Jewish Fan Once Schooled Charles Dickens on Antisemitism

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 who she felt trafficked in anti-Jewish tropes. That the correspondence took place in the 19th century, and the author in question is Charles Dickens, does not make its lessons any less timely.