Dire Democratic Debates
The second round of Democratic Party Presidential primary debates should worry any voter concerned about the future of our great nation. Too many candidates on stage supported the expansion of government-run insurance, healthcare for illegal immigrants, open borders, free college tuition, forgiveness of student debt, reparations for slavery, increased income redistribution, and a guaranteed monthly income.
They even refused to criticize fellow Democrats who equate holding facilities for illegal immigrants with Nazi concentration camps. Six million of my Jewish ancestors did not voluntarily enter Nazi concentration camps. They did not offer to dress in rags, be slowly starved to death, perform voluntary slave labor, and agree to be gassed to death in crematoriums.
What was not discussed at the debates:
* our $22 trillion national debt.
* the future insolvency of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
* asking our NATO allies to contribute their fair share of spending for mutual defense.
* China’s indoctrination camps for several million who practice an unapproved religion.
* all lives mattering.
Mainstream moderate Democrats from the recent past – such as Senators Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Scoop Jackson, Sam Nunn, and Joseph Lieberman – would not recognize their own party today.
Larry Penner
Great Neck, NY
There Is No East Jerusalem
The caption under your page 1 photo two weeks ago referred incorrectly to “East Jerusalem.” There is no “East Jerusalem.” Jerusalem is a single, undivided city.
What the writer – possibly a syndicated photographer – presumably meant was “eastern Jerusalem,” which is a correct geographical description rather than an incorrect political description.
To your credit, your related article on page 3, “PA Threatens To Cut Ties With Israel Over Sur Baher Demolitions,” contains the correct designation.
Mark I. Fishman, Esq.
President of PRIMER-Connecticut
Fairfield, CT
Rabbi Broyde Is Wrong (I)
My favorite line in Rabbi Broyde’s op-ed last week was “Values-based discrimination is completely permissible in religious institutions.”
So, according to Rabbi Broyde, religious organizations can practice “values-based discrimination,” but religious individuals can’t. How does that make sense?
In other words, if I am a principal and wish to protect my students from associating with a man who openly defies a Torah prohibition, I may do so, but if I own a sefarim shop, I may not. All my customers – including young children – must conduct business with a man who, for example, wears multiple nose earrings and dyes his hair hot pink.
Is this the law Rabbi Broyde thinks is great for Jewish life? In which land of the free does he live in?
Joshua Bernstein
Brooklyn, NY
Rabbi Broyde Is Wrong (II)
Rabbi Michael Broyde continues to misapprehend the danger of the proposed Equality Act.
He believes, for example, that Jack Phillips’ refusal to bake a specialized cake for a same-sex couple constituted “discrimination.” To Rabbi Broyde, this refusal is equivalent to declining to service a black American simply because of his skin color.
In truth, there is no equivalence. In the latter instance, the baker is guided by prejudicial feelings toward a customer because of his race. That’s discrimination and should be illegal. But Phillips had no objection to selling a generic wedding cake to the two men. Phillips’ objection was to baking a unique cake that would give his imprimatur to a same-sex ceremony.
Rabbi Broyde asks if I would object if a hotel owned by the “Aryan National Church” declined to host a Jewish wedding. Let’s make the example more realistic. Say that a Muslim hotel owner refuses to host a wedding between a Muslim woman and a Christian man, citing religious grounds. I believe the hotel owner would be well within his rights.
Regarding the Equality Act’s true agenda: Rabbi Broyde ignores the insidious undercurrent guiding the LGBT movement. It seeks to make all sexual pairings equally valid – not only in law, but in moral terms. It desires to commandeer the educational system and teach our children that all forms of sexuality are “natural.” It further wishes to cast those who oppose this agenda as “haters.”
If fully adapted, the Equality Law would thrust a dagger into the heart of the moral underpinnings of our society. While we rightly separate religion and state, our founding fathers inserted several references to G-d in the Declaration of Independence. The framers recognized that a society devoid of a moral bedrock cannot long endure.
Avi Goldstein
Far Rockaway, NY
Rabbi Broyde Is Wrong (III)
Rabbi Michael J. Broyde’s op-ed last week proposes that Jews would somehow be harmed by failing to extend federal anti-discrimination laws to sexual orientation (since they already cover race, gender, national origin, and religion are already covered). I have a number of questions about this proposition, but first I must note an omission to his list: age.
Employers’ frequent disregard for the laws against age discrimination hurt the opportunities of older applicants. The same cannot be said about other victims of discrimination. An American discriminated against because he’s Christian will find a job elsewhere. So will a homosexual. An older person, however, is discriminated against everywhere. And most everyone becomes old eventually.
And yet, diversity policies are almost never geared to helping older job applicants. Yeshiva University’s discriminatory policies are typical. YU’s website states: “Yeshiva University is an equal opportunity employer committed to hiring minorities, women, individuals with disabilities and protected veterans.”
No mention of hiring older workers.
I myself lost my job of 24 years over six months ago, and I probably will never be hired again because of my age. Even an employment discrimination boutique law firm near Chelsea, NY, wouldn’t hire me. Its website, too, proclaims it doesn’t discriminate against any race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation. No mention of age, though.
As to Rabbi Broyde’s argument that Jews would somehow be harmed by failure to extend federal discrimination laws to sexual orientation: This “slippery slope” argument would be persuasive if Jews were not already adequately protected against most forms of religious discrimination by existing law. But they are.
Additionally, sexual orientation is not the only category currently unprotected by law. Employers can refuse to hire someone based on his appearance or weight. Why should sexual orientation be elevated above other unprotected groups?
