Letters
Mr. Kaplan, you’re wrong
Mr. Kaplan once again romanticizes the behavior of past Presidents when he attacks President Trump. Almost all Presidents engaged in unsavory behavior in private, publicly or both. From President Clinton’s sexual escapades to Obama’s lying about keeping your doctor in order to pass Obamacare to Biden, who enabled his son to collect millions of dollars from foreign countries to be split among the Biden clan. Biden pardoned multiple family members because of this corruption.
Kaplan’s statement that Democrat party members are “sincere, devoted supporters of Israel” is patently absurd. The Democrat party is now led by Bernie Sanders and AOC, who are both rabidly anti-Israel. Survey after survey shows that Democrat voters are anti-Israel while Republican voters are pro-Israel. Democrats voted to block arms transfers to Israel, including our own Senator Kim.
Trump is trying to end taxes on tips and overtime, signed an order to cut drug prices and tariffs will bring jobs back to the U.S. for working class Americans. Sure doesn’t sound like “placing the needs of the wealthy over the weak” as Kaplan claims. In addition, the families of Americans killed or injured by illegal aliens, that Biden let in, would disagree with Kaplan’s assertion that Trump favors “victimizers over the victims.”
Mr. Kaplan’s problem is that he is a leftist who overlooks Democrat Presidents’ shortcomings but does not do the same for President Trump. Perhaps Mr. Kaplan should heed Ethics of our Fathers 1:6 and judge everyone favorably, including Trump.
Michael Milchen
New Milford
Mr. Kaplan, you’re right
Joseph Kaplan’s column expresses, from the first sentence to the last, my own feelings about Donald Trump and about the despair I feel at the “cold edge of the community I once felt was a warm home,” to use Kaplan’s words. I have learned that I cannot voice my opinion about Trump openly in my Modern Orthodox community (which was, until a year ago, Teaneck, and is now Great Neck, NY). My husband and I have banned talk of politics from our Shabbat table when we have guests, and I am silent when we are invited to other homes for meals if the conversation veers toward politics.
It pains me to remain silent, as anyone who knows me can confirm. But it pains me even more to see how much the values that I hold dear, that I thought all of us who identify as Modern Orthodox hold dear, are scorned by this president. Honesty, fidelity, sensitivity to others’ needs, compassion, caring for the poor and disadvantaged, and respect for the law are all values that a Torah-based life teaches us to live by. Trump lives by greed, selfishness, contempt for all who disagree with him, and an unwillingness to take responsibility for his deeds.
Too many of the people in my social circles excuse their support of Trump by claiming that his support for Israel is paramount in their thinking and, in spite of his moral and ethical failures, that alone is enough reason to support him. But his behavior can’t be excused on those grounds. His support for anything has proven to be transitory at best and his positions can change on a dime when the mood strikes him. He clearly has no moral compass and no ethical structure that governs his actions. We need real moral leadership from a president, and with Trump we get none.
Sheila Reicher
Great Neck, NY
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