Letters
LETTERS Our House Divided To the Editor: From the outset, let me compliment you for sustaining such a high caliber forum of Jewish topics, that more often than not expresses the views of most...
...In the beginning as at the end he is "sympathetic...
...better yet, will it survive...
...It fills the heart with misgivings, and it betrays the instinct that flowered Israel in the first place...
...It's never too late...
...Many Jewish people hold that the way to peace is through having such a strong defense that no country dare contemplate war with the United States...
...Thank you, Mr...
...If our Orthodox brothers decline to participate, so be it...
...Furthermore, he cites Utah, presumably because of Utah's Mormon tithing tradition, in his hypothesis that Israel would be solvent but for its commitment to "socialism...
...If the Orthodox establishment elects to distance themselves from this act of achdut (unity), they will unfor-nately decline to a minor sect both here and in Israel...
...No wonder the tears...
...We are, all of us, K'lal Yisrael—branches of catholic Israel...
...Rabbi Benjamin A. Kamin Bay Shore, New York Liberals and Conservatives To the Editor: After reading and re-reading John Terry Dolan's puzzling claims ("A moment Interview with NCPAC's Terry Dolan," March 1982) that "Jews are more interested in being liberals than they are in being Jews," and that "From the economic history of Jews they have a heck of a lot more in common with free enterprise, capitalist notions than they do with socialist notions," it occurs to me that he has swallowed whole the Shylock stereotype of Jews, or he is just plain ignorant of Jewish history and tradition...
...Ida Cohen Selavan Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Withdrawal Symptoms To the Editor: Chaim Potok's heart-rending article about the Israeli withdrawal from Sinai ("'What Will You Do When April Comes?'" March 1982) is testimony to the painful twists characterizing Israel's history...
...These Jews believe that the way to peace in the world is to make it worthwhile to be a friend of the United States and make a country think twice before they are our enemy...
...A prominent Conservative rabbi declined because I was not a member of the Rabbinic Assembly...
...But, only on the way up—step by step—toward traditional, Torah true Judaism...
...This was not Stanley and Livingstone bringing propriety to the wilds and extracting ivory...
...It is the reality of the event as it plays itself out now which is so poignant...
...We are honoring our commitment to the paper signed by the deposed Baptist, the dead Moslem, and the ailing Jew...
...No wonder the tears that flood our faces...
...We cannot, nor do we intend to, prescribe to our members the "hows" and the "whys" of our faith...
...Your brand of secular Judaism takes many liberties, but is it surviving...
...Several Jewish organizations and Jewish magazines (i.e...
...No wonder the tears...
...Even today that tradition is carried on by our people who support a whole network of charitable and philanthropic causes...
...Asked about this I replied, al reggel achat, "Oh, it was about how Jews run the banks and the media...
...The same group of Jews believes that Israel can only survive in a world where the United States is militarily and economically strong...
...A. However, a Reform rabbi, (the University of Maryland Hillel rabbi Robert Sachs) did so willingly within the framework of the unity of Israel...
...He tells us: "I will come to your home, but not to where your soul lives...
...We clear the way for Mubarak over the broken bricks of our own houses, we^rush away our own sawdust from streets we paved, and he responds by denying our sovereignty...
...They are the salty waters of the Jewish national experience...
...No wonder the tears...
...We know what belongs to us, especially in the category of sadness...
...Do I think Reform or Conservative Judaism has a purpose...
...A Jew can start with a few mitzvahs and grow to be more observant...
...Sinai, to all the Jews present and to every future generation—to me, to you and to our children's children...
...As the Lubavitch Rebbe says: "I love my fellow Jews whether they are not observant or as extreme in their observance as the Satmar...
...Assimilation has and will continue to kill us...
...Commentary, American Jewish Forum, Jewish Week, etc...
...Jerusalem is fine for resettlement directives, not fine enough to visit...
...Thank you, Mr...
...Many Jews have come to the realization that new ideas must be tried...
...The way your magazine is now, I don't see it as a force to keep Judaism alive...
...A unified approach by the American rabbinate is the order of the day...
...This approach is consistent with support of Israel while the liberal approach is hypocritical...
...There are places where Judaism survives—in Brooklyn, Monsey, Riverdale and in Teaneck, New Jersey—to name a few...
...The Torah is our soul, our lifeblood and the very reason why we exist...
...Before I could perform such a marriage, I was obliged to obtain a license...
...It's our only way to survive...
...In other places, even in America, it is not unusual for troops to push their own people...
...Would that the flow of oil be as true to the heart as the flow of tears...
