Continuing The Rebbetzin’s Columns (I)
I want to thank you for your decision to continue publishing Rebbetzin Jungreis’s columns. As you put it in the editor’s note accompanying last week’s column, the Rebbetzin is no longer with us but her message is eternal. It matters not that the columns you’ll be running have previously appeared in the paper; after all, Torah study consists of much review and repetition and the Rebbetzin was a Torah teacher par excellence.
Shmuel Lazar
(Via E-Mail)
Continuing The Rebbetzin’s Columns (II)
Hopefully you will run the Rebbetzin’s old columns for many years to come. I have been a subscriber to The Jewish Press for about 45 years. When I receive the paper at my front door, the first column I’ve always turned to is Rebbetzin’s Viewpoint. It has inspired me for all these years.
Thank you for “listening” to the readers who wrote in asking you to continue her column.
Malka Skolnick
(Via E-Mail)
Outstanding Oriana
Jason Maoz’s Sept. 16 op-ed column, “Oriana Fallaci and the Suicide of the West,” was excellent.
An outstanding journalist and author, Oriana Fallaci was also a brilliant human being. Despite her upbringing and early life as an ultra-leftist, she came to the realization that Islamic fundamentalists are a grave danger to our world.
To sum up her message in her own words, “Islamism is the new Nazi-Fascism. With Nazi-Fascism, no compromise is possible. No hypothetical tolerance. And those who do not understand this simple reality are feeding the suicide of the West.”
George Epstein
Los Angeles, CA
Not Enamored Of Trump (I)
I share reader Myron Hecker’s devotion to Israel, but I wish I shared his conviction, expressed in several letters to the editor in recent months and most recently in your Sept. 16 issue, that Donald Trump will be an unparalleled champion of Israel should he make it to the White House.
I would remind Mr. Hecker that earlier this year, when he was unscripted and responding off the top of his head to a question about whom he would lean on more in any negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, Trump said: “Let me be sort of a neutral guy…. I don’t want to say whose fault it is – I don’t think that helps.”
And a few weeks later, he told the Associated Press that in order for any Mideast negotiations to succeed, “a lot will have to do with Israel and whether or not Israel wants to make the deal – whether or not Israel’s willing to sacrifice certain things.”
It was only after he was hammered for those statements – by, among others, Hillary Clinton – that Trump had his son-in-law (and the editor of the newspaper owned by his son-in-law) write up a pro-Israel speech that he, Trump, read off a teleprompter at the AIPAC conference.
Sorry, Mr. Hecker, but the fact that Donald Trump, facing a barrage of criticism for his earlier statements, read a pro-Israel speech written by others from a teleprompter doesn’t give me a great deal of confidence in where he really stands.
Gary Cohen
(Via E-Mail)
Not Enamored Of Trump (II)
Re the letter from Trump supporter Myron Hecker:
If I thought there was even the slightest possibility that Hillary Clinton is the anti-Israel demon some in our community make her out to be, I would swallow my very strong reservations about Trump and vote for him.
But Hillary had a solid record on Israel during her years as a U.S. senator, and while I don’t agree with her position on Israeli settlements, the fact is it has been U.S. policy for more than four decades, no matter the president or secretary of state, to oppose the building of settlements. So articulating that position does not make one anti-Israel. (And as I’m sure Mr. Hecker knows, a significant percentage of the Israeli public also opposes settlement building.)
But I, like so many others, am completely put off by Trump’s unending string of defaming others, his shoot-from-the-hip statements, his dangerously shallow understanding of the world, and his habit of changing his positions whenever it suits his mood or audience and then claiming the latest position is the one he’d always held.
And then there’s the almost total lack of substance in what he says. No one – including Trump – has any idea how he’ll build that wall on the border with Mexico, let alone how he’ll force the Mexican government to pay for it. And despite all his talk about how he loves veterans and will do wonders for them, he hasn’t offered a single detail about what he’d do in that regard. Nor has he said a word about what will come after he implements his vow to “abolish Obamacare” – other than his nonsensical promise to replace it with “something terrific.”
I will be watching the upcoming debates with extreme interest and an open mind. Maybe Trump will surprise me with a reasoned and sober presentation and maybe Hillary will underwhelm with a weak and dispirited performance. But right now I cannot fathom what people like Mr. Hecker see in Donald Trump.
Elise Markowitz
(Via E-Mail)
Not Enamored Of Clinton
In typical Clinton fashion, any challenge to Hillary’s presidential ambition engenders the usual reflex actions to protect her by a complicit mainstream media and her army of apologists and sycophants (“Hillary’s Health and Secretiveness Are the Paramount Issues,” editorial, Sept. 16).
It has long been evident that The New York Times can no longer be judged as a respected newspaper deserving of the journalistic credibility it had earned in years gone by. Sadly, the paper’s propensity to jump to Hillary’s defense by putting the emphasis on both candidates to be open and transparent is clearly one-sided and driven by politics.
The hubris exhibited by Hillary in calling for Donald Trump to release his tax returns because he must have something to hide is the ultimate hypocrisy when she has refused to reveal the contents of Wall Street speeches for which she earned millions of dollars.