Forward.com

Abandoned

Sun, 30 Dec 2012 18:47:00 EST

In two recent columns, on November 16 and December 21, J.J. Goldberg has written of the Senate coalition that consisted of Southern Democrats and conservative Republicans from the prairie and mountain states that blocked efforts to admit Jewish refugees in the 1930s and 1940s.

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True Help

Sun, 30 Dec 2012 18:45:00 EST

In his recent piece “Who Benefits From Service Trips?” (November 16), Brent Spodek highlights an issue that has long troubled many of us in the Jewish volunteer world: Sometimes service-learning trips for Jews in their 20s and 30s focus more on cultivating “effective Jewish citizens” than on working with communities that could benefit from volunteer service.

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Not Stepping Back

Fri, 21 Dec 2012 15:22:00 EST

The December 21 front-page story on the American Jewish Committee inexplicably repeated an egregious error that the Forward published one year ago.

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Not Critics

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 11:48:00 EST

We were surprised and disappointed by the headline and thrust of your article (“Israelis Stunned By Lack of Help for Sandy Victims,” November 23).

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More Than Giving

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 11:41:00 EST

As a social work advocate, I was delighted to read Joel Berg’s article, “The Ethics of Street Giving” (November 16).

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Action, Not Talk

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 11:39:00 EST

As a Jewish climate activist, I was pleased to see the tight causal linkages drawn by the Forward between climate change and Hurricane Sandy in the November 9 editorial “Sandy’s Lessons.”

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Next Steps

Wed, 21 Nov 2012 13:42:00 EST

You omitted key information about the role of NEXT: A Division of Birthright Israel Foundation as an igniter of systemic change in the field of Jewish young adult engagement (“Birthright Reshuffles Follow-up Effort,” November 9). Furthermore, what you present as a reduction in funding from Birthright Israel Foundation was a result of many donors giving directly to NEXT — instead of via the foundation — after NEXT was incorporated, in 2009. Birthright Israel Foundation provides no support to NEXT from its general campaign.

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Who’s To Blame?

Wed, 17 Oct 2012 16:59:00 EST

Jane Eisner’s comments on Monica Lewinsky (“Mulling Over Monica,” October 5) and her new book made me lose my breakfast. Coming off of the Yom Kippur fast, I did not need the loss of its nutritional value. In the contest between whose morality was lower, Clinton’s or Lewinsky’s, I would expect more from a married man, Rhodes scholar and president of the United States than from a 20-something White House intern. How Clinton, a serial adulterer if ever there was one, gets a pass from the left in general, and women in particular is beyond my comprehension. If he were a public company CEO, the sexual harassment suit would have been filed in milliseconds.

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Jewish Dylan

Wed, 17 Oct 2012 16:58:00 EST

In your rundown of Bob Dylan’s most Jewish songs (“The Bard’s 10 Most Jewish Songs,” October 5) you forgot “Father of Night” and “Drifter’s Escape.” The first is a doxology to an awe-inspiring God much like the God of Judaism; in the second, the drifter (a wanderer, like the Jewish people) is accused of an unknown crime and saved by divine intervention.

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Word Choices

Wed, 17 Oct 2012 16:57:00 EST

I am a subscriber to the Forward. I look forward to it and read it weekly. I am quite frustrated that a paper that professes to be a Jewish publication continues to use the phrases “Occupied Territories” and “Palestinians.”

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The Food Problem

Wed, 17 Oct 2012 16:56:00 EST

Magen Tzedek is an initiative of utmost importance to the ongoing commitment of all religious communities to the just and ethical production of food, one of the most sacred of gifts. That the initiative is off to a “slow start” (“Magen Tzedek, a Response to Agriprocessors Scandal, Still Not in Operation,” October 5) is hardly surprising, given the structure of the entire American food system and the economic and political power it wields over our lives. For the low-wage workers who constitute the majority of the workforce that feeds the nation, that power is experienced daily in the fields, on the floors of packinghouses and in restaurant kitchens. Magen Tzedek compels all peoples of faith to consider anew the deeper standards of justice by which we are fed, and to confront anew the daily exploitation of those who bring food to our tables.

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Missing Contributor

Thu, 04 Oct 2012 05:00:00 EST

The October 5 article, “Haggadah Editor Admits Using Another’s Texts,” identifies three of the four contributors to the Haggadah: Jeffrey Goldberg, Lemony Snicket and Nathan Englander. It failed to mention the fourth contributor, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein.

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An Oversimplification

Thu, 04 Oct 2012 05:00:00 EST

In his apparent drive to combat the real-world problem of anti-Semitic bias, Daniel Jonah Goldhagen (“Fuel for the Days of Rage,” September 28) seems unfortunately — and ironically — oblivious to his own counterproductive stereotyping of another group: “political Islamists.”

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An Offensive Ad

Thu, 04 Oct 2012 05:00:00 EST

You have accepted an ad from the Republican Jewish Coalition (September 14 edition) that is loaded with innuendo and advances the name calling and rumor mongering that often characterize this political campaign season. The ad from Republican Jews is just one step from libel, but it makes it all the way to vulgar and demagogic.

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Proudly Secular and Jewish

Thu, 20 Sep 2012 14:22:00 EST

We were delighted to see the oped by Jacques Berlinerblau (“Untangling an Oxymoron: The Secular Jew,” September 14).

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Honoring the Fallen

Thu, 20 Sep 2012 14:21:00 EST

Thank you for honoring the contributions and sacrifices of Jewish men and women who serve in the American military, as you did in your piece on those who have lost their lives in service to the United States (“Profiles of the Fallen,” September 14).

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Our Economic Reality

Thu, 20 Sep 2012 14:18:00 EST

Noam Neusner’s effort to make Mitt Romney a greater champion of tikkun olam than Barack Obama (“Making the Jewish Case for Mitt Romney,” September 7) and therefore more worthy of Jewish support reminds me of what Davy Crockett is supposed to have said about the rhetoric of a political opponent: “It don’t even make good nonsense.”

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Arts and Culture?

Thu, 20 Sep 2012 14:17:00 EST

I have pondered, long and hard, this locution, used by our paper since the beginning of time to identify the arts pages — at least “time” as reckoned by readers of our paper. (As one of the Forward’s first reviewers, I go back to those early years.)

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Not Just a School

Wed, 05 Sep 2012 17:03:00 EST

Your August 31 article that described the exciting, innovative approach of the Jewish Journey Project was right on target. But the article’s title (“Fun Times at Hebrew School”) is misleading in a key way.

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Always Wrong

Wed, 05 Sep 2012 17:02:00 EST

I vehemently disagree with Rabbi Steve Wernick and his supporters who contend that it somehow is acceptable to quote sources without attribution in sermons, as he contended in your recent August 31 article. “When May a Rabbi Use the Words of Others.”

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