Letters

...Only signed letters with a complete return address can be considered...

...Ahavat Yisrael (love of Jews) is the theory and practice of those who serve on the Lubavitch mitzvah mobiles, as well as of those who learn in the yeshivot for "returners" and the "advanced yeshivot" to which most of them progress...

...Finally, it seems rather narrow-minded and blind to the lessons of recent history for organized Jewry, in the form of rabbinical boards, Holocaust commissions or the like, to pursue policies exclusionary or denigrating to other historically-despised minority groups...

...In this regard, press accounts in New York City show that a gay interreligious Holocaust observance recently held in an auditorium at Columbia University involved participation by, among other groups, New York's large gay synagogue...

...The group has come to be known as the "Jewish Group," because it has always been led by a rabbi (ordinarily the Hillel director here at the University of Missouri) functioning as the Jewish chaplain for the Department of Corrections . The amusing part is that the group has no Jewish members, although some years ago there was one Jewish member for a short period of time...

...According to figures compiled by sex researchers, between five and ten percent of the adult Jewish community is gay...

...But large numbers of non-Jews did perish at Babi Yar...

...Errata Cincinnatian Ida Cohen Selavan's name was inadvertently omitted as contributor of the Spice Box item in last month's moment, entitled, "America, 'tis Zion...

...It does not cheapen or dilute our grief as Jews to acknowledge that others were caught up in the disaster of the Holocaust...

...Here is another group to lend support to our testimony against the revisionist anti-Semites who deny the horrors of the Holocaust...

...I do agree with Fein on another point: that contributions to practically any Israeli institution may free funds from government subsidies and divert them to the originally planned projects, including settlements on the West Bank...

...The reason I'm telling you all this is that the inmates have also become fans of moment...

...Our apologies...

...for those Jews, there is no question but that the Jewish community should "condone"—I would much prefer the word "tolerate"—the rights of a sexual minority to mourn its dead in the appropriate setting of a Holocaust Memorial...

...It was a statement both positive and negative: positive, because these causes are deserving (and in the case of the Relief Fund it was both in expiation for, and in protest against, the shocking events in Lebanon...

...it is equally wrong for Jewish groups in this country to take the view—as they frequently have—that Holocaust memorials should not take account of the other minorities involved, because to do so would somehow "dilute" the Jewish Holocaust experience...

...During the past year, I have been meeting once a week with a group of about ten inmates serving terms in the Missouri State Penitentiary, located in Jefferson City, Missouri...

...I take my copies to them when my wife and I are done with them...

...I know this sounds rather bizarre—mainly because it is bizarre—but I have found that it's also quite touching...

...Nonetheless, the prison administration formally recognizes the Jewish Group and has accorded it status along with that of other religious groups formed by inmates...

...When the former chaplain moved out of town this past summer, to become Hillel director at the University of Rochester, he gave each member a mezuzah to be wom around the neck, which each wears proudly...

...They are reasonably well read on these subjects and have developed what appears to be a genuine affection for Israel and Judaism...

...Our Passover banquet even included baked ham and shrimp casseroles prepared by friends and families of the inmates...

...Yes, Dr...

...How much more so for a people who has aspired over the millenia to superior morality, integrity and ethics...

...Here is another group to bear witness that it did happen...

...However, I take exception to Leonard Fein's stance on UJA contributions ("Should We Give to UJA...

...These fellows have taken a serious intellectual interest in Judaism, though I doubt any of them would convert...

...The odd thing about this group is that, over time, it has taken a keen interest in Israel, related political events and Judaism...

...An additional point: I fully support the argument put forth in Fein's letter to Robert Loup...

...Some months ago I divided my increased contribution between the Jewish Federation (entirely for local use), the Technion, Red Magen David and The Jerusalem Post's Relief for Lebanon Fund...

...I thought you might enjoy knowing how diverse your readership is...

...Furthermore, the sex research statistics suggest that several hundred thousand Jewish Holocaust victims may have been gay...

...I had arrived at the same conclusions as did Mr...

...negative, in that I feel UJA funds, while benefitting the people and the State of Israel—as stated in Fein's letters—are nevertheless an endorsement of the government and its policies and not infrequently result in projects which serve to buttress and enhance the government's popularity locally...

...It can only lend greater force to our cries of "never again...

...Rabbi Miller notes with disapproval the dilutionist actions of the Russians in commemorating Babi Yar as a universal, rather than purely Jewish, tragedy...

...November 1982...

...When gay people today wish to mark that event with memorial ceremonies, we Jews should be among the first to lend assistance and support to their efforts...

...The Board of Rabbis may1 v represent a wide spectrum of the religious Jewish community," but it surely does not represent the entire community...

