Jewish Character in 'Paradise' Too Close to Nazi Propaganda

To the editors:

I recently saw "Paradise Lost-and-Found" at the Hasty Pudding Theater. I am a student at the Kennedy School of Government. I am Jewish. I hope I would be writing this letter even if I were not Jewish, even if my father were not a survivor of World War II, even if he did not lose a majority of his family to the evils of the Nazis.

I tried to think of the intent of the character Oyamaifat (I don't remember his exact name). I realized there was a lot of making-fun going on during the play about male/female issues, Latino machismo, etc. I tried to make excuses for having the Jewish character contrived as such, but I could not. They were making fun of an ethnicity, a race. It frankly surprises me that students at Harvard University, who are supposedly so "educated" and welcoming of diversity, are really so ignorant.

The talit (the bib Oyamaifat wore) is an extremely religious article. Jews kiss it and pray every time they put it on and kiss it when they take it off. Many boys receive them as gifts for their Bar Mitzvahs and treasure them their entire lives, even if they are not religious. Cutting the talit to serve as a bib is completely offensive (and I am not religious).

To see the star of David strewn all over his garb, to see the fatness epitomizing the love of food in Jewish culture, to see the peyes (the curls of hair)--basically this Jewish "person" is a caricature. It reminds me all too well of the caricatures the Nazis portrayed in their propaganda. With all their intelligence, why don't these Harvard students open a book and their eyes, and look at the propaganda--the pictures that made fun of the way Jews "looked"--and the hatred it helped perpetrate.

Maybe there were Jews in the audience who did not share my perception. But I can guarantee that my father and each member of his family who endured and survived the atrocities during the war, each of the six million Jews who perished at the hands of evil and ignorance--each of these Jews would find absolutely no humor in the character Oyamaifat. I hope the actors, writers and producers of "Paradise Lost-and-Found" will learn something about the suffering during the war, something about tolerance for diversity and about the danger of something "innocent," like stereotyped appearances. SUSANNE WEINRAUCH, M.D.   March 4, 1998