Film Festival Promoted By Top-Notch Publicists As one of the publicists for the Israel Film Festival in Chicago, this year and last, I would like to extend an invitation to Forward film critic Daphne Merkin to call us anytime (“Exporting Homegrown Culture: Can Israeli Cinema Go Global?”, August 8). I am sorry she had a…
Specter: Mideast, Court Stances Stand on Facts I was surprised to read in a July 18 article a Democratic activist quoted as saying that, “Specter says [to the Jewish community], ‘I’m Jewish. Vote for me’” (“Specter Squeezed from Left, Right”). I have never and would never take such a presumptuous position. With some familiarity with…
Accident Symptomatic Of Neglect in California I lived in the Santa Monica area for about five years, and it is a complete illusion that it is some kind of paradise (“Soul-Searching Follows Farmers’ Market Tragedy,” July 25). That is the lie that Santa Monicans like to tell themselves, but, as is the case in Los…
Call Presidential Bigotry By Name: Antisemitism The Anti-Defamation League’s national director, Abraham Foxman, has yet to grasp the central fact that should be guiding discussion about the antisemitism of American presidents: We are Jews in America (“Harry Truman, My Flawed Hero,” July 18.) Responding to the defamation of American Jews should be his first priority….
Israel Experience Vital Elan Ezrachi’s July 4 opinion article was a cogent reminder that for Diaspora Jewry, “it is more dangerous not to travel to Israel than it is to visit the Jewish state” (“Missing the Experience of a Lifetime”). He’s absolutely right. The growing indifference and alienation of the young can erode even Judaism….
Christian Jail Programs Instill Faith in Rebirth As a Jewish inmate in a federal prison, I have a somewhat unique vantage point from which to observe the success of faith-based programs (“Bush Plans to Introduce Christian Rehab Program In Federal Prison System,” June 27). “On the street,” to use the local vernacular, I was one…
Bring Ethiopians Home About three years ago, the North American Conference on Ethiopian Jewry arranged for Elimelech, an 11-year-old boy who had arrived in New York after escaping from Ethiopia, to live with us for a while (“Rabbis Urging Action on Ethiopian Jewry,” June 27). Before he came to our home, our parents were really…
Recognize Reform In Lutheran Church I was disturbed to read in an otherwise cogent opinion column by David Klinghoffer some dangerous and morally dubious generalizations about Lutheranism (“Keep Taboo on Conversion to Christianity, June 13”). It behooves us, especially in the shadow of Jewish historical experience, to at least fulfill Hillel’s dictum, “what is hateful…
Judge Chabad Outreach Efforts by their Results In his June 6 review of Sue Fishkoff’s book “The Rebbe’s Army: Inside the World of Chabad-Lubavitch,” Joseph Berger writes that, “Fishkoff is too uncritical and at times a bit too differential, and I would have preferred more of an ironic appreciation of the distance between Lubavitch statements…
Landmark Policy Fair The American Jewish Congress finds it “profoundly troubling” that the federal Department of the Interior has issued a new policy that will treat all historically landmarked buildings, whether secular or religious, neutrally when it comes to grants for preservation repair costs (“Group Pans Church Grant,” June 6). While there would be justifiable…
Hadassah’s First Cook Book, Cornhusks ’n All A May 30 article identifies the Hadassah in Dorchester, Mass., as having been, in 1931, the first chapter in the United States and Canada to publish a cookbook (“Happy Holidays from Hadassah”). That distinction rightly belongs to the 25 women of Omaha, Neb., who worked in 1927 on…
