Letters
LETTERS The Changing Moment To the Editor: How do I read your magazine? From cover to cover—and with delight. To have a publication that deals with the Jewish-American and Israeli worlds as they...
...Synagogues...
...To Be Continued...
...Don't change...
...Is another Holocuast really inevitable...
...I.L...
...Allow me then, if you will, to take issue with some of his comments...
...When told as a tale, the episode contains acceptable humor, but when recorded as fact, it misrepresents the purpose of Talmud, the nature of Rashi and the other standard attendant commentary, Tosafot, as well as portrays the Orthodox Rabbi and adherents of traditional law as inept, parochial buffoons...
...Rabbi Stuart Geller Cleveland, Ohio The Andrew Young Affair To the Editor: I have read Leonard Fein's article "The Andrew Young Affair...
...Alan Rockoff Newtonville, Massachusetts To the Editor: There might be some justification for foisting fiction as truth, but when its purpose is to satirize that which others venerate, then that questionable license has been abused...
...Orthodox Jewry has enough valid criticism to contend with, without having to suffer the indignities of writers' purloined fantasies...
...others I'm not, and a few I want to think about...
...Rabbi Hoffman described the modern synagogue as a place of "limited liability...
...So please keep wide open the window that you have opened to the Jewish world as it is, with all its diversity...
...Of course we have a commitment to justice and decency as Jews, but first I think we need to talk about our commitment to be Jews, and how to be Jews in this chaotic world...
...He spoke forthrightly for the synagogue as a stable institution in Judaism...
...If we solve the problem, and manage to live as committed Jews, our devotion to the issues of justice and decency in America will follow naturally...
...In the speech that I heard...
...It was with dismay that I read in your last issue that you will devote more space to "issues of justice and decency in America...
...Robert Milch's tale of his father's abortive attempt to build a sukkah based on blueprints found in the Talmud—which every cheder boy knows are non-existent—is a well-known apocryphal story...
...I did not hear Rabbi Hoffman encourage this situation...
...Ethelyn Simon Piedmont, California Sukkah Blues To the Editor: Oh, come on...
...And I have not seen any letters in succeeding moment's which disagreed with Rabbi Gellman...
...Next time, perhaps, you will write a memoir about your father's chicken, and why it crossed the road...
...This is not to say that I am against justice and decency...
...I read it on my way to a meeting of all the Jewish organization representatives to discuss this issue, and when the discussion ended I urged everyone there to read that remarkable statement...
...However, his criticism of Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman's speech at the Havurah Conference disappointed me...
...Like Rabbi Gellman, I do not want to draw up a balance sheet on Havurot vs...
...His intent, I think, was clear: synagogues, like many institutions, are suffering from a consumerism that lacks a total commitment...
...Gerald Landau Lexington, Massachusetts To the Editor: My warmest praise for Leonard Fein's superb (and literate) analysis of the Black-Jewish confrontation (moment, October...
...To have a publication that deals with the Jewish-American and Israeli worlds as they really are is so heartening...
...The first time I heard the old joke about the sukkah that Rashi recommended and Tosafot questioned, I fell out of my crib...
...Yours is the only high quality open forum on the gut issues facing us as Jews today...
...Do we tsitter at every manifestation of anti-Semitism including passing comments overheard in restaurants...
...Hang in there as you are...
...Kenen Washington, D.C...
...There are some points he touches on with which I am in agreement...
...Are we Jews really that terrified...
...I do not think that Rabbi Hoffman was being either anti-rabbi or anti-synagogue...
...Rabbi Joshua Berkowitz Stamford, Connecticut Havurah To the Editor: I read Marc Gellman's view of the First National Havurah Conference in the September moment...
...Shortly after the conference, I was present at a faculty lecture to hear Rabbi Hoffman's talk repeated at Kutz Camp in Warwick, New York...
...But those questions are debated everywhere—in the newspapers, TV and all the other Jewish publications...
...Are we really a collection of psychological basket cases oozing fear and trepidation from every pore and brain cell...
...rather, he bemoaned it...
Vol. 5 • December 1979 • No. 1
