Wedding Venue Vagaries
Regarding the “Is It Proper?” column on whether the music at frum weddings is too loud (May 31) and the letters that have appeared since:
Having recently made a wedding at a venue near Ashkelon, I’ve come to conclude that things aren’t so cut and dried. Sometimes one has to take the undesired lavish elements in order to get other aspects he or she really desires.
For example, my son and daughter-in-law wanted an entirely outdoor venue. That already limits available places in which to hold the affair. The place we found which had an open date before the Three Weeks (there is a glut of weddings this summer due to the war) prides itself on providing around 20 different stations during the kabbalat panim and then serves a six-course meal after the chuppah. They require a minimum of 300 portions. It’s non-negotiable. I and my machateiniste tried to negotiate for less food and a lower price. But the menu is what gives this place its reputation and the caterer refused to even hear it.
My point is that often it’s a matter of supply and demand on the venue end and what the venue is willing to do or not do that determines how lavish an affair one might throw. I have no complaint against the venue. They have a business model and they stick to it. I have no complaint against my son and his wife. They wanted an outdoor wedding; it’s not an unreasonable ask. But the confluence of those two factors led to a considerably more lavish affair than I had originally anticipated.
Daniel Schwartz
Rehovot, Israel
Celebrate Within Your Means
The “Is It Proper?” responses (May 31) focus on extravagance, but I think the actual issue has nothing to do with weddings. The problem is keeping up with the Joneses…in all areas. Are there plenty of people who can afford gala affairs? Sure! All that matters is what I can afford and live within my means. People have to be comfortable being honest with what they can afford (and mechutanim have to be understanding and work together). It’s true that wedding halls are generally a one-size-fits-all concept, so there aren’t a lot of venues that can be customized, which doesn’t help. But I agree that corona weddings highlighted the disconnect between the usual type of affairs and joy.
Joshua Goldman
Passaic, N.J.
Sharing The Love
Reading “Why I Love Being Jewish” (July 19), I couldn’t stop shaking my head up and down and thinking, “How did he know my every thought?” Avi Ciment is right on target with every word he wrote. Actually, I knew them to be my words – only he got to put them in print! Yasher Koach!
Laurie Kurs
Via Email
Secret Service Stumbles
Concerning “The Trump Assassination Attempt – Some Questions Must Be Answered” (Editorial, July 19): To provide adequate protection, Secret Service agents assigned to protect any presidential candidate should be at least as tall as, if not an inch or two taller than, the candidate. Both female agents surrounding President Trump appeared to be a foot shorter, which would not fully protect him. Second, a sharpshooter should be placed on any rooftop within firing range of any potential assassin. How could the shooter’s roof have been left unguarded? How disappointing that it took the attempted assassination of former President Trump for the Secret Service to finally authorize the assignment of agents to protect third party candidate Robert Kennedy.
Larry Penner
Great Neck, N.Y.
Isolationists, Take Note
I take exception to a phrase in your July 19 editorial applauding the choice of Sen. J.D. Vance as former President Donald Trump’s vice-presidential running mate. You are impressed because he is a leading advocate for an “America first” isolationist foreign policy. A popular sentiment proven costly on December 7, 1941.
Let me offer one example of the danger:
“Sometimes called the most important company in the world, TSMC (officially Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) produces an estimated 90% of the world’s super-advanced semiconductor chips, which are used to power everything from smartphones to artificial intelligence applications” (CNN). Those chips also power some critical parts of America’s military. The other 10%, by the way, come from a company in the Netherlands. America has an embargo on selling any of those chips to the People’s Republic of China. The threat to all users of those chips is apparently so severe that no one has dared break ranks. China itself can produce similar chips. What they are unable to produce is the embedded controls that makes the chips function so highly.
In short, the United States cannot permit China to capture Taiwan and control 90% of the computer chips that make the world run. Here’s where it gets convoluted.
At all costs we must not permit Russia to prevail in Ukraine. China’s President Xi is watching. Russia’s President Putin has also threatened to invade NATO countries. If the West weakens and buys peace in our time by compromising with Putin when its own territory is threatened, Xi will be emboldened to take Taiwan where the West’s territory is not threatened.
In a monumental change, Silicon Valley heavyweights are abandoning the Democrats for Trump. I don’t know how things will play out, but surely they will explain to Trump why he cannot let Taiwan fall.
Alan Lewis
Fair Lawn, N.J.
The IDF’s Amazing Stats
The excellent series of articles in The Jewish Press by Barbara Diamond, “My Israel War Diary,” bring into personal focus the traumatic effect of the Gaza War on the Israeli home front, as well as on Jews around the world. This coupled with the constant calls for ceasefires from most nations worldwide begs the question of how well the IDF has conducted the war and whether it was worth all the pain and suffering.
While the Gaza war is still raging, it is difficult to make a definitive overall assessment of how it is being conducted by the IDF. This war is being fought in what is universally considered the toughest combat environment, that of urban warfare, against heavily armed defenders inside miles of fortified tunnels, and embedded in schools, hospitals, government offices, and population centers surrounded by civilian shields. The IDF has the additional burden of trying to avoid harming the 100+ hostages captured and still being held by Hamas in the very tunnels the IDF is trying to uproot them from.
However, by putting it in the context of other conflicts under comparable conditions, it is possible to make a general assessment of the IDF performance. Comparisons can be made, for example, to the battles between the Russian and German armies in Stalingrad and Berlin, the American army against Japan in Okinawa and Iwo Jima, and the American army against the North Vietnamese and VietCong forces in Vietnam. All these conflicts included fighting against forces entrenched in tunnels, caves, and/or population centers, and the death toll among the combatants were numbered in the thousands on each side, and for civilians when they were present, in the tens of thousands. Even in Israel’s 1948 War of Independence, the casualty tolls were high for both sides. There were 6,000 Jews and 10,000 Arabs killed.
In contrast to these examples, the tolls in the Gaza war are strikingly different. Tens of thousands of Hamas fighters and civilians have been reported to have been killed, against a remarkably small total of about 500 IDF martyrs. This was accomplished by pinpoint surgical strikes and precision targeting by the IDF forces.
These results can only be described as brilliant, or even a miracle. I am sure that future military historians will study this campaign as a model for conducting warfare against heavily armed defenders embedded in densely populated urban areas.
Max Wisotsky
Highland Park, N.J.
