Your View

Dancing With Chimney Sweeps

This is a guest post by a Harry’s Place Reader

Press Night of “Seven Jewish Children” was last night

First out of the stocks is Michael Billington of The Guardian. Remember him? He wrote the wonderful biography of Harold Pinter with its fascinating description of Pinter’s education at The Grocers’ School in Hackney, with Joe Brearley – the English master – as his mentor.

However it seems that Billington’s notion of how Jewish children are educated has changed a bit. Here is what he says in his review of Caryl Churchill’s appalling playlet:

“But Churchill also shows us how Jewish children are bred to believe in the “otherness” of Palestinians and how, for generations to come, they stand to reap the bitter harvest of the military assault on Hamas.”

And isn’t ‘bred’ a rather sinister word to use in this context? I wonder why he didn’t use a more neutral word such as “taught”?

Or am I being far too sensitive?