A foreigner, not a Jew

In his review of Anti-semitsm Revisited (Why the rabbis’ understanding of antisemitism is

still relevant, 12 February) Simon Rocker repeated a common misunderstanding of a famous verse in the book of Esther.

Mordechai is referred to as “HaYehudi” and then as “Ish Yemini”

The plain meaning of these terms are that he was from the people who were exiled from the Kingdom of Judah — so a Judean - and from the tribe of Benjamin. So he is being singled out as a foreigner but without any religious context.

The word “Jew” itself does not seem to appear before the year 1000 or so. Barry Landy Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge