Fighting City Hall – and Winning
Kol Hakovod to Dr. Dovid Schwartz for his perseverance in overcoming New York City’s Counseling Censorship Law! I was very excited to read his article. Very impressive! As he said, truly a miracle!
R. Rosenblum
Brooklyn, NY
Am I a Member of the Radical Right?
Stuart Epstein’s letter last week was a classic example of presenting a false narrative and then expanding on it. In his letter, Epstein stated that President Trump and the conservative news media have declared that anyone who supports programs like Social Security and Medicare are “crazy socialists.”
Absurdly false – to say the least. Donald Trump has never said anything of the sort. In fact, he campaigned in 2016 on strengthening both of these programs.
Epstein’s letter also touched on another convenient whipping boy, the “radical right.” I support everything Trump has accomplished, especially reviving our now booming economy which boasts the lowest U.S. unemployment numbers ever recorded. I’m delighted and proud as a Jewish-American that he did what so many others shamelessly promised but never delivered on: recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moving our embassy there.
Trump’s patriotism and love of our nation energizes my spirit. He is an “America First” man but totally devoid of the anti-Semitism that Charles Lindbergh (of the original America First movement) exhibited. He works hard, every day, to improve this country. Does my approval of this incredible man who delivers on campaign promises make me, according to Mr. Epstein, a member of the “radical right”?
Mr. Epstein, in a few prior letters, has proven that he detests and disapproves of Donald Trump – and that’s fine in our beloved country. Creating false narratives about a sitting president, however, is not. Joe Friday of “Dragnet” said it best: “Just the facts.” Or, as the Latin expression goes, “Primo veritas” (truth first).
Myron Hecker
The Free Ride Is Over
The scheduling of a reading of P Is for Palestine for children in the Highland Park, N.J. public library was outrageous, anti-Israel, and anti-Semitic. It was sponsored by outside agitators who targeted Highland Park because of its large Jewish population.
This reading is just one in a series of recent anti-Semitic incidents that indicate that classical anti-Semitism is back with a vengeance.
The apparent Golden Age after the Holocaust, when “Never Again” was a universal motto, gave many Jews a false sense of complacency. We thought we were in some sort of pre-Moshiach age of acceptance and security. This period, though, lasted all of about 70 years – and even this period was not enjoyed by all Jews.
Today’s liberalism is not our grandfather’s liberalism. It has morphed into an all-encompassing radical political agenda that demands strict adherence to the whole package of women’s, minorities’, and LBGT rights and freedom for “oppressed” people all over the world, including Palestinians. In the halls of American government today, openly anti-Semitic and anti-Israel officials spout their venom.
Unless we begin to assert our power very soon, our condition here in America will soon mirror that of Jews of France, Germany, Belgium, England, and Scandinavia. “Never Again” is in real danger of becoming “Here We Go Again.”
Max Wisotsky
Highland Park, NJ
Children in Shul
Last week’s “Is It Proper?” feature asked “Do young children belong in shul?” I would like to note that, according to Living with the Sages: Volume 1 by Rabbi Dovid Castle, “once Rashi came into the synagogue carrying one of his grandchildren on his shoulder” (p. 142, quoting Sefer Ha’Orah, vol. II).
Dr. Elie Feuerwerker
Highland Park, NJ
Maligning Felix Frankfurter
I write in response to Dr. Raphael Medoff’s lengthy letter in which he takes issue with my argument that Supreme Court Justice and presidential confidante Felix Frankfurter was “arguably correct” in believing that “pushing the issue would not have swayed FDR.” While I thank Dr. Medoff for his response, he makes disingenuous arguments and badly misses the point.
First, Dr. Medoff chooses to ignore the fact that, as I wrote, Frankfurter “regularly urged the president to help resettle European Jews to the United States.” As such, it is simply false that Frankfurter never acted in the interests of his co-religionists.
Second, even a simple reading of my piece will show that Dr. Medoff took my statement about “pushing the issue” entirely out of context and used his own false parenthetical to inaccurately characterize what I said. He suggests that my reference to Frankfurter being correct about the futility of interceding with FDR was with respect to “[rescuing Jewish refugees]” when, in fact, I was clearly referring to Frankfurter’s refusal to support Jan Karski’s account of the Holocaust on the grounds that “he was skeptical of Karski’s account and could not credit Karski’s descriptions of ghetto round-ups, mass starvation, shootings and gassings.” As I went on to demonstrate, Frankfurter’s assessment was ultimately borne out when the president met with Karski face-to-face and, unconvinced by his account, refused to take any action.
