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…
Lara Friedman is taken aback that her desire for peace found no match at the Arab League’s Conference on Jerusalem, manifest by rejection of any Jewish claim to that city (“Jerusalem Isn’t Just for Arabs, Either,” March 9). Israel’s conflict with the Arabs has never been about Jerusalem. Since the United Nations approved partition in…
Regarding “The Allure of the Burka” in the February 3 edition of the Forward, it is male religious fanatics (Muslims, Orthodox Jews, etc.) who have problems with the way women dress or want to dress. Instead of forcing women to conform to men’s rules, why don’t these men just wear bags over their heads so…
Harvey Hames’ analysis of the role of Halacha in the State of Israel offers an important perspective on this complex historic-religious conundrum (When Democracy and Halacha Collide, February 17). There is, however, another critique of the rabbinic tradition that is overlooked in Hames’ op-ed. Halacha is, in effect, the offspring of an oral tradition, the…
Since my granddaughter attends the University of California, Santa Cruz, I have been following and supporting the efforts of Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, including her recent Forward op-ed on February 17 (“Why I Filed Title VI Complaint”). Lately I have come to the conclusion that the best course of action would be to ignore the whole issue….
On behalf of PJ Library, a program dedicated to giving the gift of quality Jewish children’s literature to families across North America and doing so at a rate of 95,000 books each month, I would like to respond to Deborah Kolben’s Jan. 31 column. “Where Have All the Good Jewish Books for Kids Gone?” We…
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