Lawrence Silverman
I Miss Elie Wiesel
Re Yitta Halberstam’s article on Elie Wiesel last week: I wonder how Wiesel would have reacted to the new anti-Semitic tactic in delegitimizing the Holocaust. Instead of denying it occurred – which is difficult considering the indisputable evidence – many anti-Semites now try to minimize or trivialize its enormity by conflating it with more commonplace events like the treatment of foreigners at American immigration centers on the border.
They try to equate assembly-line death factories – which claimed six million innocent men, women, and children – with detention centers for willing migrants who await final disposition of their legal status before being released safe and sound.
This deliberate act of obfuscation is meant to confuse the unwary public. It is akin to equating a massive thermonuclear H-Bomb with a conventional 500-pound aerial bomb by calling both “big bombs.”
It is at times like these that we most miss Wiesel’s eloquence and profound insights.
Max Wisotsky
Highland Park, NJ
A Second Holocaust?
Rabbi Rafi Peretz, Israel’s education minister, is being criticized by the ADL for stating that the scale of assimilation in the world is like a “second Holocaust.” I said the same thing years ago and was attacked by Holocaust survivors and the press.
There is so much intermarriage today; people don’t realize that it is 50-90 percent depending upon the city. Rabbis must not stick their heads in the sand. We must convert as many people as we can back, especially babies born to non-Jewish women married to Jewish men.
If you do not like the term “holocaust,” call it Juicide instead, but the fact is that Jews are killing off future generations with their own choices.
Rabbi Dr. Bernhard Rosenberg
Edison, NJ
What the Media Didn’t Tell You
Many people criticized Israel for demolishing illegal Arab apartment buildings near a security barrier in Jerusalem. However, news reports on the demolitions omitted several key points.
First, these high-rise buildings were excellent potential sniper nests. Similar buildings were used by snipers along Route 60, a major road from Jerusalem to the Gush Etzion communities. As a result, several Israelis were killed.
Second, the illegality of these buildings was well-known for years.
Third, some of the buildings were unfinished or uninhabited.
Fourth, the Palestinian Authority obviously doesn’t care about the investments of its people and businesses; if it did, it wouldn’t have given permission to build in this area. But the propaganda benefit of building in the area seems to have trumped its concern for its people.
Israel’s Minister of Public Security Gilad Erdan said the government acted after an Israeli court ruled that the construction constituted “a severe security threat and can provide cover to suicide bombers and other terrorists hiding among the civilian population.”
The court “ruled unequivocally that those who built houses in the area of the security fence knew that building in that area was prohibited, and took the law into their own hands” by building there nevertheless.
Arthur Lee Horn
Fort Lee, NJ
Trump Is More Jewish Than Sanders
As I read Bruce Abramson’s op-ed the other week on “How Donald Trump Became The First Jewish President,” I couldn’t help but think about Bernie Sanders. In my opinion, Donald Trump is much more of a “Jewish president” than Sanders would ever be if he won in 2020.
No other president has done so much for Israel and all Jews than Donald Trump. While I dislike his character and while I have always been a Democrat, Donald Trump has supported Israel in ways that other presidents only talked about – if they even did that.
I refer to such deeds as recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital; ending our participation in the terrible Iran nuclear deal; recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights; supporting Israel when unfairly attacked by the UN; and rebuking those four women recently elected to the House of Representatives for their frequent anti-Semitic statements.
Yes, Sanders was born Jewish, but – for whatever reason – he seems to demean the state of Israel at every opportunity, often criticizing it unfairly while disregarding attacks by the Palestinians.
George Epstein
Los Angeles, CA
The Charlatan: Reverend Al
Great editorial on Al Sharpton last week. I’ve had a question about this particular charlatan for many years: How in the name of sanity and good sense can a street-hustler who never graduated high school become a reverend?
I’ve read over the years that he was considered to have “the calling” by some community “elders.” The rest of us travel a different road: college, then a theological seminary that bestows a divinity degree. I guess having “the calling” carries more weight than the drudgery of all that unnecessary education.
The real tragedy is the recent circus Democrat candidates put on, visiting Sharpton’s National Action Network and dutifully “kissing his ring” – praising this horrible person despite his sordid and disgusting past in an effort to get his blessings and, of course, his endorsement. It was a new low, even for slimy politicians. Old-fashioned Yiddish describes it best: a shonda.
The good news is that this shameful and discomforting spectacle gave more votes to Donald Trump.
Myron Hecker
You Can’t Isolate Liberalism
I read with interest Rabbi Reisman’s article on the New York political establishment going after yeshivos. New York’s legislature has also given much recognition to LGBT Americans. Many think these two issues have nothing to do with each other, but I believe they do.
I would like to add another supposedly unrelated issue: the new real estate laws in New York which make it impossible to raise rents on one million rent-regulated apartments in the city. Many in the real estate industry were put out of business overnight due to these laws.
These three are not unrelated. They are intertwined. When trends shift liberal, the effects are felt across the board. In the last 15 years, the Jewish vote has helped advance the liberal agenda. Sometimes Jews voted for left-wing candidates for short-term monetary gain and sometimes they did so to find favor in the eyes of the political establishment.
Either way, we did not fight for moral values because “Who cares what the goyim do?! Let them be.” Now this attitude is coming to bite us. LGBT propaganda is in our faces; our children’s education is being taken out of our hands; and the livelihood of many Jews has been destroyed. All three are the result of a very liberal political environment.
Many of us wanted to believe we could work with progressives on justice, democracy, and private ownership while disagreeing with them on abortion, assisted suicide, and the definition of marriage. As liberals say, “Live and let live.” They would let us run our own schools and practice our religion even if it clashed with liberal post-modern morality.
This strategy, though, has proven to be a failure. Extreme tolerance breeds the likes of Illan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. Good morals and good values go hand in hand!
Avraham Sharaby