Significant Date
I notice that the Palestinians will formally join the International Criminal Court, in order to bring charges against Israel for war crimes, on April 1, commonly called All Fools’ Day or April Fools’ Day.
In view of their own behavior, placing rocket launchers in schools, mosques, and apartment blocks when targeting Israel’s civilian population – both deliberate contraventions of the Geneva Convention – is this choice of date not highly significant?
Martin D. Stern
Salford, England
Dr. King And The Jews (I)
As someone who is troubled by the casual prejudice found all too frequently among segments of the Orthodox community (a phenomenon that has caused several people I know to have become seriously disillusioned with frumkeit and in one case to have gone completely off the derech), I applaud The Jewish Press for last week’s front-page essay by Saul Singer, “Martin Luther King and the Jews,” and the op-ed article by Rabbi Zev Eleff, “Orthodox Jewry and the Civil Rights Movement.”
Reading those articles touched a real chord, reminding me that Orthodox Jews need not be insular and closed-minded. It’s impossible to be a light unto the nations if we insist on staying in our daled amos, viewing outsiders with suspicion, intolerance, and even hate.
Rabbi Eleff’s piece in particular transported me back to a time when Orthodoxy was generally more open and tolerant, when our communities were known more for their darchei noam, their pleasant ways, than for the constant infighting and chillulei Hashem with which we’ve become all too familiar.
Chaim Weinberg
(Via E-Mail)
Dr. King And The Jews (II)
I was gratified that The Jewish Press featured an article about Dr. Martin Luther King on the front page last week. I think he has been much misunderstood in our community because his message was distorted by some in the so-called civil rights movement with their own agendas.
We Jews can certainly empathize with those objecting to being second-class citizens or having to sit in back of the bus. Who doesn’t understand that? King’s message was a sincere one: equal opportunity for all, not the racial preferences for some urged by racial opportunists as paybacks for past discrimination. A golden opportunity for mutually beneficial relations between Jews and blacks was lost when he was murdered.
Eli Hurvitz
(Via E-Mail)
Dr. King And The Jews (III)
From Martin Luther King to Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton – how far have civil rights leaders fallen!
Stephen Hammer
(Via E-Mail)
Paris Terror Attacks
I fear the Paris attacks (front-page news story, Jan. 16) are just the beginning. I think the outward reserve that even out and out anti-Semites displayed in recent decades has largely disappeared and it has become easier to give vent to hatred of Jews.
Coupled with this are the crazy people who seek emotional redemption in the shedding of blood and who wish to identify with those who view beheadings and mass murder as religious callings. It’s not politically correct to say this, but the march of Muslim jihadists is relentless and growing. Divine intervention is definitely in the offing.
(Rabbi) Shimon Saperstein
(Via E-Mail)
Selective Outrage (I)
You were so right in observing (“The Plight of French Jews Deserved More Attention,” editorial, Jan. 16) that “Had the massacre perpetrated by Muslim terrorists at the offices of the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo not preceded the murders of four patrons at a kosher market in Paris, it is highly unlikely that millions of Frenchmen would have taken to the streets in protest of growing Muslim militancy.”
In fact, as Philippe Karsenty, the deputy mayor of the Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine, noted, “Some of the people walking [in the Jan, 11 rally] are the same people who walked against Israel last summer. This is completely hypocritical.”