A teen’s response
I’m writing in response to the recent discussion about teens and bar/bat bitzvahs (“Bar mitzvah parties don’t diminish the rite of passage,” May 15). Unlike the authors of the other letters, a rabbi and a teacher, I actually am a teenager. I’m a freshman at Berkeley High, and had my bat mitzvah in 2006. I know what so many adults think of teenagers, that we are loud, rude, that we experiment with drugs, don’t respond well to authority, and only think about what’s on the outside.
I’m writing to disabuse you of this notion, because it’s a gross generalization, which I have been struggling against since I became a teenager. My bat mitzvah was very meaningful to me, and afterward, I didn’t have a party, just a big family dinner and some friends over to hang out. I was especially upset when Stacey Palevsky said that kids were more interested in Miley Cyrus than William Shakespeare, and I am sorry but that offends me, since he is personally my favorite author of all time.
It’s not that I don’t think some kids just do it for the party, but I think it’s unfair to assume that this is true for all teens.
Rena Lourie | Berkeley
The theme is Judaism
Ms. Palevsky’s column highlights the need to provide the moral compasses our children need and deserve. There is a systemic intolerance to deal with the real issues that are part of the bar/bat mitzvah process, i.e., we ignore economic, ideological differences and peer pressure. What our children learn is that “The Party” is the ultimate goal. We fail to keep our children focused on the “theme” of the ceremony — Jewishness, not spending enough money to feed an underdeveloped country.
While the ceremony may not be a passage into adulthood, we should not throw the baby out with the bathwater. The only “theme” is Judaism — a recognition that we are part of an age-old community and that we stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before. The party is an affordable byproduct.
However, in our zeal to highlight wealth, that message has been lost on us and creates tremendous pressure on the entire community. We need to say “no” — the precise message we want our children to learn. While the battle over “themes” can take on epic proportions, it gives families valuable teaching moments. In the end, the only “theme” is being Jewish.
Karen Lipney | San Francisco
Jack Kemp’s influence
I read your obituary on Jack Kemp (“GOP senator took a strong stand against anti-Semitism,” May 8), which praised his stand against anti-Semitism and his commitment to civil rights. Jack Kemp was a semester ahead of me at Fairfax High School in Los Angeles — he was in the class of winter 1953. Fairfax students were probably about 95 percent (or more) Jewish, and Jack was one of the few non-Jews. It was a wonderful school, 85 percent of the seniors went on to college or university. I believe that Jack was greatly influenced by Fairfax High.
I am a Democrat and did not agree with many of his policies — but I certainly appreciated your feature, and Jack’s stance.
Marisa Samuels | Walnut Creek
More voices needed
The American Jewish Committee congratulates the United States on its election to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, and looks forward to a sustained American-led effort to reform this important, yet flawed, institution. Flawed because nations with horrid human rights records also sit on the council and routinely ignore major humanitarian crises around the world in favor of repeated broadsides against only one country, Israel.
America must not simply become a lonely voice of dissent in a chamber crowded with the world’s tyrants. It must take on the responsibility of focusing the council on the very real human rights abuses that plague our world.
Mervyn Danker | San Francisco
Executive Director, American Jewish Committee
Institute rule of law
President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu have more in common than often reported — mostly a mutual desire for peace and justice. As an American and San Francisco native, I share Obama’s belief in dialogue and compromise; as an Israeli for the past 25 years, I share Netanyahu’s skepticism and reticence to rely on yet more promises, and his insistence on protecting Israel’s people from Palestinian terror attacks and Iranian nuclear missiles.
The Arab and Muslim world continues to reject the legitimacy of Israel as the state of the Jewish people (as advocated by the Mandate and the U.N.’s 1947 “partition plan” recommendation). When they, including the Palestinians — led by their political/religious leaders, and in their schools and media — accept Israel, and focus on building a just, stable society rather than focusing on destroying the Jewish state, peace will come. All the rest pales in comparison.
If President Obama, and the pope and all others, truly want to help the Palestinians and bring peace to the region, they should assist them in building the infrastructure and culture of a free society based on the rule of law, rather than repeating tired slogans about “two states” or “land for peace.”
Aryeh Green | Beit Shemesh, Israel
Not a solution
What Israel needs right now is leadership bold enough to stand up to the nations and bury the idea of the two-state solution once and for all.
This “solution” can never bring peace. Giving the Palestinian Arabs their own state will not diminish their hatred of Israel in the slightest. It will only confirm their opinion about Israel’s psychological weakness, its lack of attachment to its historical roots, and its unwillingness to pay the price necessary to defend its territory. It will convince them that terrorism works, and it will increase their confidence in Israel’s ultimate demise.
The only way for Israel to achieve lasting peace with the Palestinian Arabs and their allies is to defeat them so convincingly that they have no choice but to abandon their plans for Israel’s destruction. Israel is indeed capable of achieving such a victory, but not while it’s ruled by godless ideologies of either the left or the right.
It’s only by returning to the core principles of our faith, and living up to those principles, that we can defeat adversaries more numerous and seemingly more powerful than ourselves.
Martin Wasserman | Sunnyvale
‘Revisionist historian’
In your April 17 issue Aaron Blumenfeld writes: “There is a long history of a symbiotic relationship between the Jews and the European peoples” (“Netanyahu can prove himself by not kowtowing to U.S.”).
Had Theodore Herzl not been stunned by the anti-Semitic Dreyfus affair in France, he would never have convened the First Zionist Congress at the end of the 19th century; had there been no pogroms in the Russian Empire before World War I, there would have been no mass emigration from there to the U.S.; had the Jews in Europe felt a “symbiotic relationship” with their European neighbors, they would not have settled in the inhospitable piece of land that eventually became Israel.
In World War II German anti-Semitism spread like wildfire throughout most of Europe. The British mandatory power practically closed Palestine to Jews seeking refuge from the Nazis.
Mr. Blumenfeld is a great revisionist historian. I believe he is the first writer who has used the word “symbiotic” to describe the relationship between the Jews and their European neighbors.
Joseph Itiel | San Francisco