09 Jun Speak Your Vues

CAMPING

Dear Editor: “The Governor’s announcement that day camps can open is a good first step. We can celebrate once we review the details and camp directors confirm that they are feasible. At this point, I remain cautiously optimistic that we will find a way to offer children and their parents a safe social environment where kids can be kids. Education in every form is essential. That’s why I won’t stop fighting for camps and schools and special education programs to open safely in Phase 1.”

Thank you, Simcha Felder

Editor’s Note: We need to protest this Governor. He makes rules that suit his daughter not us. Double Standard!

MAYOR WITH NO BRAIN NOR MORALS

Dear Editor: The mayor talks about “400 years of deep rooted racism”. What’s with the “2000 years of deep rooted anti-semitism”? Do you see Jews rioting and looting? We’ve had and have black leaders, business tycoons, politicians, judges and yes – a had a TWO term black president for crying out loud! So I say: STOP with this relentless “black discrimination” already. It’s completely ridiculous at this point! Everyone is discriminated against in one way or another at some point in their life. You don’t see them rioting. You don’t see looting. And never on this crazy animistic level. The black community has to get their act together and start looking within. Mr. Floyd was not a saint arrested for whistling dixie, much as the media wants to portray him as such. There was a miscalculation of police action. It does nothing to answer for millions of black people doing nothing about their own lives or garnering some respect. Like Barack Obama. Or Clarence Thomas. Etcetera…. They have way too much to learn from other hard working minorities of ALL colors. Be humble. Work hard. Show respect to earn respect. ACT RESPECTFULLY! Enough already! ENOUGH! Hard working and kind and good people across America are tired of the racism card as it is already long long over dealt and lost it’s value completely. So in closing, I disagree completely with anyone trying to validate the “peaceful” protesting and wanton hate being shown to law enforcement. They are wrong on every level, and continuing this joke of encouraging rage and resentment will only make matters worse, as true history shows. Mayor! The color of ones skin does nothing anymore to endanger his chances of succeeding in life! It’s the color ones mind! The world is not buying the race card anymore. Stop locking people in! Open the sports arenas and get these goyim to stay busy.

RDL

Editor’s Note: The Mayor has the Chutzpah to say that racism precedes Corona so no rules apply. He is a typical German hates Jews and is bending over backwards to the black community!

ARRESTED

Dear Editor: If my father was the Mayor of New York, And I got arrested during a demonstration, Here is what I think would happen: My father would be angry, disappointed and even furious. He would let me know that there is no excusefor behavior that results in arrest. He would tell me that especially as the mayor’s daughter I have an added responsibility to behave as a law abiding citizen. He would add that my behavior was so disgraceful that it undermined his hard work and efforts to keep law and order in YCduring volatile times. But alas, y father is not the Mayor of NY. And our mayor is a different kind of father than mine was. When Chiara de Blasiowas arrested, her father said: I love my daughter deeply. I honor her. I’m proud of her that she cares so much that she was willing to go out there to do something about it.” So let me understand Mr. Mayor, if Chiara didn’t do anything wrong, why was she arrested? Was it an umawful arrest?

TK

Editor’s Note: Now we wonder why the Mayor is trying to defund Police? He is clueless!

KOVID 65 PLUS Dear Editor: Kabaid Es Avichah V’es Emechah B’H Covid 19 seems to be on the decline, we must now turn to Kovid 65 plus, our senior population. They are not permitted to join our minyonim nor would they want to risk their health by doing so at this time . However, programs should be put in place so their connection to the Aibishter and to K’llal Yisroel remains ongoing and intact. While we are on the topic, we are not only talking about the “kovid” and concern we have for our elders. There is a diverse population of homebound people who cannot attend shul services; among them, physically and mentally challenged yidden and children younger than 13 . Zoom has become a very popular way of getting together while still maintaining social distancing. Classes for yeshiva students, sheurim, tehillim even Daf Yomi is “zoomed”. There are zoomed “virtual minyonim”, however they are individuals davening in their homes and are missing the feeling of Tefillah B’Tzibur. I understand that certain halachic advisories have to be posted on a davening site that explain the limitations of zoom davening. For those minyonim that were fortunate enough to open already, how about if they open zoom davening to our homebound yidden so that they can feel like they’re still part of of K’llal Yisroel , Hashem’s children. They have been part of your kehilah for decades, establishing and supporting shuls, don’t leave them behind! Yearning to be part of the kehilah again.

