Letters to the Editor: Election 2016

So, How ’Bout That Election?

Your cover photo of President-elect Donald Trump (Nov. 11) makes him look like he’s crying. I’m sure it was done on purpose. After the election, President Obama was most gracious and kind. So was Secretary Clinton. Not so the Jewish Journal. You are unable and unwilling to ever rise above your partisan pettiness and show some class. I can’t say that I’m surprised.

Rabbi Robert Elias, Temple Knesset Israel

It was most disheartening and discouraging to note how many Jewish people voted for Donald Trump. I imagine they thought he’d better protect Israel, that they were voting their unhappiness with the Iran treaty or that they desired to decrease their taxes. What their vote has given us is a president, a Senate and a House of Representatives that will likely turn back the clock on a multitude of significant issues, including a woman’s right to choose, immigrant rights, LGBT rights and health care, to name just a few. A friend of mine who works at a Jewish school told me that one quarter of her students were cheering on Wednesday because Trump won. What a catastrophe your vote has presented us with. 

Roz Levine, Los Angeles

I feel your pain but I can assure you it’s all going to be fine. Eight years ago, some friends told me it’s the end of America, but we survived and, many would say, thrived. Our system of checks and balances will work this time just like it has for the past 200-plus years. God bless America. 

Michael Weiss, Los Angeles

Rob Eshman described in his column (“Jews and Hillbillies,” Nov. 11) how he has been writing for over a year about “the anti-Semitism the Donald Trump campaign inflamed and inspired” without any credible evidence. Eshman is repeating a false and unsupported allegation. Then Danielle Berrin quotes him and presumably other people will quote both of them and, on that basis, they are perpetuating this lie that Trump’s campaign inflamed anti-Semitism. This is like the blood libel of the Middle Ages. One person starts with a libelous statement against Jews, and a second person repeats it and after a while, many people repeat the same false libelous statement without any credible evidence to support it. If Eshman and the Jewish Journal are going to succeed in their mission of serving the Los Angeles-area Jewish community rather than being a propaganda arm for the liberal left, pro-Democratic media, they should be more credible.

Marshall Lerner, Beverly Hills

Misleading Headline on Sexual Assault Story

Many news readers are impacted more by the headline of a story than by the story itself. That’s why it’s particularly important that headlines are fair and accurate. I found that the headline on the Oct. 21 story describing Ari Shavit’s abhorrent sexual misconduct — “My Sexual Assault, and Yours: Every Woman’s Story” — went too far. It may get more eyeballs to suggest that “every woman” has been sexually assaulted, but it’s at the expense of trivializing the horrific experiences of women who really have been sexually assaulted. 

Jared Sichel, West Hollywood

Cherished Times of Boyle Heights

The October 1993 renaming of Brooklyn Avenue to Cesar Chavez Avenue by the Los Angeles City Council and the County Board of Supervisors is now a memory but remains a lingering pain (“UCLA Exhibition Recalls Jewish Glory Days in Boyle Heights,” Nov. 4). Truthfully, two roadways were changed: Brooklyn and the adjacent Macy Street.

I lived in Boyle Heights for 16 years, my first home in the United States, in the late ’70s. This eastern part of L.A. was founded in the 1870s and dubbed “Paredon Blanco” (White Bluff) when California was part of Mexico. Brooklyn Avenue was the business hub of kosher butchers, bakeries, bazaars and merchandise retailers. Another close place is Breed Street Shul, also known as Congregation Talmud Torah of L.A., the largest Orthodox synagogue west of Chicago from 1915 to 1951. This street block became home of the L.A. Jewish Academy and Mount Sinai Clinic (a forerunner of the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center). For the first time in L.A., a solemn ceremony was held here to raise the new flag of the Israel statehood in Oct. 28, 1948.

Abraham “Adolfo” Finkelstein, 90, my neighbor and closest friend, is a great-great nephew of famous Zionist Rabbi Abraham Finkelstein of New York. In addition, my children were born at the White Memorial Medical Center, and three attended the Seventh-day Adventist church grade school on Brooklyn Avenue. 

My staunch support for those who would have wished Brooklyn to remain Brooklyn.

Willie Florendo Ordonez, Altadena