Rav Charlop Remembered
Regarding the tribute article for Rav Zevulun Charlop by Rabbi Daniel Z. Feldman (Jan. 26), let me add that many years ago and for many years (1966 to 2015 – he started with a lifetime contract), Rav Charlop served as the rabbi at Young Israel of Mosholu Parkway in the Bronx. My father attended that shul in those days.
May his memory be for a blessing.
Sharon Evans
Coral Springs, Fla.
Subverting The Ballot, a Venerable Tradition
In Letters To the Editor (Jan. 26), did it miss Mr. Penner’s notice that for hundreds of years, political candidates have been attempting to get other political candidates off the ballot? Does Mr. Penner really believe it started with Biden? One theory in the mysterious death of Edgar Allan Poe in 1849 is that it was connected to election shenanigans in Baltimore, Maryland.
Did it also miss Mr. Penner’s notice that although we are in theory a constitutional republic, we are in actuality a democracy? One of our rights includes the right to redress the government with grievances? Would this not include the court system? The matter is to be decided by the courts, not by Larry Penner.
Did it also escape Mr. Penner’s notice that we have another Republican candidate, Nikki Haley?
Nat Weiner
Bronx, N.Y.
The Expanding Front of Antisemitism
Attacks on the Jewish community are coming from the most unexpected places. Superintendent Andre Spencer of the Teaneck, N.J. School District has announced that among its partners in a new “Togetherness and Belonging” program will be CAIR NJ. The large Jewish community there is rightly incensed. CAIR is a subsidiary of the Muslim Brotherhood, and itself is the main sponsor of Students for Justice in Palestine. SJP’s very presence on more than 200 American campuses invariably heightens antisemitic agitation. While a handful of schools have lately suspended their campus chapters due to particularly extreme post-October 7 outrages, most ignore its baneful presence. Government officials have long been equally clueless, as CAIR was initially slated to be part of the Administration’s countering antisemitism initiative.
CAIR’s national executive director, Nihal Awad, has praised Hamas in the past. In November, he was captured stating, “The people of Gaza only decided to break the siege – the walls of the concentration camp – on Awed Oct. 7. And yes, I was happy to see people breaking the siege and throwing down the shackles of their own land and walk free into their land that they were not free to walk in.”
After being condemned by the White House for such despicable comments, he claimed they “were taken out of context.” This was similarly the pathetic Congressional testimony response of three university presidents to campus genocidal calls.
K-12 education has joined higher education as a Jewish war front. Teaneck is but one example in a growing list of looming battles. Red/Green activists are taking over local school boards, promoting Ethnic Studies requirements and pushing anti-Israel materials into classroom. Put-upon students are being well prepped for further descent into Higher Antisemitism. Jews need recognize such dangers and must be prepared to fight back vigorously.
Richard D. Wilkins
Syracuse, N.Y.
Obama and Biden Helped Turn Iran Into a Major World Power
Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad are hostile forces that completely surround Israel. They are all proxies of Iran and have been engaged in constant terrorist activities, and are now becoming involved in open conflict against Israel and even the United States.
In 2008, when Barack Hussein Obama assumed office a president of the United States, Iran was an impoverished country, aspiring for greatness but not having the resources to become one. In the succeeding years, the time they were in office, the Obama and Biden administrations funneled over 150 billion dollars, including planeloads full of cash, to Iran. This enabled Iran to become a major power in the Middle East, to supply arms and funds to its terrorist proxies, to develop its nuclear capability, which is on the verge of making an atomic bomb, and to become a full-fledged member of the autocratic “Axis of Evil” – China, Russia and Iran – that is a threat to the entire world.
Now that the Democrats have created this Iran monster, they don’t know how to control it. The major Biden administration effort to reduce is to try again to pressure its only democratic ally in the region, Israel, into the tired old “two-state solution,” which has failed in the past and has little chance of being implemented in the foreseeable future. Given the worldwide outbreak of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish bitterness, the Israelis won’t countenance a separate Palestinian state now, and the Arabs have never accepted any kind of Jewish state at all.
Thus, in the absence of any real deterrence, other than from Israel, the phrase “Death to Israel, Death to America” is turning into more than just an idle slogan and into an active battle cry for Iran and its proxies.
Max Wisotsky
Highland Park, N.J.