...If one looks at the history of the Nazi blight, one sees that the persecution of homosexuals and Jews was part of one mad mentality of intolerance and hatred with the object of "purifying" the world by ridding it of any people who were "different," ergo, inferior...

...Last week, in fact, a fellow serving a 25-year term for murder (Irish Catholic) was genuinely disappointed that I hadn't brought in the next issue...

...Arthur S. Leonard New York, New York Letters to the Editor moment welcomes letters from readers...

...This group has been meeting regularly for several years now, though its membership changes as people get released, transferred, placed in solitary confinement and so on...

...December 1982) of the response by Rochester's Board of Rabbis to the gay Christian groups' request to hold a commemorative service at the local Holocaust Memorial is most thought-provoking...

...But this "hostility" is not found among the apolitical (in Israel they refer to themselves as bilti miflagti) heads of the yeshivot and their students...

...Their teachers do not exploit them, as the gurus of the Moonies and Hare Krishna exploit their converts, nor do the yeshivah directors pursue benighted power politics in the manner of Khomeini and the Moral Majority...

...Incidentally, I don't believe that contributions (even substantial ones) to most, if not all, of the four institutions we selected would ever reduce the government's support of them and provide it with more money for other purposes...

...How would the Rochester Board of Rabbis react if a group of gay Jews came to them and asked to hold a ceremony at the Holocaust Memorial for the gay Jews who perished in the Holocaust...

...The event cited is quite typical of the help and endorsement which the people and funds of the UJA provide to, and how they are used by, individual government officials for their own aggrandizement...

...He was sorry to hear that the magazine comes out only once a month...

...All the same, it won't be my money that will be used there—a moot point perhaps, but one which has appeal for me...

...They are different because together with study of the Torah—traditional, intellectual study, not "anti-intellectual study," as Dr...

...Frederic G. Reamer Columbia, Missouri The State of the Ultra-Orthodox To the Editor: In "The State of the Jews, 1982" (moment, December), Dr...

...Daniel A. Talonn University City, Missouri In the Most Unlikely of Places To the Editor: I am currently the Jewish chaplain (lay) for the Missouri Department of Corrections...

...All letters should be typed, double-spaced, and sent to the moment Editorial Office, 462 Boylston Street, Suite 301, Boston, MA 02116...

...The truth is that large numbers of gays (research indicates that it may have been hundreds of thousands) were slaughtered in the Holocaust, and that many of them, contrary to Rabbi Miller's assertion, could not "hide their sexual identity," as they were betrayed by others...

...Frankly, I am not very religious, in the traditional sense of the term...

...One may well understand many of the ingrained attitudes and beliefs that led to the negative response, but many of the assumptions, stated or unstated in Rabbi Miller's narrative, demand a response...

...For more on this subject, I would suggest reading The World of the Yeshiva by Professor William B. Helmreich (Free Press/Macmillan), From Suburb To Shtetl by Professor Egon Mayer (Temple University Press) and Professor Samuel C. Heilman's The People of the Book (Chicago University Press...

...Fisher...

...Cohen is right, the political Orthodox groups, in Israel and in the Diaspora, "breed hostility" to Conservative, Reconstructionist and Reform Jews...

...These will be helpful in correcting wrong notions about ba'alei t'shuvah, the yeshivot and kollelim (yeshivot for married men) that teach and study according to the Gaon of Vilna's method, and the score of "post-graduate" yeshivot which follow the rationalist Brisk method of interpreting the Talmud and writing novellae (chiddushei torah...

...It is wrong of the Russians to hide the fact that most of those slaughtered were Jews...

...My country, right or wrong" is plain wrong everywhere (as it was here during the Vietnam War...

...Rabbi Miller's Board of Rabbis was wrong...

...Last spring, for example, we held our "Passover" banquet, which really provided an opportunity for inmates' friends and families to visit in a somewhat informal way outside of regular visiting hours...

...This is a testimony to the dearth of Jewish clergy in mid-Missouri rather than to my ability to serve as a religious or spiritual figure...

...Trude Weiss-Rosmarin The Jewish Spectator Santa Monica, California Sharing Our Grief To the Editor: Rabbi Miller's account ("Exclusive Rites...

...Gerson Cohen asks: "How different are they |the young people who have enrolled in yeshivot for ba'alei t'shuvah] after all, from the Moonies, the Hare Krishna, the Ayatollah Khomeini or the Moral Majority...

...One would suppose that gays who identify as religious Jews so strongly that they have created a synagogue for themselves would have a somewhat different view as to what "religious Jews" may "condone...

...Cohen charges— they also study musar, Jewish ethics...

...We reserve the right to edit for publication...

...Finally, if enough people here were to act similarly, it would send, a loud and clear message to Begin, Sharon and Co.: that they are not entitled to blind, automatic support and endorsement...