Train Teachers To Talk About Torah Authorship How to improve supplementary schools (“Study Provides Snapshot of Struggling Supplementary Schools,” August 22)? I recommend encouraging and training educators and rabbis to discuss authorship of the Torah, including archaeological findings, in order to listen to the theological beliefs and doubts of their congregants. And they shouldn’t forget…
What Did Kosher Plant Do for Migrants’ Kin? It’s difficult not to be cynical about Agriprocessors’ effort to improve its image in the Jewish community by hosting a contingent of Orthodox rabbis, supposedly for them to see first hand how the plant treats its animals and its employees (“Orthodox Leaders Tour Agriprocessors, Give Plant Clean…
Don’t Judge Orthodoxy By One Alleged Mistake An August 1 article about Shmarya Rosenberg’s anti-Orthodox blog terms FailedMessiah.com “one of the essential stops on the Jewish blogosphere” (“Blogger Focuses on Orthodox Foibles”). If I understand correctly, Rosenberg jettisoned Orthodoxy because 20 years after seeking help for Ethiopian Jewry from the Lubavitcher Rebbe, he discovered the…
Clinton Might Not Like The Seward Analogy Rabbi Menachem Genack argues that Senator Barack Obama should follow the example of Abraham Lincoln, who appointed political rival Senator William Seward as his secretary of state, and select his own rival, Senator Hillary Clinton, as his running mate (“The Man From Illinois and the Senator From New York,” August…
JDC Shell Corporation The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee’s shell corporation in Cyprus has drawn more than Russian scrutiny, as a July 25 article reports; it has also drawn indignation and anger in the Jewish communities of the former Soviet Union (“Charity’s Shell Corporation Draws Russian Scrutiny”). Asher Ostrin, the head of the JDC’s Russian…
Belke, Rivke and Gitl Philologos writes of children who took their mothers’ names (“How Did Jews Choose Their Last Names?”, July 18. I know of no other culture where there are surnames based on women’s first names. A remarkable number of names are based on Yiddish women’s names or diminutives of these names, which often…
Lithuania’s Obligations I find it both sickening and frustrating that the Lithuanian government still tolerates antisemitism (“Europe’s Shameful Honoring of Vilnius,” July 4). I was in Vilna the day the neo-Nazis mentioned by opinion writer Rabbi Andrew Baker made their march down Gedimino Prospekt. I did not know about the march until the next day,…
Lithuania Has Earned Its Place in Europe Regarding Rabbi Andrew Baker’s July 4 opinion article “Europe’s Shameful Honoring of Vilnius,” I am amazed by the persistence of efforts to deny Lithuania its European identity. Through the centuries, my countrymen have struggled to stay in Europe and remain Lithuanians. History was brutal to us. Wars, occupations…
Not All Prisoners Are ‘Underbelly of Society’ Rabbi Lon Moskowitz is quoted in a June 13 article as saying, “We work with the underbelly of society, the spiritually void, the morally empty” (“Demand for Kosher Cuisine Swells Ranks of Jewish Prison Chaplains”). I am a 64-year-old inmate in the federal penal system, and I don’t…
Sobibor Wasn’t Polish A June 13 Shmooze article on Holocaust-themed graphic novels refers to Sobibor as a “Polish extermination camp” (“Comic Explores Shoah”). After a relatively long absence of such mindlessly insulting and history-falsifying nonsense, we were shocked to again find it again in print — and all the more so in a Jewish newspaper…
Chaplaincy Takes All A June 13 article accurately notes the growing need for Jewish chaplains in California and the fact that, as Rabbi Lon Moskowitz quite rightly states, there “simply aren’t enough chaplains to fill all the vacancies” (“Demand for Kosher Cuisine Swells Ranks of Jewish Prison Chaplains”). Indeed the need is even greater than…
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