J.M. of Flatbush GJ

Editor’s Note: You can’t change halacha if davening on Zoom does not count as a minyan then there is no need for davening on Zoom!!

IDENTICAL

Dear Editor: Hi, Why are so many of the letters here exactly identical to comments on Jewish sites such as vosizneias,com, theyeshivaworld,com, and reddit. com/r/Judaism, or to posts on message boards such as the Yeshivaworld Coffee Room or Imamother.com?

BM

Editor’s Note: Could it be that those people write letters in multiple places? Do you really think that a person only writes their opinion in one place?

TUITION

Dear Editor: Here is a letter I saw on Matzav.com Why is there deafening silence on the school tuition issue? Like tuition doesn’t end after playgroup? Only playgroups deserve a discussion about whether they should be paid? What about parents who are paying thousands each month for school tuition? At the very least, schools should acknowledge that it’s a legitimate question. In a perfect world, these steps should have taken: 1. Very early on in Covid-19, every school should have sent a communication to the parent body, acknowledging that’s it’s a question that they are working to resolve fairly. Almost no schools mentioned it to their parents. How unfair. 2. Schools should have had representation of the parent body and together with school representatives should have met, via Zoom, with mutually agreed upon dayanim to resolve the issue. 3. At the very least, schools should have unilaterally been shoel and presented the psak to their parent body with the reasoning. The universal silence (other than a couple of mosdos) is troubling to parents who are dying from financial pressures, crushed under the burden that they can’t take anymore. I mamish don’t get it. The only thing worse is how seminaries are going about their business, but that’s a separate discussion. And the groundswell of dissatisfaction of thousands of parents will explode as the question of registrations for next year comes to fruition. Disclaimer: On a personal level I have no issue whatsoever paying my kids’ elementary school full tuition agreement because my kids’ schools are doing a phenomenal job, but even they absolutely SHOULD have acknowledged the issue and they didn’t. Don’t we, parents, deserve a drop of respect?

With great respect, A Parent

Editor’s Note: Great point. How about approach your Rov and discuss it with him.

SICKENING LEFT

Dear Editor: Dear Editor, The past few weeks have been a very sad time for the United States. It all started when an innocent, unarmed African American named George Floyd was murdered by an evil, disgusting, shameful police officer. This officer and his assistants should all immediately be charged with murder because justice must happen. After this shameful racist action, protests against racism started around the nation and the world. These protests are justified and I stand together in solidarity with these protesters!! However, a protest turning into looting is un-American and not constructive! One of my American heroes is Martin Luther King Jr., and MLK, the leader of the civil rights movement, was someone who believed in the right to protest but with peace or as he said it, “We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence.” MLK knew that riots were the total opposite of supporting civil rights. One thing that has bothered me personally in the past few weeks is the politics with these events. President Trump by many top Democrats has been labeled a racist in some regard. This hurts me as an American because I can tell what’s red is not yellow. President Trump is the same president that has signed into law a meaningful Criminal Justice Reform bill. Many African American leaders praised Trump when he signed a vital piece of legislation. President Trump has never himself labeled his opponents as racist because he also knows what’s red isn’t yellow. It really hurts me that Nancy Pelosi took something out of Hollywood’s playbook in acting because it isn’t going well for her. Pelosi quoted former Presidents Reagan and Bush to try and fail to attack Trump. It might be an election year, but her behavior is unbelievably foolish. President Trump in his compassionate speech on the state of the nation a week ago, said that if the nation would be forced to, they would be forced to use the military to stop the looters. The media and the drama-queen Democrats reacted stupidly, because 12 hours later Superman Governor Andrew Cuomo, comes to the rescue and says that he might bring in the National Gaurd, and the media lavish praises on their new cult leader. This is sickening! If you thought it ended there, you are wrong. Then a former Defense Secretary James Mattis slams Trump as saying he is the first president in his lifetime to try not to unite the nation and that he is blatantly violating the Constitution. I respect General Mattis’s service to this nation, but honestly, this statement is ridiculous and a complete lie. First of all, is it Trump’s fault that he condemns the death of Mr. Floyd, speeds the DOJ investigation into this cowardly murder, and then he is called a racist?! General Mattis, have you been sleeping the past 3 years when in many situations President Trump does an amazing action, and the Democrats nevertheless call him racist or sexist. General Mattis, it is also childish to slam your old boss who fired you because of a job performance unsatisfactory with a duly elected President of the USA. Our nation has entered a new era of politics, where Nancy Pelosi idolizes Ronald Reagan and George Bush who they once also called racist too, just so that they can claim that Trump is racist. Really?! Pelosi and the Democrats are plainly being pathetic! The problem of the past is that there were more words than actions, now Trump has reversed that, more action than words. Just take a look at Joe Biden, he has been in politics for over 40 years, and all of a sudden he claims that he will fight for criminal justice reform. What has he been doing for 40 years? Well, I guess Trump would say he was sleeping!! Trump has changed the world of politics, acting upon promises that he made to the American people and not solely talking lavish language when nothing gets done. It is just amazing how the Democrats claim that Republicans are racist and don’t do anything about the problem of racism when they 8 years ago had an African American Democrat president with a Democrat Majority in the House and the Senate when they didn’t do a thing about Criminal Justice Reform! Rather it took a white Republican president with a Republican House and Senate to get criminal justice reform! The next time you call Trump or Republicans racist, think again!! At the end of the day, as Americans, we must come together as one against injustices which there are every day, and if we see that there’s a community that feels left behind, follow the Trump way: stop talking and start doing!!

