Letters To The Editor

It goes without saying that the more people who can show up, the better. As a community, we must respond to this sneak attack on Hoshana Rabba. The opposition obviously felt we would not come out to protest erev Yom Tov. They are wrong. This is our community, and no anti-Semite will go unanswered.

Rabbi Dr. Bernhard Rosenberg

How Bad Was Yitzhak Rabin?

I enjoyed Tzvi Fishman’s recollections last week of the late Rav Avraham Shapira on his 12th yahrzeit. I was troubled, though, by Rav Shapira’s objection to a poster that showed Yitzhak Rabin escorting Arafat and Assad into the Old City of Jerusalem. Rav Shapira said, “Would the Chofetz Chaim make a poster like this?”

Perhaps not. But the Chofetz Chaim was not involved in activism. Activism sometimes requires stating blunt truths. Let us not forget that Rabin and the Left were giving away biblical Israel, piece by piece, to murderous Arab terrorists in the 1990s. They put millions of lives in danger.

The Oslo Accords weren’t just a political “mistake.” They were the equivalent of someone drilling a hole in a ship in the middle of the ocean. If someone were doing that, wouldn’t all measures – including harsh measures – be appropriate to stop such a person?

The Chofetz Chaim, incidentally, could be extremely harsh at times. His sefer on women covering their hair and dressing modestly is unyielding. Among other things, he exhorts husbands to repeatedly protest if their wives don’t obey the laws of tznius. He writes that a person would not stop berating his wife if she were ruining his business. A woman not obeying halacha, he argues, is ruining the spiritual welfare of the home and must be stopped.

Perhaps the Chofetz Chaim was not such a softie, after all.

Bottom line: If someone is destroying something holy that you care about deeply (like Jewish lives and biblical Israel), you do virtually everything in your power to stop that person.

Joshua Bernstein
Brooklyn, NY

Join the Democrats?

Last month, Councilman Chaim Deutsch argued in these pages that Jews must register as Democrats in New York. But what do Democrats represent? Here are a few items:

Taking G-d out of our schools and political institutions; legitimizing millions of illegal immigrants from Latin America who undermine our social welfare state; muffling the voice of conservatives; and opposing Israel.

How can we join such a party?

Robert Harris Blum
New Albany, OH

Syria Withdrawal Harms Israel

The hasty withdrawal of U.S. forces from northern Syria is a disaster for Israel and a victory for the Syria-Russian-Iran axis. It forces at least a segment of the Kurds into an alliance with Syria, which cannot be good for Israel.

President Trump has made a monumental blunder. What was he thinking? Or was he thinking at all?

Nelson Marans
New York, NY

Are Children Nuisances?

Dennis Prager makes an interesting point in noting that leftists have fewer children than other groups. There is no question that raising children can be difficult. Even if one is a great disciplinarian and one’s children are perfect angels, children are, at the very least, a “distraction.” They need to be fed, put to sleep, given living quarters, etc.

If one believes the point of life is to “chill” or “party,” then children can only be a nuisance. They distract one from having “fun.”

The only real reason to have children is because G-d said one should. If G-d is the center of one’s life, then one does what He wants even if it is “inconvenient.” Leftists, though, by and large don’t believe in the G-d of the Bible and therefore dispense with the tedious task of having and raising children.

I think it behooves us all when battling the left to remember that they are not just wrong about politics. They are dead wrong, too (and pernicious), when it comes to the basic underpinnings of society.

Moshe Schwartzman
Brooklyn, NY