Impure Land?
Reading Dr. Yitzchok Levine’s Dec. 2 Glimpses Into Jewish History column on Rabbi Moshe Weinberger (“Jews in Europe: Do Not Come To America!”), I recalled visiting a Jewish bookstore on Hester Street, long closed, owned by a chassidic Jew.
I asked the proprietor why the Jews remained in Europe prior to the Holocaust despite the widespread Jew hatred there. He replied with the very term used by Jews like Rabbi Weinberger in describing America: treife. I was astounded.
My paternal grandfather left Bialystok in 1907 and brought his wife and two sons, one of whom was my father, in 1909. My mother’s family arrived here from Odessa on Thanksgiving Day 1910.
Half a century later I asked my tante, my grandmother’s sister, if she regretted coming to America. Her English was virtually non-existent, as she spoke only Yiddish and Russian. She gave me one of her looks, as if I were meshuggah. The answer, of course, was an emphatic no.
Oh, those poor Yidden who remained in Europe at the urging of well meaning but overzealous rabbis.
Bert Zackim
(Via E-Mail)
Takes Issue With Columnist
Among the many wonderful articles in your great paper, I especially love to read Rabbi Dr. Jerry Hochbaum’s Jacob’s Ladder column. Perhaps that’s because he was my good friend and chavrusa for many years, and we got our semicha the same day at RIETS. Seriously, though the column is always excellent.
However, the Dec. 2 piece on Toldos included something I cannot accept: “In the end, Yitzchak finally agrees to renew the treaty with Avimelech….”
In my Bereishis volume (Great Torah Lights, vol.1) I argued (several leading rabbonim said I did so in a “powerfully persuasive” manner) that Yitzchak never made any agreement with Avimelech, but rather got him drunk. The phrase “they swore each to his brother” actually refers to Avimelech and Pichol (the Torah would never call our holy forefather Yitzchak a “brother” to a Plishti).
This explains the (otherwise) astonishing statement (v.33) that the town Be’er Sheva owes its name to the fact that Yitzchak’s shepherds dug a new well that day, number seven – shiv’ah (Sforno).
If my thesis is wrong, this verse makes no sense. My complete analysis, with further important details, is in the appendix to the volume.
Rabbi Dr. Yitzchak Meir Goodman
Far Rockaway, NY
There He Goes Again
Jimmy Carter, considered one of our worst presidents by historians, last week reiterated his views on the Israeli-Palestinian Arab conflict and once again confirmed his status as the most anti-Israel political figure in recent times.
The former president apparently does not – or wishes not – to realize that the Oslo Accords, which were very favorable to the Palestinians, called for negotiations between the two parties to the conflict before any Palestinian state would be established.
For the nearly 25 years since Oslo, Palestinian leaders have failed to negotiate in good faith and have never ceased calling for campaigns of terror and an end to the existence of Israel.
Nelson Marans
(Via E-Mail)
Readers’ Platform
December 7 was National Letter Writing Day.
Surveys show that the Letters To The Editor section is one of the most widely read and popular of any newspaper. Weekly newspapers such as our own Jewish Press offer readers a chance to speak out. The same is true with daily newspapers such as AM New York, the New York Daily News, Newsday, New York Post, New York Times and Staten Island Advance. Weekly newspapers tend to offer more space for writers than daily newspapers. Some daily newspapers have quotas of no more than one letter every 30 or 60 days per writer.
Contrary to popular myth, letter writers don’t always have our submissions published. Being a prolific letter writer doesn’t always guarantee publication on a regular basis by anyone. It helps if you have a snappy introduction and a good hook, and are timely and precise with an interesting or different viewpoint.
We are fortunate to live in one of the few remaining free societies, with a wealth of information sources available. I continue to be grateful that The Jewish Press and other daily and weekly newspapers afford letter writers the opportunity to express our views.
Thanks to you, ordinary citizens have the freedom to comment issues of the day and to voice agreement or disagreement with the actions and legislation of elected officials.
Larry Penner
Great Neck, NY
Obama’s Mixed Bag
President Obama has never been my cup of tea, but I blanch whenever I hear or read hyperpartisan statements about how bad he’s been for America. Like most presidents, he’s been a mixed bag. Certainly not the great chief executive portrayed by his admirers, but nowhere near the unmitigated disaster described by right-wingers
Just remember what the world looked eight years ago. The Republicans had just lost power after the disastrous and scandal-ridden George W. Bush presidency – during which the U.S. launched a war against Iraq on the basis of misleading intelligence that has thus far cost the lives of nearly five thousand U.S. servicemen and women and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis; allowed 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden and his followers to escape in Afghanistan; saw the misappropriation of billions of taxpayer dollars by contractors in Iraq, a major portion of which had been awarded without bids or any recordkeeping; and found itself mired in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
No wonder Bush’s approval ratings when he left office were in the low 20s. Americans were more fearful about their future than at any time since the early 1930s.
Eight years later, Obama leaves office with a growing economy and an unemployment rate at its lowest since the 1980s (numbers don’t lie). And his tenure has been relatively corruption free, with far fewer scandals than any administration in decades.
As far as the U.S.-Israel alliance is concerned, despite Obama’s rocky personal relationship with Benjamin Netanyahu (no worse, by the way, than Ronald Reagan’s relationship with Menachem Begin or Gerald Ford’s relationship with Yitzhak Rabin or Bill Clinton’s relationship with Netanyahu), military and intelligence cooperation between the two countries are at an all-time high; the administration has vetoed or otherwise torpedoed every single anti-Israel resolution at the UN over the past eight years (to put that in perspective, the Reagan administration voted against Israel at the UN 22 times in eight years); and Obama just signed the most generous military aid package to Israel in American history.
Obama has had more than his share of failures, including the Obamacare debacle and the administration’s inept handling of the Arab Spring, but the state of the country as described by his most bitter opponents doesn’t come close to the actual reality.
Yerachmiel Grossman
(Via E-Mail)
