Forum
FORUM B'nai B'rith Official Charges New moment with Lack of Jewish Good Taste I am disappointed in your decision to print the letter from Joseph Epstein in Jerusalem (Forum, May 1988, p. 59) in...
...Instead, he reminds us of his equally pretentious namesake, the Wizard...
...They blaspheme God by doing that.tlMay their victims forgive them...
...If yes, why not say so...
...Myra Reisman Commack, New York May Their Victims Forgive Them "Getting a Get" in your May 1988 issue vividly dramatizes the moral bankruptcy of Orthodox rabbis...
...Rabbi Amy J. Zweiback Levenson B'nai Yisrael Reconstructionist Congregation South Bend, Indiana Is moment's Judaica Catalog Legal...
...Is it legal for a non-profit organization to sell things at a profit to support its activities...
...So is our use of postage rates.—Ed...
...If so, can it use its special mailing rate to advertise these sales...
...But this article lifted me from a purely emotional response to action...
...Michael Neiditch Director Commission on Continuing Jewish Education B'nai B'rith International Washington, D.C...
...It is unfortunate that we must go to civil courts for relief...
...Our goal, both in the magazine and in the catalog, is to inform and educate our readers in their lives as Jews...
...Until then, Israel is smart to sit tight and reap the full benefits of the hotel for as long as it can...
...For my 45th birthday (coincidentally, I was born on the night of the uprising of the Warsaw Ghetto—April 19, 1943), I had a party with 25 good friends...
...FORUM B'nai B'rith Official Charges New moment with Lack of Jewish Good Taste I am disappointed in your decision to print the letter from Joseph Epstein in Jerusalem (Forum, May 1988, p. 59) in which he takes a swipe at the previous editors of MOMENT and throws a bouquet at yourselves...
...In the March 1988 MOMENT (p...
...What would Isaiah say...
...But, as Rabbi Schulweis said, if we want to teach anything to our children, if we want to give them appropriate role models, we need to focus on the goodness...
...Eid Kwasmi says he has learned about democracy from Israel ("MOMENT Interviews Arab Merchant Eid Kwasmi," May 1988), but he has obviously not learned the most important lesson—that statehood must be earned in ways he seems unable to grasp...
...Myra Reisman Commack, New York Earning Statehood Mr...
...The editor's reply stated that MOMENT'S postage rate was significantly less than regular rates...
...Until you perfect your own unique recipe and demonstrate to your readers that you have the capacity to serve up a stimulating menu month after month, you owe it to us to refrain from patting yourselves on the back...
...It is not God that is to blame, but the men who misread the word of God...
...I often rely on MOMENT as a valuable resource in my teaching...
...The late Rabbi Nisson Alpert, probably Rabbi Feinstein's closest student and disciple, wrote (in a letter to The Jewish Week, April 4, 1986) "Not only did Rabbi Feinstein never innovate a means for 'annulment of marriages,' he wrote a letter in 1973 condemning the proposal as undermining basic Torah concepts...
...Hanoch Bordan Toronto, Canada Explaining a Houdini Deception I believe I know how Harry Houdini and his wife "switched" places in the "Metamorphosis" act ("Harry Houdi-ni's Escape from Ehrich Weiss," May 1988...
...I believe they didn't really switch places during the Metamorphosis...
...Our Judaica catalog is legal and ethical...
...As Shanks said, arbitration takes a long time...
...We know what Oz thinks about this, but his judgment is, to say the least, questionable...
...Micah would be appalled...
...It was Bess in the trunk or bag (as in the advertisement) all the time...
...Lawrence M. Reisman New York, New York How to Negotiate the Taba Dispute I disagree with Hershel Shanks' views on the Taba dispute ("Taba as Microcosm," Perspective, May 1988...
...When I read your article I felt that "I wanted to give you our congregation's mailing list to help you solicit new MOMENT subscriptions...
...At that time a "deal" can be worked out along the lines Shanks suggests...
...All over the country rabbis and Jewish community leaders are reading and quoting from MOMENT...
...We American Jews do indeed have— and rightfully so—a boundless gratitude toward America for providing us the freedoms it has...
...How can anyone resist the challenge he presented...
...Rabbi Alpert's letter concludes...
...I've been watching developments in the new MOMENT trying to decide whether or not to renew my subscription...
...How to walk that tightrope is the challenge that the Israeli people, with their supporters around the world, must meet...
...There is no need for Israel to rush to settle its dispute with Egypt over the Sonesta Hotel...
...They dressed up as each other, Houdini looking like Bess and Bess looking like Harry...
...If Israel loses it can always say, "O.K., we will give Egypt back the land, but first we will demolish the Sonesta Hotel...
...Anyone familiar with Rabbi Feinstein's work knows that his decisions in specific cases were limited to those cases alone...
...We put a lot of energy into analyzing, teaching and wrestling with the evil that the Holocaust represents...
...He would desperately like to assume the role and stature of a prophet, but he lacks the job's most basic requirements, including common sense and divine direction...
...Any profit from catalog sales goes to support our magazine, which, although an editorial success, continues to live on the brink financially...
...The get procedure can be humiliating and unjust...
...Nancy Becker Knoxville, Tennessee It's Even Worse Than You Thought Honey Rackman's article ("Getting a Get—How Some Husbands are Blackmailing Their Wives—And Getting Away with It," May 1988) concerning get blackmail is misleading in its insistence that "halachic solutions" are available to solve the problem...
...in all my 20 years as a faculty member of Yeshiva University's rabbinical school and as head of Yeshiva University's post-rabbinic program in jurisprudence, I have never heard the idea of instituting annulments dealt with in a serious manner...
