Remembering Rabbi Eliach
I would like to share some thoughts about Rabbi David Eliach, who passed away last Thursday, October 2, at the age of 99.
Rabbi Eliach headed the Meshek Yeladim Moza institution for child survivors of the Holocaust, instilling Jewish values in people most likely to question them. He evidently answered the questions so effectively that he married an orphaned child survivor of the Holocaust, Dr. Yaffa Eliach, OBM, who eventually earned an international reputation in her own right.
In 1987 Yeshiva University conferred on Rabbi Eliach its first ever honorary degree of Doctor of Pedagogy.
One of his most amazing achievements was his ability to inspire others to achieve greatness in Jewish studies, notably within his own family. His wife, Dr. Eliach, became one of the most famous writers about the Holocaust. His charismatic, dynamic daughter, Smadar Eliach Rosensweig, is an Ivy League-educated professor of Bible at Yeshiva University’s Stern College.
Rabbi Eliach’s extended family achieved a unique trifecta at the inaugural Yarchei Kallah conducted by Yeshiva University on Shavuot in 2011, featuring Yeshiva University’s “A” team of educators that first year, when his daughter spoke (providing men with a rare opportunity to hear her since she usually addresses women), as did her daughter’s accomplished husband, Rabbi Michael Rosensweig, rosh kollel at Yeshiva University, and her daughter’s father-in-law, YU professor and leading pulpit rabbi Bernard Rosensweig, OBM.
Rabbi Aaron I. Reichel, Esq.
Via Email
Take Back The Democratic Party
The American electoral system depends strongly on two major centrist parties, Center-Left, and Center-Right. The ‘D’ party is now being rapidly transformed into ‘DS’ – Democrat Socialist, aided and abetted by core societal sectors: media, culture, education, and corporate. Those who care for restoration of the party’s traditional moderate stance need to oppose this takeover.
The “Progressives” program proceeds in a “3D” path: division, destruction and diminishment. Identity politics, intersectionality, and Critical Race Theory are tearing the country apart. Police are being defunded and prosecutors defanged. Equal justice under the law is increasingly an illusion.
Constitutional norms are being shredded. Every time a Supreme Court decision irks the Left, there are calls for packing the Court. The Senate minority rights protecting filibuster hangs by a thread. “Progressives” continue to disparage American “exceptionalism,” nationalism, history and heroes. The country’s borders must stand unguarded and its sovereignty gradually to be subsumed under international bodies.
The hour is late, but the death knell is yet to be sounded. Moderate Democrats urgently need to wrest party control back from “Progressive” clutches. Primaries have been their proven path to power. Turnout in the primaries tends to be abysmally low, enabling the threat of primary challenges to moderate incumbents. Moderates need rise to those challenges. Senior citizens, who needn’t care what others think, must voice their concerns. Most of all, paraphrasing MLK, voters must not blindly look for the “right” letter after candidates’ names, but at the content of their campaigns.
Richard D. Wilkins
Syracuse, NY
Jews Are An Easy Target
Foundational Zionist thinking involved our people’s self-determination resulting in dynamic Jewish creativity, a stronger self-confidence and self-image of Jews, and an increase on these accounts in respect from gentiles for Jews both as a people/nation and as individuals.
So why has anti-Semitism increased, not decreased? I offer for readers’ consideration that the age-old contempt for Jewish weakness (in the view of others), and concomitant scapegoating, is still at play (“New York Times Blames Powerful ‘Rabbis,” Oct. 1).
How so? In many respects, the totals of assets of people throughout the world (the Russians, Chinese, Japanese, Indians, Indonesians, British, French, Poles, Americans, etc.) surpass ours.
It remains safe for anti-Semites individually and collectively to hate and target Jews, Israelis, and now the State of Israel. What good would it do, in contrast, for haters to apply the same treatment to a billion Chinese and their country?
I am reminded of Charles DeGaulle’s canard that we are a “domineering people.” What rubbish! All we want is to live a normal existence and be free from persecution.
Ed Yitshaq Levenson
Oaxaca, Mexico
America and Israel Need a Moral ‘Iron Dome’
Dennis Prager is once again spot on with his analysis of the correlation between secular society and freedom (“As America Has Become More Secular, It Has Become Less Free,” October 1).
Prager observes: “For the Founders, the most obvious reason freedom was dependent on faith in G-d was that only if G-d is regarded as the source of freedom could men not rightfully take it away.”
The United States has been steadily drifting away from the Judeo-Christian ethic that had been the foundation of American liberty. As Attorney General William Barr noted in 2019, “Secularists and their allies have marshaled all the forces of mass communication, popular culture, the entertainment industry, and academia in an unremitting assault on religion and traditional values.”
There is a two-pronged war against G-d, here in America and in Israel. Jews of faith must step up to the plate in both arenas.
The anti-religious bigots of the Democrats/Socialists/Progressives now control and limit American freedom of speech in high tech social media and mainstream media, as well as in the union-controlled public school system – and, of course, in academia. They also control the borders with a policy geared to accelerate and solidify political control by the Democrats. They believe that open borders are not destroying our country, because to a communist, destruction is good. Removing G-d from society is their goal and the secularization of America has been steady and ongoing, as Prager notes, since the 1960s.
In Israel, much has been written about a prime minister who wears a kippa and is the first Orthodox prime minister. Prime Minister Bennett is the first Israeli prime minister to be empowered because of the support of the Arab bloc in the Knesset. We mustn’t forget that it was a minority of Jewish Knesset members plus the Arab bloc that passed the law which undermines the halachic determination of “Who Is A Jew.” This decision is comparable to “open borders,” as it grants automatic Israeli citizenship to gentiles who self-identify as Jews.
It was also a minority of Jewish Knesset members plus the Arab bloc who voted to begin the process known as “Oslo.” Am Yisrael is still paying the price in Jewish victims of terror and missile attacks from the terrorist entity that the Oslo process legitimatized.
Having anti-Zionist Arabs as part of a ruling coalition endangers Jewish values.
As America succumbs to the communist takeover, the only hope is a return to America’s biblical foundation. Former Jewish Press chief editor Elliot Resnick advocated (July 24, 2020) for Jews to proudly declare and publicly endorse the Jewish values and moral ethics that were always at the core of American culture.
G-d gave the Jewish people a Torah and a commandment to be a light unto the nations, thereby sanctifying G-d’s name. Israel must wake up to the slow but steady process to remove the Jewish mission from its raison d’être. A truly Jewish state of Israel that proclaims biblical values is America’s “Iron Dome” against tyranny.
David Ferster
Via Email