Letters to the Editor

Return of Torah Portion

I am very troubled by The Journal’s deletion of a regular Torah section. Like it or not, know it or not, the Torah is the lifeblood of the spirit of the Jewish people and the world. It ain’t called “Tree of Life” for nothin’! All major rabbis concur that what will save Israel and the Jewish people is a deeper connection to Torah. This doesn’t necessarily mean Orthodox practice, but it does mean involvement, study, awareness, learning. What The Journal should be doing is increase the variety and depth of Torah. To run away from it and create a “book club” shows a disturbing lack of awareness.

With the great number of Torah scholars and teachers in Los Angeles and Israel, The Journal could do great things to uplift the Jewish community and the world at large. Do you need to be reminded that when Israel suffers in history it is often to due to a profound lack of Torah within the people – the opposite is also true.

Anonymous
via e-mail

Editor’s note: Torah Portion is back. Starting this week, we will have the Torah Portion, and next week we will feature both Torah Portion and My Jewish Library. All new Torah Portion columns will begin in two weeks. Thank your for your response.

Toll of Terror

I sincerely appreciate your listing the photos and names of those who died in Israel (“Human Toll of Terror” ad). I recall when I lived in Israel, on Kol Yisrael radio station, every hour, names and photos of soldiers were honored on a TV. Unlike the way the United States honors our soldiers killed in Vietnam.

Oscar Haimowitz
Beverly Hills

Special thanks to Janine and Peter Lowy for providing the series the “Human Toll of Terror.” It is painful, provocative and a must read.

Karen Gray
Malibu

Evangelists

Your article about the Rev. Billy Graham was very interesting (“Evangelists,” Nov. 26). I belong to a popular West Valley synagogue. The only time our synagogue has had more than 500 people show up to an event (other than High Holidays) was when we hosted Andre Crouch and his Gospel Choir for Friday night services. Most of the people were temple members. Our adult education is meagerly attended, the lunch and learn sessions with the rabbis get a small – but loyal – turnout and many other events scrape by with a dozen regulars.

Contrast this with the weekly Bible Study Fellowship I attend at a church in Reseda. Held at 9:15 a.m., these meetings draw more than 400 women every Tuesday morning from more than 30 different churches. It is free to join, there is free child care, you have to do two pages of homework on the assigned reading or you can’t participate in the small group discussion, you may not bring Starbucks or even water into the room, if you arrive too late you can not join the group time and every week they collect about $500 in donations – completely voluntary.

The Christian ladies want everyone to experience the Bible like they do. They are encouraging and welcoming. Can we say the same about our temple events? Do we invite people to come and share the word of God? Perhaps the Orthodox do, but most Jews that I know do not want “outsiders” to get involved. Judaism is a special club, and just like the ancient Hebrew Christians did not want to allow uncircumcised pagans to be allowed to accept the gospel without becoming Jewish first, most Jews today have the same clannish attitude. It is hard to spread the good word about Judaism when people act as if it is a club to which you cannot belong unless you were born into it. I converted when I married my husband, I learned to read Hebrew, had a bat mitzvah, read Torah and Haftorah and tutored my daughters. My husband only attends on High Holidays, yet he is the real Jew. Yes, I know if you convert you are supposed to be “real,” but it is easier said than done. Judaism is an uphill battle.

I do not know what the future holds, but your thoughts encouraged me to write. Thank you for writing thought-provoking editorials.

Anonymous
via e-mail

Special-Needs Support

Wendy Madnick’s article (“Support Still Lags for Special Needs,” Nov. 12) acknowledges the growing problem in our community of a lack of resources for special needs children. Vista Del Mar and the Julia Ann Singer Center have long provided special education services to emotionally and behaviorally troubled youth, as well as children in the autism spectrum. The Bureau of Jewish Education’s task force did not include our agency and, as a result, may overlook our specialized programs and how we could help in the expansion of services to the Jewish Community.

In fact, our most recent grant is for helping autistic children prepare for their bar/bat mitzvahs using our special education teachers, art and movement therapists, Hebrew studies teacher and our on-grounds temple.

We would welcome the opportunity to work together to develop this program and others that can meet the needs of Jewish families, whether they belong to a temple or not, who share a desire for their special needs children to celebrate their Jewish life.