...Where is their sense of outrage...
...I hope this helps in a small way to keep MOMENT healthy and alive...
...While the dispute is before the arbitration panel in Geneva, Israel has full control of the hotel and of any profit the hotel makes...
...More important though, Oz should ponder the following: Had the hypothetical cardinal's Church not placed the Jews in the dirt to begin with, had it not actively caused countless persecutions and deaths of Jews, had it simply gone about its medieval business without labeling Jews devils incarnate, we Jews would indeed have no gripe with it...
...Helene Audrey Bergman Brooklyn, New York MOMENT'S Judaica catalog is no different from a synagogue Judaica shop, except we offer our items through the mail...
...Now something disturbed me enough to make me decide not to renew...
...Arthur L Goldberg Wilmette, Illinois Synagogue Makes Mailing List Available I read with some interest and much sympathy the item several months ago regarding your conflict with the Washington, D.C...
...It distresses me that communal pressure is rarely applied and, when applied, is often ineffective...
...I offer this list with my pledge to help you promote-MOMENT...
...Of course they had their regular clothes on underneath their disguises...
...Has Israel treated its Arabs like the Church did the Jews...
...They show no compassion, no mercy and no justice...
...They had only to take oft" their disguises during those few seconds it took to "change" places...
...They must appoint sane leaders and refuse coercion by terrorists...
...This would not be much of a victory for Egypt, since the hotel is what they want...
...Especially odious is Rackman's use of Rabbi Moshe Feinstein in support of her claim that annulment is a viable halachic alternative...
...Using the letters page as kindling for a private ' 'bonfire of the vanities" serves no good purpose...
...Surely their consciences must tell them that any law that picks on innocent victims for punishment cannot be the law of the God of Israel...
...She quotes Emanuel Rackman, Eliezer Ber-kovits and Irwin Haut without stating that they are left-wing extremists whose opinions are rejected in the halls of Yeshiva University and among the members of the Rabbinical Council of America...
...11) the editor replied to a letter criticizing MOMENT'S use of tax-exempt postage rates for a Judaica catalog...
...Statehood must, and can be, earned, but it can never be achieved by mindless violence...
...Israel cannot commit suicide by either walking out of the occupied areas tomorrow or brutalizing itself and losing the essence of what made Israel the hope of the Jewish people and many non-Jews in the world...
...touched me—as does everything he writes...
...I began by reading excerpts from Rabbi Schulweis's article...
...Let him and all the Kwasmis on the West Bank have the intestinal fortitude to prove it...
...Kwasmi says he wants democracy and to be a good neighbor...
...Jewish Community Relations Council over its refusal to allow you to use its mailing list ("Choking Jewish Communication," Perspective, December 1987...
...Rabbi Feinstein never intended to set a "halachic precedent...
...In your first issues you seemed to be uncertain whether you should be a magazine that explores the important issues of the day that are of concern to the Jewish people or are the equivalent of an airline magazine for Jews...
...MOMENT is published by an independent, non-profit, charitable corporation, so recognized by the Internal Revenue Service...
...They tolerate extortipn in the name of religion—not the first time that despicable conduct has been rationalized as a religious imperative...
...Modesty, discretion and a dose of Jewish good taste should have turned you away from this self-congratulatory display...
...Though I am a well-wisher to your efforts, and I have reason to think that you have the ability to make an important contribution to Jewish life, it is certainly too soon to render a verdict...
...Are people who allow terrorists to dictate their policies prepared for, or even fit for statehood...
...The occupation cannot avoid having a brutalizing effect, but it has not yet done so in any material way...
...This is a good example of why people like Oz are not only illogical but dangerous...
...My party was an auction...
...He did not address the correspondent's concern...
...Rabbi Avi Shafran Providence, Rhode Island Acting on Rabbi Schulweis's Suggestion Rabbi Schulweis's article in the April 1988 issue ("How Do We Measure Up Morally to the Rescuers...
...Amos Oz is Illogical and Dangerous Amos Oz wrathfully equates an Israeli rabbi's lament that Israel's Arabs seem to feel no gratitude for the good Israel has brought them with a hypothetical anti-Semitic American cardinal's condemnation of Jewish "ingratitude" for having been "lifted . . . out of the dirt" ("He Raises the Weak from the Dust and Lifts the Poor Out of the Dirt," May 1988...
...The Righteous Gentiles are powerful role models for us...
...But anyone with an iota of humanity can clearly see that a law that causes such pain cannot be the law of God...
...But the Orthodox sadists continue to punish the innocents—the agunah and the mamzer—in the name of God...
...April 1988), I think the inescapable answer is that they are both right...
...If four wars since independence, a long pre-independence struggle, and continuing hostility did not brutalize Israel, then the culture of compassion runs deep indeed...
...We raised S242.75 which I have mailed to the Foundation to Sustain Righteous Christians, as he suggested...
...To achieve statehood the Palestinians must refuse to allow their children to be made into killers...
...if no, why do it...
...But all this is far better than unwarranted "halachic solutions" that fly in the face of halacha, that are unacceptable to the mainline halachic authority, and which, if adopted by some, would cause an irreparable split in the Orthodox Jewish community...
...Laure Smith West Hyattsville, Maryland Israel Must Walk a Tightrope After reading the articles by Yosef Goell and Danny Rubenstein ("Is the Occupation Brutalizing Israel...
...In the end if Israel wins—great...
...Their line, of course, is that it is God's unchanging law, the typical refuge of religious scoundrels...
Vol. 13 • July 1988 • No. 5
