The Washington City Paper each week is full of articles that show the paper’s deep concern for the community and the diversity of people who live here. So it was with shock that I read a letter to the editor (The Mail, 10/21) that can be described as nothing less than crudely anti-Semitic.

The letter writer equated a Jewish ritual with a Satanic practice. He recommended, as the best introduction to Judaism, a book that some seemingly conspiratorial force is supposedly keeping from American eyes. He also guided readers toward an anti-Semitic Internet hate-literature site. Are these not clues enough to tip off editors that the letter writer is promoting anti-Semitism?

The City Paper thus helped spread dangerous, age-old myths about Jews that still circulate in much of the world—lies one would never expect to read in an otherwise responsible American newspaper.

Could you please explain to your readers how such a letter got into the City Paper? Did editors think it merely an interesting commentary on an article? I find it hard to believe they could so easily miss such obvious hatred. But the alternative, I suppose, is worse.

Van Ness