Troubling Remark
As you comment on in “The President’s Cheap Shot on Iran Sanctions” (editorial, Jan. 23), President Obama berated Senator Robert Menendez for pushing Iran sanctions legislation he (Obama) opposed but which was supported by Israel. The president told Menendez he understood the pressures from “donors” that members of Congress have to endure.
That a president of the United States would so clearly employ the infamous stereotype of Jews as seeking to control U.S. foreign policy through the distribution of their money should be of great concern. It doesn’t matter that the president’s remarks were made in the course of a private meeting. The fact that Mr. Obama even thinks this way is troubling.
Susan Eisenberg
(Via E-Mail)
Troubling Editorial
Having just read your Jan. 23 editorial“The President’s Cheap Shot on Iran Sanctions,” I can only ask you to just give it a rest. I’m referring to your hostility to President Obama. Although you’ve managed over the past several years to avoid the name calling and factual inaccuracies so prevalent in most right-wing criticism of the president, you always seem to try to take advantage of every opportunity to savage him.
You yourselves have acknowledged that his administration has single-handedly and repeatedly thwarted condemnation of Israel at the UN Security Council, even at the risk of offending most of the rest of the world. Do you not appreciate that Obama’s standing up for Israel in international forums is the single greatest obstacle to his dream of forming coalitions with our natural Arab allies in the Middle East – and yet he does so anyway? Does it not matter that the Obama administration has broken all previous records in providing military hardware to Israel?
So you have a problem with the possible implications of his use of the word “donors.” Well, that term pales in comparison to the epithets employed against Jews by several previous presidents, yet none of them has ever been demonized by Orthodox and right-wing Jews to the extent that Obama has.
Yitzchok Stein
(Via E-Mail)
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More About Sarah Schenirer
In his Jan. 30 front-page essay “Challenging the Status Quo,” Rabbi Naphtali Hoff writes about Sarah Schenirer’s role in establishing the Bais Yaakov movement after World War I. There is even more to the story than is commonly known.
The information below is from Rabbi Abraham Atkin’s Ph.D. thesis “The Beth Jacob Movement in Poland (1917-1939).” I will send a link to this thesis to anyone who is interested ([email protected]).
Rabbi Hoff notes that Sarah Schenirer had a very limited Jewish education, as was the case for most women who lived when she did. Indeed, while Sarah Schenirer was the idealistic influence behind the Bais Yaakov movement, she did not have the academic credentials needed to make the Bais Yaakov schools a long term effective educational endeavor. Realizing this, the Agudah leader Jacob Rosenheim sent Dr. Judith Grunfeld (nee Rosenbaum) to assist Sarah Schenirer. Another person who assisted was Dr. Leo Deutschlander.
Dr. Judith Grunfeld was educated in Rav Hirsch’s school in Frankfurt, and later earned a Ph.D. in education. Dr. Leo Deutschlander, who came from Hungary, was greatly influenced by the writings of Rav Hirsch and played an important role in the development of the Bais Yaakov Movement in Poland.
They both possessed the skills needed to establish an effective educational institution, since they had advanced graduate secular degrees. Thus, Rav Hirsch should perhaps be considered the “spiritual grandfather” of the Bais Yaakov movement.
Rabbi Atkin points out that the two-year course of study at the seminary emphasized the following areas of study:
Five Books of Moses, which included the study of Chumash in the original and in its entirety with the commentary of Rashi and Rav Hirsch; Prophets and Hagiographa; prayers; Jewish history; Hebrew grammar; Jewish law; psychology; and pedagogy.