...We are putting up a fence around our dreams in favor of a political gambit...
...To the Editor: For the past year I've been receiving your magazine and I have been debating whether to renew my subscription...
...To add to the disabilities described and imposed by the Orthodox rabbinate upon non-Orthodox rabbis, I can recall some years ago when I was invited to consecrate a marriage in the District of Columbia...
...Moses gave us all a perfect Torah on Mt...
...This was Katz and Cohen and Flek being summoned by cannon and fire...
...I also find that the beginning and end of Rabbi Sol Roth's commentary most illuminating...
...While we are troubled by the confusion and anger of the retiring Sinai settlers, we also wonder about the-painful dilemma faced by the evicting soldiers...
...Does he not realize that Jews were forced into their relationships with "free enterprise, capitalist notions" by restrictive civil laws forbidding them to be land owners, and denying them access to guilds and professions...
...I see it as a sounding board for philosophies that have in the past, and could in the future, destroy us as a people...
...However, there are many Jewish people who would strongly disagree with this...
...Mitterand, but we don't need your distinctions about what is and what is not ours...
...The anguish on the faces of those young men and women who have been forcibly removing their countrymen from Hatzar Hadar and other desert places is particularly telling...
...Is it not also a paradox that the R.C...
...Jewish history is turning on itself in a painfully reflexive fashion...
...Jewish philosophy emphasizes that human dignity arises out of being self-sufficient...
...Mubarak, but we don't need your conditions...
...A. and other fringes of the Orthodox establishment accept non-practicing Jews as long as they were born of a Jewish mother, even if they flaunt their non-observance, yet will not accept determined and practicing Jews who were converted by Conservative, Reform or Reconstructionist rabbis—even when the conversion was accomplished in accordance with Halachah...
...I deliberately use the term branches simply because I will never accept the term "denominations" as they apply to Judaism...
...Over 30 percent of the people who gave $10,000 to the Republican Senatorial Trust were Jewish...
...Robert Chernoff Secretary, American Association of Rabbis New York, New York Will We Survive...
...Perhaps he cannot be expected to be aware of the strong Jewish tradition of tz'dakah, of the giving of charity...
...Or was it meant to arrive on April Fool's Day...
...We in the American Association of Rabbis do indeed recognize the legitimacy of all branches of Judaism so long as they do not detract from the morals and traditions of Judaism...
...Letters to the Editor moment welcomes letters from readers...
...They see a deep threat from the old tried and failed liberal ideas of unilateral disarmament, curtailing United States intelligence, military capability and the growing dependence of the economy on the public sector...
...The response: "Don't they...
...I am convinced that Rabbi Roth and the entire Orthodox establishment have lost touch with mainstream Jewry, particularly since an unprecendented number of Jews who profess Orthodoxy only practice it in synagogue ritual...
...In fact, I often find myself agreeing with your editorials to the point that they serve as the basis of a number of my sermons as well as "grist" for discussions during our adult education programs...
...In foreign affairs many Jews have disagreed with the policy of rewarding our enemies while punishing our friends...
...We've had these battles before...
...This entailed endorsement from a colleague...
...As evidence of this, over 45 percent of the Jews in this country voted for Ronald Reagan in 1980...
...All letters should be typed, double-spaced, and sent to the moment Editorial Office, 462 Boyston Street, Suite 301, Boston, MA 02116...
...Now is the time for Conservative, Reconstructionist and Reform rabbis to band together on issues of "who is a Jew," on matters of conversion, and on matters of marriage and divorce— all within the framework of a workable Halachah for the 80's and beyond...
...The last five issues seem to have solved my problem...
...Only signed letters with a complete return address can be considered...
...I told her that I had been invited to introduce the film "The Fixer" at a local synagogue, and that I planned to deal with Malamud's book and show where he drew upon Beilis' autobiography and where he departed from it...
...When we fail to live up to our covenant with G-d's Torah and fail to pass this on to our children, then we deprive them of their birthright and we destroy future generations...
...Re: "Our House Divided" in the April issue, I must confess that the views expressed by the authors most clearly identified the collision course between the different branches of Judaism...
...A prominent Orthodox rabbi equally declined because I was not a member of the R.C...
...John W. Uhlmann Kansas City, Missouri Errata Our apologies to Rabbi Sidney Schwarz of Media, PA, contributor of the March 1981 Spice Box item entitled "DWBBM," whom we mistakenly identified as Rabbi Sidney Jacobs...
...Several Jewish members of Congress and the Senate are conservative...
...She is a librarian but had never read The Fixer...
...These Jewish communities are alive with tradition...
