Not Too Early For Pesach Falafel Fund
The Falafel Fund, which enables needy religious families in Jerusalem to visit the neighborhood falafel store so that harried mothers can get a break from cooking at least one meal for their many children the week before Pesach, started when I saw an eight year old with long peyos clutching three loaves of unwrapped bread against his sweater the day before bedikas chametz.
I realized then that mothers of large, poor families are cooking meals right up to erev Pesach because they can’t afford to go to restaurants or get takeout food the days before Pesach, as many of us do.
So, at the cost of $12.00 per person, we send families for a falafel, a portion of French fries, and a canned drink. One meal for an average family can cost well over $100 – an amount way beyond even the dreams of these families. (And since many families have 10, 12, and even more children, the cost can often top $150.)
All the families we help are carefully chosen. Every penny of the money goes directly to the falafel store owner, with a petek to the chosen families. We thus ensure that no money gets redirected for anything else by the financially strapped parents.
The children are thrilled beyond belief since they rarely get to eat store-bought falafel, and they never go out to eat in a “restaurant” (they don’t realize it’s only a falafel store, since most have never been inside a real restaurant).
Last year we were able to send quite a few families to the local falafel store. But the project is so deeply appreciated that people are already asking to get on the list.
Please join us in this unusual mitzvah by sending checks made out to Tzvia Klein, Arzei Habira 49, apt. # 32, Jerusalem, Israel. And include your e-mail address if you have one so that I can personally thank you.
Please do not make checks out to Falafel Fund as it costs more to cash such checks. And we cannot cash money orders.
Help make life happier for these families and easier for the wives and mothers. Checks arriving after Pesach will go toward the ingredients needed to make Shavuos cheesecakes for other families.
Thank you.
Tzvia Ehrlich-Klein
Jerusalem
Haley’s Strong Stance
I would like to thank Ambassador Nikki Haley for having the courage and conviction to stand up to the UN regarding its biased, unfair treatment of Israel (“The U.S. Is Determined to Stand Up to the UN’s Anti-Israel Bias,” op-ed, Feb. 24).
Thanks to Ambassador Haley and President Trump, I as an American Jew feel Israel will once again have the support it deserves from America.
Jodi Nicastro
(Via E-Mail)
Taking Issue With Prager (I)
To hear Dennis Prager tell it (“In 2012, Conservatives Were Just As Depressed As Liberals Are Now,” op-ed, February 24), the only difference between the 2012 and 2016 election results were that the “conservative” side won in 2016 as opposed to the “liberal” side winning in 2012.
Mr. Prager knows better. In fact, the 2012 Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, publicly denounced Mr. Trump’s candidacy. That’s because Mr. Trump’s threats of putting his general-election opponent in jail (which he conveniently forgot after the election), his attacks on all free trade agreements, and his promise to spend a trillion dollars on infrastructure without raising tax revenues are not conservative at all.
What makes this reality even worse is this president’s shameless description of a federal judge as “so-called” and his embrace of a Russian dictator that would make Nixon and Reagan tremble in embarrassment.
So please, Mr. Prager, stop pretending and face up to the fact that people have a right to be concerned about what Mr. Trump and Mr. Bannon are really up to.
Yosef Tannenbaum
Brooklyn, NY
Taking Issue With Prager (II)
I’ve been reading Dennis Prager’s commentary for years now, and I have to say he’s becoming increasingly shrill and even downright insulting. He routinely and summarily dismisses all who hold liberal views as somehow not being grownups or serious people. And when he writes about Donald Trump he does so with no nuance, characterizing all who dare criticize Trump as closed-minded liberal bigots.
Perhaps Prager is overcompensating for all the negative things he said about Trump during most of the 2016 presidential campaign. Gems such as: “I am contemptuous of much of what [Trump] does, I don’t trust what he says”; Trump’s behavior “combines meanness, immaturity, and insecurity”; “Trump either is not very intelligent or lacks intelligent judgment”; “the man is an equal opportunity boor”; and “Trump is unworthy of being president.”
Of course, once Trump sewed up the Republican nomination, Prager, a longtime Republican, became a huge Trump booster because, he said, as bad as Trump was, Hillary Clinton was even worse.
Prager is entitled to support whomever he wants and for whatever reasons, but based on his own remarks he certainly should be cognizant of the fact that Trump was no ordinary major party presidential candidate but rather one who stoked division, fear, and even hatred with his incendiary and often untrue and off the wall remarks – such as, to cite just two of literally dozens of examples, his claims that Ted Cruz’s father had somehow been involved in the JFK assassination (and then defending that claim by saying he’d read about it in the National Enquirer) and that the rate of violent crime across the country “is the highest it’s been in 47 years” when in fact it’s actually way down from its peak in the early 1990s.
So although I don’t condone the doomsday warnings coming from Democrats or the mass anti-Trump protests that in many cases turned violent, I can understand how Trump inspires real angst and even horror in so many millions of people. If Dennis Pager really can’t comprehend that, then he’s conveniently forgetting his own dismay, not that long ago, at the mere prospect of a Trump presidency.
Gary Steinberg
(Via E-Mail)
Palestinian Indoctrination
Re Stephen M. Flatow’s Feb. 24 op-ed column, “Media Suppress Mention of PA Terror Glorification”:
The media have failed to acknowledge the core reason for the growth of terrorism: Children being taught to hate and encouraged to become terrorists from their earliest years, especially their early education through college.
Years ago, a Muslim friend explained to me the basic problem in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Born and raised in Jordan, Sami was taught throughout his education that “the land from the river to the sea (including the state of Israel) is Arab land.”
These children were brainwashed. They were not born believing this, or to hate others – they had to be taught.
Shouldn’t the media be reporting this so that the world can know about this phenomenon? One must first understand the problem in order to solve it.
George Epstein
Los Angeles, CA