Stoppard is right. Jews are different, they think differently and they remain different down to the nth generation

Leopoldstadt is to Vienna as the East End is to London and the Lower East Side to New York, an entry point for Jewish migrants in flight from Russian pogroms and in search of a better life. Unlike first footfalls in other cities, however, Leopoldstadt is also a state of mind, a nagging sense of unbelonging that persists for generations, long after a family has found apparent security elsewhere. Popularly known as Matza Island, after the flatpack Passover bread which is not allowed to rise, Leopoldstadt was where Sigmund Freud, who grew up there, mapped the unconscious mind.

In Tom Stoppard’s self-mapping new play, most of the conversation takes place away from crowded tenements, in a high-ceilinged mansion on the Schwarzenbergplatz, some time after the Merz family made its fortune in textiles and, as Stoppard snipes, got ‘baptised and circumcised in the same week.’ But Stoppard will not let it go with a cheap quip like this, and nor can I.