Sincerely, D S G

Editor’s Note: We can never cease to marvel as to how much more to the left the left can go.

HOLOCAUST DENIER

Dear Editor: Yet another scholar at the U.S. Holocaust Museum has denounced Israel as racist, colonialist, and murderous. Is this an appropriate use of our tax dollars? The latest attack on the Jewish state comes from the pen of an Israeli historian, Amos Goldberg, who last year served as a Senior Scholar-in-Residence at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, in Washington, DC. Goldberg’s denunciation of Israel, which appeared in early June on “+972 Magazine” website (and was co-authored by Alon Confino), was titled “To Understand Zionism, We Must Listen to the Voices of its Victims.” The article was published just after several synagogues were graffitied with anti- Israel hate messages during the George Floyd riots. According to Goldberg, Zionism is “a settler colonial movement.” The State of Israel is “based on segregation and discrimination.” Israel is “a wrongdoer, and an occupier” which carries out “crimes against the Palestinians” including “the plunder of land” and “the killing of innocents.” He also claims that the hundreds of thousands of Arabs who fled from Israel during the 1948 war “were in fact expelled.” In another paragraph that reveals Goldberg not only as an extremist, but also as an incompetent historian. He writes that “Arab resistance to the Zionist movement”— that’s what he calls Arab terrorist massacres of Jewish women and children—“and later Israel, did not derive from antisemitism but rather from their opposition to the colonization of Palestine.” So, according to Goldberg, when Arab leaders cite Koranic verses about Jews in ancient times, that’s not anti-Jewish, it’s anti-Zionist. When Arab newspapers publish cartoons of Jews with hook noses and dollar signs for eyes—that’s not anti-Jewish either, it’s anti-Zionist. And when Arab propagandists quote from the most infamous anti-Semitic book in history, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, they, too, are not being anti-Jewish, just anti-Zionist. Another incredible aspect of Goldberg’s article—especially for someone who claims to be a Holocaust scholar—is his complaint that some Germans are too sympathetic to Jews and Israel. Until now, Germany “has been a model of coming to terms with its past,” he writes, referring to restitution and education. But that has “reached a deadend,” because some criticism of Israel in Germany today is “deemed antisemitic” by some people. “This kind of philosemitism is disturbing,” Goldberg declares. In other words, he actually wants Germans to become more hostile to Israel. Prof. Goldberg has a long track record of extreme views concerning Israel. For example, in a 2018 article in the Arab journal “Madar,” Goldberg charged that Yad Vashem’s emphasis on the persecution of Jews is “very narcissistic and problematic” and “perhaps even chauvinistic.” He claimed that Yad Vashem’s approach could lead to a “fascist enterprise” (in Israel) and “extreme violence” (by Israelis). Last year, Goldberg signed a petition accusing Israel of “the systematic oppression of the Palestinian people.” He also signed a letter urging the German parliament to reject anti-BDS legislation. Earlier this year, he signed a pledge to boycott German academic agencies or committees that exclude BDS supporters. So when the leaders of the U.S. Holocaust Museum chose Goldberg as its Senior Scholar in Residence, they must have known—or certainly should have known—that they were bringing on board someone who has expressed strong hostility to Zionism and Israel. A cynic might say that Prof. Goldberg felt right at home at the Museum. Just last year, the Museum’s journal, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, published an essay by radical scholar Amy Weiss, in which she accused the Jewish National Fund of secretly plotting to “alter a Palestinian landscape to resemble a European one more familiar to Jewish pioneers and Holocaust survivors.” According to Weiss, the racist JNF sought to “erase” Arab villages as part of a sinister “politicized land reclamation project to secure land” for the Zionists. She also mocked the JNF’s work as “the myth of ‘making the desert bloom’.” Another extremist historian at the Holocaust Museum, Rebecca Erbelding, has repeatedly compared economic immigrants trying to cross America’s southern border to Jewish victims of the Holocaust. “The parallels to the 1930s- 1940s refugee crisis are so obvious,” she asserted in one tweet. The echoes keep coming,” she wrote in another. When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez last year compared U.S. border detention facilities to Nazi-era “concentration camps,” Erbelding sent out multiple tweets and re-tweets displaying sympathy with her. In one tweet, Erbelding gave “a Geppetto checkmark” to Cortez’s defense of her declaration. That’s the designation which the Washington Post fact-checker uses when a statement is found to be “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” One of Erbelding’s re-tweets began with the words, in bold, “They’re concentration camps.” Other troubling items on Erbelding’s resume include her offer of free copies of her book to anybody who donates $50 to the American Friends Service Committee, despite the fact that the Committee openly compares Israel to Nazi Germany; and a tweet last year in which Erbelding claimed there is such a thing as a “Jewish nose.” Maybe it’s just a coincidence that extreme critics of Israel and Zionism keep popping up on the U.S. Holocaust Museum’s staff and in its publications. Or it may indicate something about the mindset in certain segments of that government- funded institution. Either way, the fact that there is a clear trend to hire detractors of Israel in these museum positions represents a very disturbing use of the American public’s tax dollars.

