Letters To The Editor

Home » InDepth » Letters To The Editor »

Letters To The Editor

By: Letters to the Editor

Published: June 28th, 2006

tell a friend

Kudos To Albert Kahn

May I add briefly to a story well told by Rabbi Gershon Tannenbaum in his always fascinating My Machberes column? A lifetime of experience has taught me how hard it is to bring about change in yeshivas and day schools. This is all the more reason why I am full of admiration for Albert Kahn, who with total devotion and without let-up has advocated the implementation of term life insurance for yeshiva rebbes. In the space of several years he has accomplished an enormous amount of good.

All who are involved in Torah education should be grateful for his truly significant achievement.

Marvin Schick

Via E-Mail

That ‘Pride’ Event

The notion of having a gay celebration or parade in Israel, particularly in Jerusalem, is absolutely deplorable (“Fear ‘Pride’ Event In Jerusalem Will Spark World Islamic Furor,” front-page news story, June 23). Our only claim to Israel, and to being a people, is the Torah. By celebrating a lifestyle that’s condemned by the Torah in no uncertain terms, the secular Israeli government effectively relinquishes its right to the Holy Land.

It’s bad enough that Israel’s secular leaders gave away land with some twisted idea that this would bring peace. Embracing a perverted lifestyle, which is not a question of saving lives, is inexcusable. This secular Israeli government is responsible for some of Israel’s worst ills. It’s time Israeli leaders realized the truth of the Scriptures, which state, roughly paraphrased, the Land will spit out those who do not adhere to Torah laws. Has there been any better proof of this than what we’ve seen over the last few years?

On the other hand, enlisting the help of Arabs to avert the gay onslaught is about as bad as embracing gays. We, the Jews and the Arabs, do not have common ground here. Jews will never go out and wantonly kill innocent people on the streets for any cause.

Encouraging Arabs to do what they did in response to the Muhammad cartoons is simply wrong.

We need to impress upon the secular Israeli government that the Bible, the Book that practically the entire world believes in, is not to be taken lightly.

David Balsam

Brooklyn, NY

Abdicating Intellect

I was deeply disappointed by reader Zalman Bloom’s entire approach (Letters, June 23) to Rabbi Pinchas Rosenthal’s response to his critics (Letters, June 16). The idea of emunas chachamim does not mean abdicating one’s intellect and suspending one’s ability to analyze ideas critically in order to defer to the opinions of the “great Torah scholars of our day.”

Such an approach does not produce talmidei chachamim but rather ignorant automatons. Mr. Bloom’s close-minded attitude is not in line with the idea of am chacham v’navon. I only hope that more open-minded individuals will choose to engage in meaningful dialogue with the many young mechanchim who are as successful in reaching today’s youth as Rabbi Rosenthal must be based on his approach.

Jeffrey Frances

Rockville, MD

Ulpanat AMIT Noga

We would like to correct some misperceptions in Samuel M. Ehrenhalt’s June 16 op-ed piece, “Reflections on a Flight Back from Israel,” regarding the situation at Ulpanat AMIT Noga in Ramat Bet Shemesh.

There are not demonstrations at the school every day. The demonstrations only take place on Fridays when, in fact, the students of Ulpanat AMIT Noga are not at school. They are on a five-day-a-week schedule and do not have classes on Friday. The girls who are exposed to these demonstrations are students at the Ulpanat Gila, which is not an AMIT school. This still concerns us deeply, however, and we are working with the municipality to protect all the students to the greatest extent possible.

And while it is true that AMIT Noga was moved to a haredi neighborhood, this is only temporary. Come September 1, the school will be relocated to the modern, religious Zionist neighborhood of Nahal Refaim.

With the critical situation in the city of Sderot, where AMIT enrolls hundreds of students whom we are trying to keep safe from daily Kassam rocket attacks, we did not want our continuing efforts on behalf of the children of Israel to be marred by inaccurate information.

Barbara Goldberg

Director of Communications

AMIT

Samuel M. Ehrenhalt Responds: It is good to have an expression of Amit’s concern about the Ramat Bet Shemesh situation. AMIT’s director of communications does not dispute any of the facts on the ground I cited on the two-year history of this wretched business.