Elias Lefferman
President/CEO
Vista Del Mar Child and Family Services
Los Angeles

Read to Me

In “This Week” of Nov. 12 (“Read to Me”), you mentioned the author Milton Steinberg and his book, “As a Driven Leaf,” along with your wife’s comment “you’ve never read…?” Well I hadn’t either, until now.

I found the book in the public library over Thanksgiving weekend.

Although the subject matter and Steinberg’s manner of writing make the book a fast read in my view, I was blown away by two very pertinent and topical parts of the book. One is at the beginning of Chapter 15, where Emperor Trajas is holding hearings or taking testimony in court. But his mind is wandering and he’s reflecting on current wars and battles that aren’t going well. The first few pages of that chapter reflecting Trajas’s wandering seemed, to me, so topical as related toward the U.S. involvement in Iraq and how President Bush may feel from time to time when progress seems stalled and reports are negative. The point isn’t that wars that don’t proceed on schedule are frustrating to all, even 2,000 years ago in, perhaps, a fictional setting. But, in my view, even though this book was published in 1939 and, perhaps written years before, this particular chapter appears to reflect current sentiment of events that are happening now which is almost unbelievable. I guess if one waits long enough, everything comes around again and again and again.

Thanks for the suggestion to a very interesting and introspective book.

Milt Cohen
Chatsworth

Gay Marriage Threat

James Besser’s article on gay marriage provides a perfect example of how liberals have shut down in this country. Instead of addressing a single conservative argument against redefining marriage, he simply attacks the conservative position as disingenuous and bigoted (“Gay Marriage: A Real Threat?” Nov. 26). Apparently unable to defend their position on the merits, liberals routinely call conservatives bigoted, racist, sexist, greedy and homophobic. Until liberals acknowledge that conservative positions are both well reasoned and well-intentioned, the lack of meaningful discussion will unfortunately continue.

Carol Burns
Los Angeles

Natan Sharansky

To hear Natan Sharansky speak is like breathing the exhilarating air of defiance and freedom. The KGB zhlobs could not break his spirit years ago, when they dragged him into the hell of Brezhnev’s Gulag. While they and their idiotic “mature socialism” are now pretty much history, Sharansky is alive, full of energy, humor and wisdom. Who knew back then that the U.S.S.R. would disintegrate, Sharansky would become a Cabinet minister in Israel and Jewish communities would freely function in Russia and Ukraine.

During the American Friends of Likud and the Simon Wiesenthal Center Book Event with Sharansky on Nov. 29, his resolve to clarify, defend and promote ideas of freedom and democracy was quite clear. His new book, “The Case for Democracy,” is a necessary reading (especially in our universities, where the students are brainwashed by the U.S.- and Israel-hating leftists professors); the world would be so much better if it was available in other languages…. I liked the touching recollection of his friend and teacher Andrei Sakharov, the great Slavic dissident, scientist and human being.

And it’s great to have the American Friends of Likud in Los Angeles; they will truly find support here.

Paul Stonehill
Encino

Carin Davis

Dear Ms. Davis, I have been reading your columns in The Journal for a couple of years and they are just excellent – not only funny, but skillful in the use of language and references to American Jewish culture.

Also, you should not despair. I don’t know how old you are, but I was 36 when I married 15 years ago. (At the time, another woman told me that if I could get married, there was hope for “the rest of us…”) You have no idea how thankful I am that I didn’t marry any of the men I thought I couldn’t live without before I met my husband.

Thanks again for all the enjoyment your writing has given me.

Amy Lyons
Los Angeles

Kosher Slaughter

As president of the Jewish Vegetarians of North America (JVNA), I can affirm that JVNA has consistently opposed efforts to single out ritual slaughter for criticism, and that we have been critical of some PETA tactics (“Kosher Slaughter Controversy Erupts,” Dec. 3). However, we believe, respectfully, that the horrific conditions revealed at the Postville glatt kosher slaughterhouse should awaken us to consider the many Jewish mandates that are violated by animal-based diets and agriculture. Even if ritual slaughter is carried out perfectly, can we ignore how conditions on modern intensive factory farms violate Jewish teachings on treating animals with compassion? Since Judaism stresses that we should diligently guard our health, can we ignore the many studies that link the consumption of animal products to many diseases? Since we are to be partners with God in protecting the environment, can we ignore the significant contributions that animal-based agriculture makes to global climate change, rapid species extinction, destruction of forests, water shortages, and many more threats.

