Letters
LETTERS Justice—and Honesty To the Editor: Several of the media have carried the story of David Rosenblum, his stopped check, Judge Bloodgood's letter and the comment "So long, Kikie" on official...
...Rabbi Levi Horowitz actually said the things you printed in your September issue...
...Slogging through Judaism as a Civilization isn't exactly fun, but it's well worth the effort...
...Do they leave it to us to infer the kind of a person David Rosenblum is...
...World Gathering To the Editor Thank you so much for publishing Samuel Pisar's masterful address to the World Gathering of Holocaust Survivors...
...What is far worse is that they operate with a worldview that is so radically different from anything I recognize in myself and in my Jewish friends that I feel no community of ideas with them...
...Morris Friedman Bronx, New York Judaism That Works To the Editor: Where has Reconstructionism been all my life...
...One speaketh peaceably to his neighbor with his mouth, but in his heart he layeth wait for him...
...These are some of the problems faced by all Jews in an open society...
...Rabbi Phillip J. Bentley Jericho, New York Camp Memories To the Editor: Thank you for Carol Kur's article ("Campassion," July-August, 1981) extolling the lasting value of a Jewish summer camp experience...
...Rather than making a rather inappropriate invitation to all Jews to join them, let them come and join with the larger Jewish world...
...Pisar's skill in handling the political message he evidently felt obliged to convey...
...Saperstein sufficiently confident of his movement that he believes that such a co-operative attitude and effort on its part will be good for all of the Jewish people...
...Finally, Mr...
...Be that as it may, our perspectives are light years apart, and I now must wonder what we mean— if anything—by the notion of Jewish peoplehood...
...The powerful responses to potential shared experiences in such a setting, as described by Ms...
...If Orthodox leaders are acting on the assumption that Orthodoxy is an automatic solution to these problems then it is Orthodox Jewry that is being misled...
...Susan Goldberg Miami, Florida One People...
...There is little point in reciting the facts of the Holocaust without underscoring their political implications for our own time...
...Does it really need to express that strength and vitality over and against non-Orthodox Jewry...
...Thank you for saying it...
...He is entitled to his opinion, but I doubt very much that he either knows much about the thinking of Reform and Conservative Judaism's religious leaders today or has had much experience with the institutions of either movement if he thinks so...
...He cites "Tens of thousands of baalei tshuvah . . . who already voted with their feet, abandoning the failed ideologies of the Reform and Conservative movements . . ." for the Orthodox movement...
...Pisar rightly sees the connection between the evil of those times and the dangers of these, and, ever gracefully, makes the connection explicit...
...I beg to differ...
...Saperstein is evidently laboring under the delusion that assimilation, intermarriage and even apostasy are problems faced only by non-Orthodox Jewry...
...For the past few years I have been active on various task forces of the New York Federations Commission on Synagogue Relations that, under the overall leadership of Rabbi Isaac Trainin, has been actively engaged with these problems for the total Jewish community...
...x The fact is that for every Orthodox Jew who started out as a Reform or Conservative Jew there must be scores or hundreds who were raised in at least nominally Orthodox homes who "voted with their feet" to become Reform, Conservative or secular Jews (Where else does Saperstein think all of those non-Orthodox Jews came from in the first place...
...The article, I am sure, sparked similar reminiscences in other moment readers, for Camp Deal brought together boys from many different Yeshivas and Day Schools throughout the New York area...
...Kur, can, indeed, be unique and never duplicated...
...I have read and re-read it, and am repeatedly struck by Mr...
...The problem is not the effort by Rabbi Horowitz and his colleagues to set themselves up as the guardians of Judaism's gates...
...I do not blame them, but the product is by now banal...
...Saperstein seems to believe that a Jew can only hold onto his or her Jewish birthright and heritage.as an Orthodox Jew...
...Sadly, I suppose they were not...
...Here is a Judaism that works for me...
...Young Israel is a strong and vital movement...
...It answers more questions than I knew how to ask, and I'm grateful to moment for pushing me to do it...
...The problems have been evident since the beginning, in the days of Napoleon, and they have not been solved...
...To the Editor: Is it possible that...
...Shall I not punish them for these things...
...LETTERS Justice—and Honesty To the Editor: Several of the media have carried the story of David Rosenblum, his stopped check, Judge Bloodgood's letter and the comment "So long, Kikie" on official stationery...
...Thank you...
...We are How Many...
...To the Editor: Young Israel's national president Nathaniel Saperstein has some strange ideas...
...As a Reform pulpit Rabbi I can attest to the fact that that movement continues today...
...Orthodox Judaism was organized, as were Reform and Conservative Judaism, as a response to Emancipation...
...Shelly P. Koenigsberg New York, New York Editor's Note: Yes...
...I can't say that I understand it on the basis of Rabbi Schul-weis's engaging article, but that was enough to get me going on my own...
...I have also been active in our local Jewish Community Council...
...But none of them, including moment ("Hizzoner the bigot," TSB, July-August 1981), had anything to say about David Rosenblum's action that provoked the judge into an ugly epithet...
...Is Mr...
...That is merely obnoxious...
...To this day, unfortunately, yet grateful for that time and place, I feel that the only time I truly tasted Shabbos, as it can be at its quintessence, was at that long-ago camp in Deal...
...Mark Nathan Chicago, Illinois...
...From their perspective, that means that we are still unenlightened...
...Carl Friedman Washington, D.C...
...Jeremiah 9:7-8) Doesn't it behoove moment—a Jewish magazine—to say something about such un-Jewish, unethical behavior...
...Or will he continue to make smug boasts from his particular corner of the Jewish world...
...In these settings Orthodox rabbis and lay leaders work together with their non-Orthodox colleagues for the common Jewish good...
...It rekindled in me not-so-dormant memories of my early summers in a special place called Camp Deal in Deal, New Jersey...
...His remarks sounded like a spoof...
...He would not have to accept any non-Orthodox thinking to remedy such lacks and, since he is in a position of leadership, I would encourage him to broaden his perspective in this regard...
...To think otherwise is dangerous...
...Letter to the Editor, July-August, 1981) He seems to believe that there are many more Reform and Conservative Jews (to say nothing of secular Jews) than Orthodox Jews because the leaders of those movements have somehow seduced the Jewish masses into denying the authority of Torah law (or, more accurately, the Orthodox interpretation of that authority...
...Some of the newer Jewish organizations such as the Coalition on Alternatives in Jewish Education (CAJE) have clearly demonstrated that much can be achieved for everyone when leaders of all Jewish religious movements work together...
...People join a congregation or a movement that meets their needs...
...How, then, can we talk seriously about the unity of the Jewish people...
...Yet, unfortunately, that is what many people do...
...Saith the Lord...
Vol. 6 • October 1981 • No. 9