RDL

Editor’s Note: We need to fight this!

SMALL BUSINESS

Dear Editor: “Small businesses are essential- to our economy and to every thriving neighborhood. Shop owners are your friends, neighbors and relatives. For months, they have been choking and now they are at the breaking point. By shopping local, we can all do our part to sustain and protect them. Look for the bright red sign,” urged Senator Felder, “and when you need to shop, remember to shop local.” Count mom and pop shops among those lost to coronavirus. The sad reality is that many small local businesses that shuttered their doors in compliance with shelter in place orders will never reopen. With challenges mounting, the battle to survive has taken on new urgency. Senator Simcha Felder is fighting to save them and rallying for grassroots support. The campaign urges people to shop local with posters displayed in storefronts across the district alerting local customers that they are open for business. “Local small businesses are really struggling now. I know it firsthand. Now is the time, before buying anything, to make an effort to shop local and ensure local businesses will be there for you in the future,” said Yossi Itzkowitz, CEO Toys 4 You. “Communities depend on having local stores available for essential needs. Shop local so we can survive together,” said Mr. Chaim Klein, Owner of PlugIns Electronics and Appliances. “The administration found a way for big box stores to operate safely, but as New York City enters Phase 1 today, small businesses are still shackled. No browsing?? Shoppers have been browsing in Target throughout the pandemic! We must allow small businesses to operate safely, legally and effectively, now,” said Senator Felder.

S F

Editor’s Note: We need to help these stores as this is a Liberlas dream to get everyone dependant on the Government.

MASKS

Dear Editor:

ASK A SHEILAH

I just feel it prudent to point out that wearing a mask when outside an eiruv presents a real sheilah of chilul shabbos. Considering that the enforcement of masks is non-existent, and there have been prominent poskim who have already said that for someone who has antibodies the mask is not considered providing any halachic benefit, if you are post-covid you should probably ask YOUR posek (don’t rely on “I heard so-and-so said”) if you should prepare a mask to leave in shul this shabbos.

L’toeles Ha’rabim

Editor’s Note: It might be time to ditch the mask altogether.