
“essential” or “important”
to their Jewish identity, I am
pained when I see authors
whom I admire launch
exaggerated or misinformed
attacks on Israel.

But I also take solace in
a correspondence, celebrated
in a new children’s book, that
showed how one Jewish reader
engaged an author whom she
felt trafficked in anti-Jewish
tropes. That the correspon-
dence took place in the 19th
century, and the author in
question is Charles Dickens,
does not make its lessons any
less timely.

I was distressed when Irish
novelist Sally Rooney said
on Oct. 12 that she wouldn’t
allow her latest novel to be
published in Hebrew by an
Israeli publisher “that does not
publicly distance itself from
apartheid and support the
UN-stipulated rights of the
Palestinian people.”
Saddened but not surprised:
Earlier this year, Rooney signed
a “Letter Against Apartheid”
— a text issued in the wake
of the latest round of violence
between Israel and Hamas. It
called for governments to “cut
trade, economic, and cultural
relations” with the Jewish state,
which it said had committed
“ethnic cleansing,” “massacres”
and more in its response to the
thousands of rockets fired into
Israel by Hamas.

With their particular focus
on words, writers should do
better, especially when they
organize, join or promote such
endeavors. If their misrepresen-
tations are without malicious
intent, they’re in desperate
need of further education.

How such “education”
might best be carried out is the
subject of “Dear Mr. Dickens,”
a new picture book written
by Nancy Churnin and illus-
trated by Bethany Stancliffe.

This true story of correspon-
dence between the celebrated
author and a reader named
Eliza Davis — a Jewish woman
who launched the exchange to
protest antisemitic tropes in
“Oliver Twist” — imparts a
timeless lesson about speaking
out against injustice.

(Disclosure: Churnin
and I belong to the same
writers group; I hadn’t seen
this manuscript before being
granted pre-publication
electronic access to an advance
review copy.)
Davis (1817-1903) refused
to be daunted when writing
the famous author, whose
portrayal of “the Jew” Fagin
in “Oliver Twist” landed “like
a hammer on [her] heart,” as
Churnin describes it. Davis
lacked Dickens’ stature. But
“she had the same three things
that [he] had: a pen, paper, and
something to say.” Quoting
the correspondence, Churnin
conveys Davis’ message: Fagin
“encouraged ‘a vile prejudice’”
against her people. According
to Churnin, Davis had consid-
ered Dickens especially heroic
— and the Fagin character
especially discordant — because
Dickens “used the power of his
pen to help others.”
In response, Dickens
declared that Fagin was based
on real-life Jewish criminals.

In a mix of what we’d today call
gaslighting and mansplaining,
he went further: “Any Jewish
people who thought him unfair
or unkind — and that included
Eliza! — were not ‘sensible’
or ‘just’ or ‘good tempered,’”
Churnin relates. Davis tried
again; evidently, Dickens didn’t
write back.

But the Jewish character in
his next novel — the estimable
Mr. Riah in “My Mutual
Friend” — was no Fagin.

After that novel appeared,
Davis thanked Dickens for
“‘a great compliment paid to
myself and to my people.’” This
time, Dickens responded much
more warmly. He went further,
notably in a magazine essay in
which he referred to Jews as “an
earnest, methodical, aspiring
people” and in changes to a
subsequent printing of “Oliver
Twist,” when he instructed
the printer to remove many
instances in which he referred
to “the Jew” and to use Fagin’s
name instead.

There’s still another aspect
of Eliza Davis’ story that
resonates: Instead of calling
Dickens out publicly, Davis
approached him one-to-one.

True, they weren’t strangers.

According to an author’s note,
the Davises had purchased
Dickens’ former home a few
years before this correspon-
dence began. But Davis didn’t
know how Dickens would
receive her initial message. And
when he scathingly dismissed
it, she didn’t give up.

Rudine Sims-Bishop speaks
of books as “windows” and
“mirrors” for the children who
read them. With rising antisem-
itism in the United States and
elsewhere, “Dear Mr. Dickens”
is a sadly timely mirror for
Jewish children; importantly, it
provides a positive, action-ori-
ented message of tikkun
olam, or the Jewish value of
repairing the world. For others,
the book offers a window into
Jewish experience, alongside
that universal message about
confronting injustice with
written words.

Moreover, Davis’ reaction to
Dickens’ words — her sense of
betrayal by an admired author
whose compassion somehow
didn’t extend to Jews —
mirrors my own increasingly
frequent experience. Like so
many Jews, I am imbued with
a sense of klal Yisrael, “Jewish
peoplehood,” linking us with
Jews everywhere — including
in Israel, the world’s only
Jewish state, where nearly half
of the world’s Jews now live.

This doesn’t mean that I
support all Israeli policies. But
criticism of Israel needs to be
leavened by facts and context,
and a recognition that the
situation is far more complex
than declarations of an “apart-
heid” regime and “ethnic
cleansing” suggest.

Although I’ve gone the
public route from time to
time, private communica-
tions with writer-friends and
acquaintances — especially in
the wake of the May 2021 war
between Israel and Hamas —
have proven far more fruitful,
yielding corrections, deletions
and other changes.

For which I, like Davis, have
expressed thanks.

I don’t expect “great compli-
ments to me and to my people”
from authorial idols and
colleagues, particularly those
of Palestinian descent. All
I’m seeking is fairness — and
freedom from vile prejudice. l
Erika Dreifus is the author of
“Birthright: Poems” and “Quiet
Americans: Stories,” which was
named an ALA/Sophie Brody
Medal Honor Title for outstanding
achievement in Jewish Literature.

She is A fellow in the Sami Rohr
Jewish Literary Institute and
an adjunct associate professor
at Baruch College of The City
University of New York.

The ‘Jewface’ Debate About Casting Non-Jews
as Jews Betrays an Ashkenazi Bias
against the practice of casting
non-Jews as Jewish characters
ACTRESS AND COMEDIAN in TV and films. She referred
Sarah Silverman, in comments to the castings as “Jewface,”
on her Sept. 30 podcast, railed a play on the historically
BY MANISHTANA
12 OCTOBER 21, 2021
JEWISH EXPONENT
racist practice of donning
“blackface.” Silverman pointed to
a series of Jewish women
portrayed by non-Jewish
actresses, including Rachel
Brosnahan in “The Marvelous
Mrs. Maisel,” Felicity Jones as
the late Supreme Court justice
Ruth Bader Ginsburg in “On
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM