12 MAY 1979, Page 18

Characteristic look

Sir: Hayim Pinner, Secretary General of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, is being over-sensitive in his reaction to Richard Ingrams's complaint that in the television seriesJesus of Nazareth 'none of the characters • looked Jewish'. Whatever Pinner, or the police, may say, there is a characteristic `Jewish look'; surely to recognise this fact is not to display 'prejudice'?

I thought that what Ingrams's remark revealed was not so much prejudice as futility. Is he going to complain of a production of Hamlet that `none of the characters looked Danish'?

Oliver Mason Hook Hill, Cousley Wood, Wadhurst, Sussex