For the sake of our health and that of our imperiled planet, for farmed animals, and for properly carrying out mitzvot, it is time to seriously consider a switch toward plant-based diets.

Richard H. Schwartz
President
Jewish Vegetarians of North America
New York

Love the Library

The Jewish Community Library of Los Angeles (JCLLA) is one of the undiscovered secrets of the L.A. Jewish community. It is the only comprehensive source of Jewish literary material for both children and adults open to everyone without any membership or fees. The library has an impressive and diverse collection from art to cookbooks, and history to philosophy. The large beit midrash with a new set of Rambam’s Mishna Torah, the Artscroll Mishna and Talmud all in Hebrew/English is the only communitywide beit midrash I have access to.

While I purchase a lot of Jewish books for my own use, it is nice to be able to preview a copy at the JCCLA before I spend money on something that I may not enjoy. The library also has items that I enjoy reading but would not consider purchasing, as well as out-of-print materials. While the JCCLA has an excellent online catalog, I prefer to just walk the stacks and see what is interesting. I’ve found some quite amazing and offbeat items this way that I never have found with a catalog search.

The video collection has hundreds of titles from comedies like “The Producers” to “The Jews of Poland: Five Cities (Bialystock, Lvov, Krakow, Vilna and Warsaw)” which is an amazing 50-minute video of five polish Jewish shtels done in 1939 showing a world that no longer exists. There are great videos for educating my daughter from “The Tefillin Factory” to a lot of “Shalom Sesame.”

The Children’s Library is a favorite of my 7-year-old daughter, Rebecca. She enjoys story time and other events as well as the kids CD, games, videos, and computer games she can play at the library. The children’s library has a whole collection of books and other media in Hebrew from Tel Aviv, Los Angeles’ sister city. The librarians know their books well and are helpful in finding those appropriate for my daughter. Also, the librarians seem to know all the families that come to the library on a first-name basis.

I recommend it to your readers that have any interest in Jewish learning or culture. Bring along the kids, too, and let them play with the games, computers, attend a program or look at books at the kid’s library. Since the library is across from the Zimmer Children’s Museum in The Jewish Federation building, it can become a fun family outing.

Dr. Lawrence Adler
Beverly Hills
Come Back Torah

I am writing to demand the immediate return of the weekly Torah commentary. Your idea of a column – My Jewish Library – on the most influential books on Judaism is a good idea, but you do not shelve the commentary on the Book of Books in order to make room for reviews of books about Judaism. What is a Jewish community newspaper without a Torah commentary? You have taken the soul out of your paper. This is completely illogical. Where are your priorities? I urge my fellow readers to write in protest at your silly change and to likewise demand the prompt return of the Torah commentary. You suggest that readers go online to read the commentary but what about observant readers? I only read the commentary on Shabbat and do not go online then. Awaiting the speedy return of your better judgment.

Bob Kirk
Los Angeles

Divestment

This letter was written to the attention of Clifton Kirkpatrick, stated clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA).

I am most concerned about the Presbyterian Church recommending divestment of investments in Israel.

As a moral issue it is hard to justify the suicide bombings in Israel, especially directed against civilians. Israel necessarily is justified in taking action in its self-defense

The bloodletting of the Palestinians is in favor of the Arab world, not in the interest of the Palestinians. The Arab world simply wants to destroy Israel. Israel has the same rights to exist as any other community.

Since l967, under Israeli control, the standard of living of the Palestinians increased tremendously compared to the standards elsewhere in the Arab world. The Palestinians now have seven universities they did not have previously and much improved medical attention. They are less suppressed if at all than any minority in the world. The intifada destroyed their good relations with Israel on behalf of the rest of the Arab world, not in their own interest.

What is the moral issue in the Arabs refusing to absorb their refugees from the l948 Israeli War of Independence? Nowhere else in the world have refugees suffered the isolation imposed on them by the Arab world.

I would urge you to help Israel to achieve peace, which prevailed before the current intifada, when the Palestinians were better off than Arabs anywhere else in the Arab world.

It would be nice to hear from you.

Jerome Greenblatt.
Mission Viejo