TS Eliot (4) Anti-Semitism

It seems unlikely that Eliot did not share an anti-semitism prevalent in American society during his upbringing. It expressed itself by hostility ans suspicion directed towards the large numbers of German Jews who were known to live in Chicago. In this sense Eliot was a child of his times and will be deplored for this in our own age. These inherent attitudes towards Jews surface most notably in Gerontion  and Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar. What is interesting is that, whatever one's views on anti-semitism are (and to make sure that I am safe from condemnation - for is that not always the first priority? - I will state that I think it is a bad thing) one has to concede that, as a metaphor for impotence and loss of control of one's destiny there are few finer than those of a once imperious Christian and mercantile Venice being in hock to the Jewish financiers (that Venice once confined under curfew to the tiny island of the first Ghetto) or of a failed westerner now renting a cheap room from a Jewish landlord in a shabby rooming house. It makes for very good poetry.