Compliment And Clarification
I enjoyed Saul Jay Singer’s very informative November 7 front page essay, “Confessions of a Judaica Document Collector.”
One quibble: Mr. Singer wrote that Paul Ehrlich was the first Jewish Nobel Prize winner. In fact, the first Jew (and first American) to win the Nobel Prize in any of the sciences was Albert Abraham Michelson.
He was a physicist known for his work on the measurement of the speed of light and especially for the Michelson–Morley experiment. In 1907 he received the Nobel Prize in Physics.
This was one year prior to the award of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine of 1908 to Paul Ehrlich.
Nisan Hershkowitz
Brooklyn, NY
Saul Jay Singer Responds: My sincerest thanks to Dr. Hershkowitz for his correction; in fact, what I meant to write was that Ehrlich was the first Jew to win the Nobel prize in physiology or medicine.
However, the first Jew to win any Nobel Prize was not Michelson but, rather, Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Adolf von Baeyer (1835-1917), who won the Nobel in Chemistry in 1905 for synthesizing dye indigo.
Throwing Rocks At Jews
A picture tells a thousand words, and your November 7 political cartoon about Palestinian Arabs throwing rocks at Jews on their way to the Tomb of Rachel spoke volumes about the dangers facing Jewish worshippers – and the silence of the international community.
On November 6, a group of Jews sought to pray at the Tomb of Joseph, in Shechem (Nablus). The Oslo Accords specifically authorize Jewish access to such sites. The Jewish worshippers had to be accompanied by a large numbers of Israeli soldiers and military vehicles, in order to ensure that the worshippers would not be massacred by local Arabs. The Palestinian Authority news service Ma’an boasted that “a group of young Palestinian men gathered in the area hurled stones and empty bottles” at the Jews.
Imagine if Jewish worshippers had to be accompanied by soldiers every time they walked to their neighborhood synagogue because local anti-Semites threw rocks and bottles at them. American Jews would never stand for such a situation. They would demand swift and forceful action to put the attackers behind bars. Yet nobody speaks out against attacks on Jews trying to peacefully and legally pray at the Tomb of Joseph and other holy sites in Israel.
We agree that attacks on synagogues and Jewish cemeteries in Budapest or Kiev are an outrage; but attacks on Jews trying to pray at the grave of one of our biblical patriarchs are just as troubling.
Rabbi David Saperstein, the longtime leader of Reform Judaism’s Religious Action Center, was recently appointed U.S. Ambassador for International Religious Freedom. Let’s insist that freedom for Jews to visit their holy sites in Israel will be on his agenda.
Moshe Phillips, Benyamin Korn
Members of the Board
Religious Zionists of America
On The Matter Of Sweden And Israel
We thought that readers of The Jewish Press would be interested in reading the following letter we sent to the prime minister of Sweden.
Excellency,
We write this letter to you in the name of thousands of lawyers associated with the Legal Forum for Israel, an international body of lawyers and jurists, in response your inaugural statement, dated 3 October 2014 to the Swedish parliament, in which you stated:
“The conflict between Israel and Palestine can only be resolved through a two-state solution, negotiated in accordance with the principles of international law. It must guarantee the legitimate demands of both the Palestinians and the Israelis for national self-determination and security. A two-state solution requires mutual recognition and a will to coexist peacefully. Therefore, Sweden will recognize the State of Palestine.”