Rx for What Ails Health Care
Dr. Jerome P. Helman assures that [within the] pending California SB810, expected to hit the desk this fall for the governor’s signature, stands the prescription to arrest and cure prohibitive California medical costs (“Healing Prager,” April 16).
This nondefined “single-payer system,” the good doctor assures, is guaranteed to cover the 37 million-plus residents of the Golden State, at the same time returning “$25 billion in savings and surpluses the first year alone.” And all this “without raising new taxes.” Dr. Helman appears well acquainted with kindred spirit Maimonides, but in his zeal appears entirely unfamiliar with the sovereign State of Massachusetts. Suggest a prolonged evening’s read and call me in the morning.
Stuart Weiss
Beverly Hills
Where the Real Threat to UC Lies
Rob Eshman commits the classic mistake that so many other Jewish liberals are guilty of in his piece “Ill-Legitimate” (April 23). The entire piece focuses on the divestment campaign at UC Berkeley pushed forward by liberals against the State of Israel. Even though it is clear the movement is solely a left-wing creation, Eshman quotes a study that also includes “the far right” as a threat to Israel. Herein lies the problem with this position.
I agree with Eshman’s fear of the “far right,” but that is not the main threat facing Israel today. The primary threat comes from the mainstream left. As the article shows, liberalism as practiced at mainstream universities like UC Berkeley and UC Irvine pose a far greater threat to Israel than any “far right” group or persons. Interestingly, Mr. Eshman left out any examples of “far right” threats that prompted his concern.
Every day, new examples of left-wing anti-Semitism are front and center in the world news. Whether Jewish yeshiva students are being beaten up in Europe or divestment campaigns [take place] on college campuses, the biggest threat facing Israel is modern-day liberalism. Jewish liberals are more concerned with their liberalism than with their Jewishness. It is time for Jews to stand athwart history [and] to yell stop to the anti-Semitism emanating from the left.
Gillee Sherman
via e-mail
Could the Outcome Have Been Different?
In a letter to The Jewish Journal (Bombing Auschwitz Rail Lines Was Not a Viable Option, April 23), Myron Kayton states that it is a “canard” that the Allies should have bombed the rail lines leading to Auschwitz, that such bombing posed insurmountable technical challenges, that each such raid would have killed “hundreds” and would have made life “even more miserable for the survivors.” He goes on to characterize Peter Bergson’s relentless wartime attempts to make the massacre of the Jews of Europe a priority concern in the U.S. as merely “fanciful.” He concludes, unsurprisingly, by asserting the cliché that “nothing” could have been done to impede the Holocaust except to win the war.
Isn’t it about time that we started letting go of the false and self-serving notions that we didn’t know — and couldn’t have done anything even if we had known?
Whatever the technical difficulty of precision bombing then, isn’t the most relevant point that the Roosevelt administration dismissed out of hand all the proposals to bomb the death camp at Auschwitz or the nearby railway lines, making no attempt whatever to ascertain the feasibility of such bombing? As for the concern expressed for the “hundreds” who might have died in such raids and the possibility of life becoming “even more miserable” for the inmates of the camp (how?), many Auschwitz survivors have in fact testified how they had hoped and prayed that the Allied planes flying over their heads — on their way to the synthetic oil refineries that were successfully bombed within a few miles from the crematoria — were at last going to take aim at the death factory, no matter what their fate might have been in the process.
As for Peter Bergson, the record of the Bergson Group’s provocative efforts and remarkable accomplishments speaks for itself, and compares favorably to the relative inaction and silence of the mainstream Jewish leadership then. In my new documentary short “Not Idly By: Peter Bergson, America and the Holocaust,” Bergson summarizes our responsibility in the tragedy: “You couldn’t have stopped the massacre, you could have slowed the massacre, you could have made it an inefficient massacre. The people who made it efficient were the Allies who didn’t interfere. And the people who didn’t urge them to interfere were the [American] Jews.” The only real question still facing us is: Why?
Pierre Sauvage
Director, “Not Idly By: Peter Bergson, America and the Holocaust”
Holier Than Thou?
Rabbi Muskin’s got it all wrong (“Holiness vs. Spirituality,” April 23). Holiness is when you think you’re better than the next guy. Spirituality is when you believe a lot of weird things.
Irwin Spector
Toluca Lake
Shalhavet in the Rear-view Mirror
Perhaps I am beating a dead horse. But when I was studying in Shalhevet in 2006, we used our town hall forum to discuss Shalhevet’s expansion. In typical Shalhevet manner, students generally expressed dissent and disapproval, while a couple of administrators dutifully reminded us that the opening of the lower schools was not really a matter of debate. Now, about four years down the road, it seems appropriate that the shutdown was a unilateral decision (“Shalhevet to Close 3 Schools Because of Financial Woes,” March 26).
Alex Melamed
Los Angeles
Liberal vs. Conservative
Isn’t it amazing that Mark Aronson says “all” writers to The Journal are conservative (“Where’s the Balance?” April 23)? And liberals like him think that conservatives are paranoid. You probably have about 50 percent of your letters to The Journal nonpartisan, about 30 to 35 percent left of center and about 15 to 20 percent right of center. And while he can’t stand the fact that there are opposing viewpoints to The Journal, he, being a liberal, has to tarnish them with false and extremist labels. The left has always and will always do this until the “whole world” is permanently docked on the left coast. By then, of course, we would all be oppressed. I am thankful that there are some letter writers to The Journal who have an occasional conservative view once in a while, and they are “lunatics.” Perhaps the writer from West Hollywood is?
Richard Levine
via e-mail
Correction
In Community News, “Walk to End Genocide Raises $175,000” (April 23), the name of the pastor at the African Christian Community Church of Southern California was incorrect. His name is Kasomo Kasereka.
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