Make Seder for Adults I enjoyed the East Village Mamele’s April 11 Fast Forward column, but it raises some issues that she probably did not intend to raise (“A Kid-Friendly Seder”). Being a regular at our local Conservative synagogue and having belonged to several other synagogues over the years, I have become very concerned about…
Both Clinton, Obama Reached Out in Pa. As one of the rabbis who attended separate meetings in Philadelphia earlier this month with Senator Hillary Clinton’s surrogates and those of Senator Barack Obama, I thought an April 11 article on how the campaigns are engaging the Pennsylvania rabbinical community was incomplete (“Obama Takes Campaign Into Pa….
Aliyah for Millionaires The idea of giving financial breaks to millionaires in order to encourage their aliyah is sickening in the extreme (“Israel Targets Millionaires in Bid to Up Aliyah,” April 4). These people need tax breaks? Talk about class warfare. I am constantly bombarded by charities who claim they need money for Israeli kids…
Spitzer Story Was No More Than Tribalism Boy am I relieved; it turns out that Eliot Spitzer wasn’t really Jewish after all (“Fallen Eliot Spitzer Was a Favorite Son of a Tribe He Never Quite Embraced,” March 21). Thank you to the Forward for publicly kicking him out of the community, so that now we…
Spitzer Disregarded the Health of His Family Eliot Spitzer’s actions were reprehensible not just for the immorality of it, nor simply because of the inherent hypocrisy of his public positions, but for an altogether different reason as well — one that opinion writer Alan Dershowitz missed entirely (“Spitzer Has Sinned, But It’s Our Sex Obsession…
Knesset Was Right To Enact Smoking Ban According to Israeli government statistics, smoking is responsible for 1,800 deaths in Israel every year (“Israelis Fume Over Smoking Ban on Army Bases,” February 29/March 7). That number far exceeds the 1,200 deaths claimed by terrorist attacks since the outbreak of first intifada. To stem the epidemic of…
Rabbi Was No Mob Boss Contrary to Arts & Culture writer Allan Nadler’s description in a January 25 article, Rabbi Israel Friedman of Ruzhin was an innovative and charismatic Hasidic leader in Russia and Galicia during the first half of the 19th century (“Righteous Indignation: How Are We To Understand the Alleged Spinka Scandal?”). During…
A Generosity of Spirit Rabbi Irwin Kula’s February 22 opinion article on the Tridentine Mass is a welcome voice of reason on this issue (“Enough Tridentine Mass Hysteria”). As a Catholic I have heard and read many disparaging comments, both within and without the Church, about the petition in the Good Friday prayers calling for…
Reject Saudi’s Phrase Being of Greek extraction, I know that the etymology of Philologos can be “lover of reason,” so let’s proceed along those lines in discussing his February 1 column (“Rejecting the ‘Arab Jew’”). I agree that the term “Arab Jew” is a contradiction and cannot logically stand on its own. Perhaps the term…
Give Equal Opportunity Commission Its Due Opinion columnist Kathleen Peratis states that the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission “is mentioned in the major media no more than a few times a year” (“Bring Civil Rights Enforcement Out of the Shadows ,” February 1). In fact, a LexisNexis search shows that the EEOC was mentioned 1,282…
Note Jewish Scientists I could not agree more with Arts & Culture writer David Kaufmann’s review of the PBS series “The Jewish Americans” (“A History of Us: ‘The Jewish Americans’ Hits the High Notes,” January 25). What PBS did, they did well; what they left out was even more incredible. Kaufmann properly laments the omission…
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