Recognize Importance Of the Temple Mount I was pleased to read Tzvi Hersh Weinreb and Stephen Savitsky’s vigorous defense of the future of a continued, unified Jerusalem (“We Cannot Forget Jerusalem,” November 9). I was utterly dismayed, however, by their description of the Western Wall as Judaism’s holiest site. We have come to expect such…
Religious Committed to Dialogue With Israelis A November 2 editorial perceptively links Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit’s proposal to drop the law of return and the efforts of American Jewish philanthropists to disconnect the Jewish Agency from the World Zionist Organization (“One People”). Both reflect the growing distance separating Israeli and American Jewry. Let me add…
For Jerusalem’s Sake The letter sent last month by the Orthodox Union to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert with regard to the possibility of his government ceding sections of Jerusalem to the Palestinian Authority was not, as your editorial asserts, motivated by “anger and insecurity” (“Holier Than Thou,” October 26). Rather, it was a reflection…
I Say Pizze, You Say Pizzi As a long-time fan and admirer of Philologos, I am thrilled to have caught him on a minor inaccuracy (“One Bagel, Two Bagel?”, September 28). The plurals of Italian pizza and pasta are not pizzi and pasti, but pizze and paste. Being myself a very small-scale linguist of the…
Archbishop Tutu’s Words Speak for Themselves An October 12 editorial argues that an examination of South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s actual remarks shows that he said nothing about Israel being racist, that he did not compare Israel to Hitler and that he is not even remotely antisemitic (“The Tutu Heave-Ho”). But in fact, the full…
Unhealthy Criticism Opinion writer Noam Neusner rightly exhorts policymakers to use facts, not anecdotes, to evaluate competing proposals for reauthorizing the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (“Anecdotes Won’t Keep America’s Kids Healthy,” October 5). In that spirit, here are some key facts. Since S-CHIP’s bipartisan enactment in 1997, the percentage of children without health coverage…
Congregants on Beach Don’t Wear Bathing Suits The Pacific Jewish Center, a fine congregation, is hardly “the last remaining vestige of Venice’s erstwhile Jewish community,” as a September 28 article reports (“Prayer Shawls, Flip-Flops Mingle at ‘Shul on the Beach’”). Congregation Mishkon Tephilo, a block from the beach and founded in 1918, is not only…
Not All Aspiring Rabbis Can Study Full Time As an older rabbinical student, I appreciated a September 14 article on professionals who are enrolling in rabbinical school (“Growing Number of Professionals Turning to a More Holy Pursuit”). I would have wished, however, that the article had included some of the rabbinical programs geared toward older…
Israel’s Debt to Sudan The suggestion by opinion writers Stephen Solarz and Rafael Medoff that Israel should welcome Darfur refugees for humanitarian reasons is a good one (“Create a Temporary Israeli Haven for Darfur Refugees,” September 7). I would suggest, however, that apart from humanitarian considerations, this would allow Israel to recognize its 25-year-old debt…
American Jewry Is At a Crossroads Asking whether Conservative Judaism suffers from malaise may be addressing the wrong issue (“Conservative Judaism at a Crossroads,” August 31). I believe a compelling argument can be made that what we are really witnessing is a realignment of the American Jewish community — to which the old categories of…
Double Standard Applied To Armenian Massacre I might be able to buy into the realpolitik argument that suggests we ought to be more concerned with Turkey as Israel’s ally than with a theoretical and extremely retrospective condemnation of the Armenian deaths as genocide (“Of Genocide and Morality,” August 31). But in that case, how can…
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