...or the R.R.A...
...That is how we will survive...
...we quit airstrips and nurseries...
...Jewish heritage stresses the responsibility of the individual...
...I commented on the irony of this, since Henry Ford had published The Protocols of the Elders ofZion...
...In fact, a Jew who is in the process of growing more religious is as pious as one who practices as an observant Jew...
...This is the major thing that separates me from the majority of your writers...
...In your own political bias you tend to equate the success of liberal candidates with what is best for the Jews...
...I find myself, and so do my colleagues, in complete agreement with the views of Rabbis Schulweis, Schaalman, Cohen and Skidell...
...In between—rhetoric of ambiguity and continued divisiveness...
...Those tears shed by Israeli women soldiers as they carried off Jewish children from their homes into departing army vehicles are all our tears...
...Arthur E. Gilbert Monroe, New York New—and Old—Anti-Semitism To the Editor: Re: "Notes on the New Anti-Semitism" in your December 1981 issue: I am quite friendly with a young Roman Catholic woman, part German, part Irish background...
...Shoshana Lev Sunland, California To the Editor: In the March issue of moment magazine regarding the article on PACs and Terry Dolan, you attempt to perpetuate the myth that Jews are liberals...
...The socialist ideas that grew out of the New Deal and the War on Poverty have failed...
...The left and their religious fanatics such as the World Council of Churches support the PLO...
...The issue of whether these homes should have been there or not does not soften the lumps in our throats one bit...
...in the thirties...
...They also hold that prosperity will come only with a loosening of regulations and a lesser role of the federal government in our economy...
...This approach is not materially different from those of the R. A. or the C.C.A.R...
...When a Jew fails to keep the Shabbos and a kosher home, it is only a matter of a few short years before he ceases to exist as a Jew...
...These ideas coincide with the ideas that Ronald Reagan has been espousing for 20 years...
...I will continue to subscribe, to read and study your philosophies in order to answer to them...
...Indeed, several of the people, who gave the maximum $5,000 to NCPAC in 1979 and 1980 were also Jewish...
...The blowing of sand, the rumble of army vehicles, and the lowering of flags all fade in significance to the trickle of military tears reported by the press recently...
...Now, as Chaim Potok reports to us, a Jewish settler says: "I'm letting my garden die...
...Bare handed, and with their faces to the desert wind, our soldiers have torn down the homes of their brothers and sisters...
...The stage appears to be set...
...The article in moment by Betsy Gidwitz ("From Moses to Mao: A Jew Visits China," November 1981) discusses a Jewish community in China that died out...
...LETTERS Our House Divided To the Editor: From the outset, let me compliment you for sustaining such a high caliber forum of Jewish topics, that more often than not expresses the views of most American Jews...
...I told her, al reggel achat, that it was about a blood libel, the accusation that Jews used gentile children's blood to make matzah...
...In Israel, where kindergarten kids grow tomatoes, where national service is a holy privilege, it is a cruel twist...
...have become increasingly associated with ideas considered to be conservative...
...We did not walk to the desert each of the four times on curious safaris...
...Better yet, are they still Jews...
...This is a profoundly human story, shaped by a prevailing sadness in Israel's story line...
...His superior, non-Jewish, dropped in, and they talked about some correspondence in which their subject mentioned buying a Ford...
...just study the Chanukah period—the phony Kohen Gadol Alcimus, the Saducees, they all died out...
...Now it is these same, leaving behind youth centers, medical clinics, libraries and ice cream shoppes...
...Can the Reform or Conservative movements show me third or fourth generation Jews who are observant...
...We risk peace with one who refuses to learn about us...
...I am Jewish, was a member/of the Republican Senatorial Trust from 1978-1981, and the Chairman of NCPAC's Policy Advisory Council from 1979-1981.1 am convinced that conservative principles and philosophy are our only hope for protecting democracy, America, Israel and our people...
...She responded, "Did they...
...We need all kinds of Jews, but we must reach a level of observance, whether it be modern or left wing Orthodox, Lubavitch, or even to the extent of Satmar...
...We reserve the right to edit for publication...
...In Israel, Jewish youngsters plant seeds in school-house gardens...
...I was working in a local archives alongside someone organizing the papers of a German Jew who came to the U.S...
...moment performs a great service in making these views known to us, but don't you think it would have been more appropriate if this interview had been published just before Purim...
...I submit that Utah would have grave economic troubles if it were trying to hold in check the aggressive tendencies of its neighbors...
...We do not leave ruins in the wilderness for our contracted "friends" to acquire...
Vol. 7 • May 1982 • No. 5
