letters

Supporting campus efforts

The Jewish Community Relations Council applauds Hillel’s efforts to prepare students and professionals to counter efforts to delegitimize Israel on campus as described in j.’s  article, “Hillels prepare to answer anti-Israel campus forces” (Aug. 20), and the related editorial.

This past school year, JCRC, along with 20 other Jewish organizations active in the Northern California Israel Campus Agency Roundtable, worked closely with Bay Area Hillels to successfully counter various anti-Israel efforts. The growing threat to Israel’s legitimacy as represented by the anti-Israel and anti-peace boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, along with the need to increase opportunities for civil discourse on campus, necessitates this expanded campus-community cooperation.

Thank you to the j. for your in-depth coverage of this important and encouraging effort. As always, the JCRC will continue to support Hillel and student activists on campus with their Israel education and advocacy programs aimed at reaching the diverse student population found on our college campuses.

Julie L. Bernstein

Director of Campus and Community Programs

Middle East Project, Jewish Community Relations Council

Hillel strategy misguided

It’s good that Hillel is developing a pro-Israel strategy to counter anti-Israel activity on college campuses. However, their strategy lacks what it needs the most, which is a clear and consistent message that Israel has an absolute right to exist as a Jewish state and will fight for that right, regardless of Arab claims that the land is theirs. Without such an unequivocal declaration of ownership, Israel can never defeat the accusation that it’s occupying stolen Arab land.

The Hillel strategy is purely defensive in nature, and contains nothing that would frighten or intimidate Israel’s campus foes, or make them think they’ll have to pay a price for their nonstop slander and incitement against the Jewish state. If this is the strongest strategy Hillel can devise, the campus situation will likely get worse rather than better.

Martin Wasserman   |   Sunnyvale

Youth for hire

Sherri W. Morr’s op-ed, “For job seekers, the Jewish community lacks kindness” (Aug. 13), fails to address the Jewish future and the need to recruit young people to work in Jewish communities to maintain our existence.

Present Jewish leaders are already worried about how to engage young people with the community. They have set up engagement and volunteer programs for 20-somethings. But they are not hiring them as an additional incentive to be involved.

I respect the fact that Morr is an experienced Jewish professional and communities are in financial trouble. I am without a job too but can work for less in exchange for experience. I have a master’s in Jewish studies from the University of Michigan where I focused on American Jewish history and worked at its Hillel part-time as an administrative assistant.

During my interviews, I gave hiring managers an opportunity to hire and train an empathetic young Jew

who is actually interested in working in and caring about the community.

There is no future for the American Jewish community if leaders don’t start bringing in and training eager young people, the next generation of Jewish leaders, to advocate for the community in the United States and abroad.

Sara Halpern   |   Rochester, N.Y.

Pledge is lip service

How “kind” of some Orthodox rabbis to sign a pledge welcoming gay Jews into their synagogues (“Gay Jews have a ‘home in Jewish life,’ Orthodox rabbis say,” Aug. 6). Why would you not welcome someone who looked and acted just like everyone else? This is just blowing smoke and accomplishes nothing.

The Torah has many laws, some of which are so primitive as never to be considered in a more sensible and humane world than existed in biblical times. By denying the right of so many to a life of happiness, security, legal rights, etc., these rabbis may be following halachah but, in my opinion, are violating a most profound and constitutional entitlement.

If they cannot see the difference between their interpretation of centuries-old (and obsolete) halachah and current reality, then they truly are not doing the “right thing” and still abandon those that would come to their shul.

Naomi Karlin   |   Oakland

Mosque plan is ‘cruel’

Thirty-one rabbis signed a letter in opposition to the ADL’s opposition to the mosque near ground zero (“ADL takes heat for opposing Islamic center near ground zero,” Aug. 6). The mosque should bring our communities together by promoting religious tolerance and dialogue. Very politically correct.

Would these 31 rabbis be in favor of the American Nazi Party opening bookstores across street from their temples citing the same reasons?

It happened in San Francisco in 1977. The Nazi bookstore opened across the street from Temple E’munah. Politically correct? A survivor and his son could not tolerate this vile symbol in their community. Morris and Allen Weiss were arrested for destroying this bookstore. The community rallied around them and a law in San Francisco was passed outlawing the display of those symbols as an incitement to riot.

A mosque near ground zero is an incitement to riot. It is cruel to the families who suffered loss, a threat to the peace of the community and an insult to human sensibilities. Even moderate Muslims deny the Holocaust, the right of Israel to exist and think of Jews as devils. We can only reason with them out of strength. They see the 31 rabbis on their knees groveling to the prophet of destruction.

Norman Weiss   |   Orinda

Support Women of the Wall

Thank you for the story about the Women of the Wall photo campaign (“Women urged to pose holding a Torah,” Aug. 13).

There was only one thing missing: how to do it! Women of the Wall has made it very easy — go to http://www.womenofthewall.org.il and click on “Take a Stand!” Upload your photo and fill in the information; WOW will forward all the pictures.

This is a wonderful opportunity to support WOW and religious pluralism in Israel. Many of us rallied to make our voices heard about the Rotem bill (Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu received over 60,000 emails within a week). Now let’s make ourselves visible and show that Torah and women together are not an anomaly in the Jewish world.

Some Bay Area synagogues are scheduling photo shoots. Contact your rabbi and/or synagogue administrator to help organize an event for your community. And please send the link to the WOW website to all the Jewish women you know.

The ultra-Orthodox in Israel are exerting more pressure to protect theirs as the only way to be a Jew in Israel. We can reverse the rising tide of the “haredi-tization” of our spiritual homeland, and further the acceptance of non-Orthodox Jews to practice in Israel as we do in the rest of the world.

Sara Yakira Heckelman   |   San Francisco