In his April 13 memo to American Jews, David Hazony makes a strong case for the importance of Hebrew, and in typical Jewish fashion, readers lob back counter arguments. Ten years in Hebrew-as-a-second-language education have taught me that students who are genuinely engaged with Hebrew find the question of Hebrew’s importance moot — they have…
In the April 13 op-ed “American Jews: Learn Hebrew!” David Hazony argues that American Jews have to learn Hebrew in order to connect themselves not only with Israel, but also with the future of “Jewish cultural life” worldwide. As a second-year Hebrew student at the University of Washington in Seattle, I have to disagree. While…
How interestingly ironic that the April 13 editorial section includes Jane Eisner’s piece “Debating Spinoza, Again,” about the classic example in Jewish history of Jewish intolerance and the excommunication of the Portuguese Jewish philosopher residing in Amsterdam in the 16th century, and Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s piece about Jewish pluralism presumably because Jews “are not a…
This reader wholeheartedly agrees with the March 30 editorial “What To Do?” with respect to the necessity of ending the Israeli occupation in order to safeguard Israel’s democratic Jewish nature, and to provide Palestinians with the self-determination they seek. However, we must understand that this worthy goal may in fact be sadly distinct from the…
The April 6 story, “Patrilineal Jews Still Find Resistance” was a reminder that the patrilineal principle has not lived up to its promise. The major movements do not accept patrilineal Jews who, because of that, find themselves in an identity limbo. The principle has undermined efforts to encourage conversion to Judaism by making it unnecessary….
In “Abusing Tikkun Olam,” (March 23) Joel Alperson writes that “Jewishly speaking, tikkun olam without God is impossible.” Quite the contrary. In its original usage in the Mishnah, tikkun olam was the rabbinic principle that allowed God’s decrees in the Torah to be set aside whenever they got in the way of maintaining a stable…
The March 23 news story “Two Babies Sickened by Circumcision Rite,” followed up on the recent story of a death from herpes associated with ritual circumcision in New York last September. These are totally preventable tragedies. It is disturbing that with today’s global blood-borne epidemics of not only herpes, but also HIV and Hepatitis B,…
It is sad to see the otherwise fine writer Austin Ratner (“Cleveland Rocks — Not Really,” March 16) using the threadbare trope “Cleveland = misery” to describe a city that is on the rise. At a recent community conclave, Ari Maron, a young Jewish developer, stated succinctly that Cleveland self-loathing is a generational phenomenon that…
In his March 16 op-ed, “The Paradox of Religious Liberty,” Jonathan Sarna criticizes the congressional testimony of Rabbi Meir Soloveichik in the latter’s attack upon the requirement that health insurance plans include the cost of contraception as threatening the “liberties of conscience” inscribed in the Constitution. Sarna contends that Soloveichik overlooked the countervailing First Amendment…
Avi Shafran’s opinion piece, “Orthodoxy and Homosexuality” (February 24), obscures the relevant facts. He sets up a straw man by disingenuously asserting that we who disagree with him believe “that any human urge is inherently legitimate.” Nonsense. We abhor murder and non-consensual sex, for example. Further, his argument that “there is no incontrovertible evidence of…
The revelation of pederasty within and its cover-up by the ultra-Orthodox community in Australia (“Child Sex-Abuse Scandal in Australia’s Jewish Community Spills Into U.S.,” February 24), is shocking but not surprising. Similar episodes have been well documented in Brooklyn and New Jersey. They fit a pattern: sanctimonious retreats to arcane rabbinic law and ratiocination as…
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