Third, Dr. Medoff expends considerable effort to demonstrate the undeniable proposition that later efforts by the Bergson Group and others influenced the president to agree to the creation of the War Refugee Board, which, as he notes, played a major role in rescuing thousands of Jews. But, as he correctly writes, that was because FDR feared an election-year scandal over his administration’s harsh refugee policy. That would not have been a concern had Frankfurter approached FDR privately (and I assume that even Dr. Medoff would not suggest that Frankfurter should have publicly rebuked the president). Moreover, as I mentioned in the article, Frankfurter did, indeed, advocate for the Jews of Europe.
One of the best parts of writing my Collecting Jewish History columns is the feedback I receive from readers. I welcome criticism and disagreements, I enjoy exchanges with my readers, and I have corrected my errors where appropriate. Whether Frankfurter could have, and should have, done more to help rescue European Jewry is a fair question subject to reasoned debate and discussion (though I must add that FDR was firm in refusing to bomb the tracks to Auschwitz or provide other assistance to the Jews, and Frankfurter clearly could have done nothing in this regard except anger the president). In this case, however, Dr. Medoff misrepresents what I wrote and criticizes me for expressing an opinion entirely consistent with the facts. I expected much better from a respected Holocaust scholar, and I stand by what I wrote.
Saul Jay Singer
A Champion of the People?
Hillary Clinton claims to be a champion of the people. Here are two facts to consider:
1) In 1975, she defended a rapist “as a favor to a prosecutor.”
2) Billions of dollars that the Clintons were supposed to send to Haiti after a devastating earthquake rocked the country in 2010 went missing. The Haitian Reconstruction Commission claims kickbacks went to the Clinton Foundation and Clinton cronies for favors Hillary did for foreign governments while she was secretary of state.
A champion of the people? I think not.
Chaya Leah Starkman
Atlanta, GA
Scientists Are Biased
Last week, Bar Ilan University Professor Nathan Aviezer accurately noted that when asked where the original “light” of the Big Bang came from, scientists reply: “[T]he light suddenly appeared… Nothing existed previously.”
It’s interesting how the thesis that G-d created that original light is not considered scientific but the thesis that the light appeared out of nowhere is.
Scientific acceptance is not always based on direct observation. Black holes, for example, cannot be detected by x-rays, light, or other forms of electromagnetic radiation. How, then, do we know they exist? By the alleged effects they have on their surroundings and implications of Einstein’s theory of general relativity.
In other words, black holes are a product of logic – not direct observation – and yet their existence is fully accepted as “science.”
Some scientists even believe in something called the “multiverse.” They believe many universes are constantly coming into existence, and we happen to live in one of them. Where’s the evidence for this theory? Nowhere. It doesn’t exist. Not only is there no evidence for it; there isn’t even a theory to suggest that such evidence is possible. It’s based purely on imagination. But that doesn’t stop scientists from accepting it as a scientific possibility.
Is positing an intelligent creator – i.e., G-d – really more far-fetched and less scientific than positing an imaginative theory like the multiverse? And is the evidence suggesting the existence of black holes really greater than the evidence in every corner of nature suggesting the existence of an intelligent creator? Of course not.
That the existence of G-d has never been accepted as a scientific theory, or even as a possibility, is due to pure bias. It certainly isn’t the result of a scientific search for truth.
Josh Greenberger
Brooklyn, NY
America Needs Religion
In his speech at Notre Dame (published in The Jewish Press last week), Attorney General William Barr noted that “the secular project has itself become a religion.”
Amendment I of our Constitution states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Based on this statement, religion is not taught in modern American public schools. Yet, atheism is. Educators teach evolution, not creation, and permit sexual licentiousness while barring mentions of Divine admonitions against it.
The Supreme Court in Brown vs. Board of Education ruled that “separate but equal is inherently unequal” in regards to segregated schools. This same logic should hold true when it comes to religion. Barring it from public schools is unjust.
We must start labeling militant secularists “anti-religious bigots.” We must also, probably beginning in more conservative states, demand that public education present diverse opinions concerning creation, morality, and social ideology.
If the American experiment is to continue to flourish, we cannot forget that our nation was built on the foundation of Judeo-Christian values. The Puritans of New England cultivated this foundation in their daily study of the Hebrew Bible, and our Declaration of Independence proclaims that it rests upon “a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence.”
David Ferster