31 DECEMBER 1994, Page 21

Both good and evil

Sir: Having recently discontinued my sub- scription to your magazine, I have today renewed it.

I have at times resented your magazine (and still do) for some of your writer's childish allusions to passé British grandeur, their loyally land-locked attitude to 'talent in blood' and aristocratic tendency to despise mobility. I am after all an urban Jew of Turkish-Russian-Spanish descent and am imbued with all the sociological characteristics of a nouveau riche without the money bit.

The recent furore over Mr Cash's article (`ICings of the deal', 29 October) has prompted me to re-subscribe. My aggres- sively Jewish persona is proud of and cher- ishes the adversity, which is, after all, the most important factor in our disproportion- al representation in the power game.

Is it not time to realise that adversity has made us good at what we do. We make good psychologists, editors, financiers, etc., because our collective experience has given us a burdensome insight that cuts through the crap, we treat big words like humanity, morality, civilisation with a pinch of salt, always remembering that Weimar Berlin was the centre of 'civilisation'. But we also make great con men, crooks, nasty power pimps for the very same reasons. A bit like the Germans, we are efficient at both good and evil. There is no point in being (right- fully) suspicious of those, some of whose best friends are Jews, until one learns to accept and appreciate uninhibited criticism.

Well done, The Spectator. You have shown your lack of inhibition by publish- ing something that did not please us, and in a way proved to me that not all of you are tweed-jacketed old bags hankering for the good old immobile days, first-class bores and sash window fanatics, who secretly despise itinerant vagrants of `Mosaic' stock.

I.I. Muraben

23 Addison Road, Hove, East Sussex