Under the circumstances, AMIT’s effort to move the school to a more tolerant venue will no doubt be welcomed by the children and their parents. That it was necessitated by baseless animosity is one of the grotesque realities of Israeli life today.

Special Invitation

Do you remember August 19, 2003 (21 Av), the date of the Number Two bus bombing in Yerushalayim? The bus was returning from the Kotel packed with families. Most of the victims were little children. Twenty-three were killed, more than 100 injured.

Do you remember the Cohen family? Mother, father, and all five children were hurt. The heartbreaking news was broadcast for hours – Ora Cohen crying, not knowing how many of her children were still alive.

The family members were separated, hospitalized in different locations. It took days for all of us to be reunited. Miraculously, the entire family survived the bombing, but all sustained serious injuries.

Shifra, our one-and-a-half-year-old daughter, lost her vision in her left eye. She required many surgical procedures to save the eye and to remove shrapnel from her tiny face. Everyone in the family is still undergoing surgeries and treatments, particularly for partial hearing loss.

The last member of the family found alive – under three dead bodies, hours after the attack – was one-month-old Elchanan, suffering from a broken hip.

Elchanan was born on the 16^th of Tamuz at 5:05 p.m. Now, three years later, hodu l’Hashem ki tov, ki l’olam chasdo, we, the Cohen family, invite everyone to celebrate Elchanan’s chalakeh (first haircut). The ceremony will be held, b’ezrat Hashem, on the 16^th of Tamuz, Wednesday, July 12, at 5:05 p.m. at the Kotel plaza.

Please join us to thank the Boreh Ha’olam for the nissim and niflaot He has done for us. Let’s get together to show our ahavat chinam one to another and unite at this special occasion as am hanivchar shel Hakodesh Baruch Hu. Let’s recite Nishmat Kol Chai together at our family’s very special moment.

Refreshments will be served (Badatz Aida HaCharedit).

Ora Cohen

(Via E-Mail)

Sarah Lehmann Responds To Her Critics

I have received an overwhelmingly positive response to my article “Why I Boycotted the Israel Day Parade” (op-ed, June 9), with many people telling me I voiced their own sentiments. The authors of the few letters to the editor on the subject that appeared in last week’s Jewish Press apparently did not read my article carefully, because they totally misconstrued its meaning and were, at best, confused about its intent.

Of course “numbers count,” as reader Amy Wall stated in her letter, but an article in The Jewish Press is a far more effective protest than appearing at the parade in an orange shirt. Ms. Wall, in writing that the “existence of the State of Israel is a miracle,” seems to have lifted those words verbatim out of the article I wrote. It’s precisely because of this miracle that I deem it of the utmost significance to speak out on Israel’s behalf rather than merely praise it. At a time when Israel is in a state of crisis, beset by enemies around it and, worse, from within, it is incumbent on all of us to do our utmost to safeguard that gift that Hashem miraculously bestowed upon us.

As to Serge Kadinsky’s comment that “Orthodox American Jews who abandon their Zionism … are essentially handing the fate of the Holy Land to secularists,” he obviously did not read to the end or even the middle of my article. The conclusion I reached was precisely the opposite. Indeed, after I went through a catharsis of sorts following last year’s disengagement from Gaza, my support of Israel, as the article detailed, became even stronger.

Furthermore, my activism on behalf of Israel has taken many forms over the past few years, including visiting the residents of Gush Katif before their eviction and raising awareness and support for them ever since. So much for my supposed abandonment of Israel. It is precisely because of the abandonment by Jews here and in Israel of their brethren in YESHA and their reluctance to protest the Israeli government’s suicidal policies that we find ourselves in the situation we are in.

Leslie Brand asserts in her letter that the relatively small number of Jews in Gaza made the disengagement necessary. Though she writes that she made aliyah, I deduce from her position that she did not settle in Sderot or Ashkelon. Did she send letters to the editor to protest the forced evacuation of her Jewish brothers from their homes and then write on their behalf when they became homeless refugees?

Regarding Ms. Brands’s claim that had there been “even a quarter of a million [Jews in Gaza] there would have been no disengagement,” are 50,000-100,000 Jews, roughly the number slated to be evacuated under Olmert’s new convergence plan, enough?

Not everyone is privileged to live in the Holy Land, but support of Israel is better served by those who are truly loyal and devoted yet reside outside its borders than by the perfidious who reside within.