Likes Rabbi Fuchs’s New Column
I just read Rabbi Raphael Fuchs’s new weekly column (“From the Rabbi’s Desk,” Jan. 27) and agreed with everything he wrote on the inauguration of President Trump.
I was glad to see in print what I personally feel.
Chaim Fessel
West Palm Beach, FL
Pete Seeger: Communist, Plain And Simple
Re “Pete Seeger: An Anti-Zionist Who Sang Israeli Songs” (Collecting Jewish History column, Jan, 20):
I loved Seeger’s music, but the column’s reference to Seeger’s sympathy with “humanitarian socialism” is a whitewash. He was, in fact, a strong party loyalist and never bucked the Communist line.
When Hitler and Stalin were allies, Seeger released a record that included songs blasting that terrible warmonger Winston Churchill. When Stalin became Churchill’s ally, Seeger asked that those records be returned. Of course, with Stalin on Churchill’s side, the war to Seeger suddenly became a righteous cause and pro-ally songs like “The D-Day Dodger” and “The Reuben James became part of his repertoire.
Seeger’s popular “If I Had a Hammer” was written in honor of the head of the American Communist Party. For more insight on his “humanitarian socialism,” read what the historian Ron Radosh has written about Seeger, an old friend of his.
For a man whom many insisted on seeing as America’s conscience, he had some blind spots. There were no songs about the Gulag or the two million people slaughtered by the Khmer Rouge. True to the party line, the only song he sang about the Nazi concentration camps (“Moorsoldaten”) does not mention Jews. Of course, he never appeared at a Soviet Jewry rally.
Pete Seeger was a devout Communist who never seemed to have a problem with Joseph Stalin. It is an insult to our brethren who suffered at the hands of Communist oppression to ignore these deficiencies in Seeger’s humanity.
Gordon Kraus-Friedberg
(Via E-Mail)
Waiting For The Embassy Transfer
In an excellent Jan. 25 op-ed in the New York Daily News (1/25/2017), former New York State attorney general Bob Abrams presented convincing reasons why we should transfer our embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. It has never made sense that while the government of Israel functions in Jerusalem the U.S. embassy is located in Tel Aviv.
President Trump’s original promise to transfer our embassy appears to be somewhat in doubt now, if we are to go by statements several administration officials have made since the inauguration. Failure to move the embassy would hurt the credibility of our new president, who has not hesitated to carry out other campaign promises.
Nelson Marans
New York, NY
A New War Refugee Board
What is happening in Syria is just the latest in a never-ending series of wide-scale massacres that have occurred since the end of the Second World War. There is a crying need for the creation of a United States government agency like the War Refugee Board President Franklin Roosevelt created in 1944, which saved more than 250,000 people, including 200,000 Jews.
Rabbi Abraham Kalmanowitz, zt”l, proposed the idea of a permanent War Refugee Board to President Eisenhower. He wanted one that would act in situations of genocide and atrocities. In his honor such a board should be created. Rav Kalmanowitz was very active in rescue efforts during the Holocaust. Let us honor him and save lives.
Reuven Solomon
Forest Hills, NY
Praying For Leaders
Your website reporter David Israel writes (“Open Orthodox Rabbi Alters Shabbat Prayer for the President to Omit Trump,” JewishPress.com, Jan. 20) that “Shmuly Yanklowitz, an Open Orthodox rabbi and author…posted on his Facebook page that ‘starting this week I can no longer recite or say amen to the Shabbat prayer for the success of the U.S. president.’ ”
This is yet another example of the way “progressives” advocate accepting the democratic choice of the people until, of course, it goes against their own Weltanschauung.
As the writer asks, does Yanklowitz suggest that President Trump is worse than Czar Nicholas I, creator of the pale of settlement, never mind an evil slaughterer like Hitler?
Apropos of Hitler, yemach shemo, it is interesting that the traditional text “He who gives salvation unto kings…” was deemed inappropriate after the overthrow of the kaiser and so a modified version for the Weimar Republic was composed.
Despite its highly patriotic terminology asking Hashem, inter alia, to restore to “our beloved homeland Germany” the lands removed under the Treaty of Versailles, it never really caught on with the liturgically conservative German Jewish community.
However, the inclusion in it of the verse from Psalms (90:4) “For in your sight a thousand years are like yesterday that has passed” suddenly made it highly relevant after 1933 with Hitler’s boast that he was establishing a “Thousand Year Reich.”
No wonder it was recited in many German synagogues at least until 1938 when most synagogues were destroyed and communal prayers were no longer possible.
Martin D. Stern
Salford, England
Sleepy Lawmakers
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority Board’s award of a $7.5 million contract to private firms to test New York City Transit bus and subway, MTA Bus, Long Island Rail Road, and Metro North Rail Road conductors, engineers, and bus drivers for sleep apnea is a great idea.
Why not test others for sleep apnea – starting with those serving on the MTA Board, on the New York City Council, in the New York State Legislature, and – while we’re at it – in the U.S. Congress?
How many times have we seen photos of lawmakers with eyes closed, yawning or sleeping, during a legislative session?
Larry Penner
Great Neck, NY
Editor’s Note: Mr. Penner is a transportation historian and advocate who worked for 31 years for the U.S. Department of Transportation.