Letters
Template for unity
Excellent article about Rabbi Joachim Prinz. I look forward to watching the documentary on YouTube.
I just wanted to call your attention to a mistake made in the caption under the rally photo. It was not organized by American Jewish Committee but rather by American Jewish Congress. In the picture, the first line of the poster on the right is AJCongr…and the article refers to R. Prinz’s having been a leader of American Jewish Congress.
Thank you all for interesting articles and sometimes challenging viewpoints. If we could all sit around a table and hear each other and become a template for unity —[ that would serve us all well.
Shana tova and may we see better days.
Ferne Hassan
Boteach fires away
As per usual, Boteach fires away in his shoot-from-the-lip style with the screaming headline, “Ben Shapiro’s disgraceful rehab of Hitler’s Pope Pius XII.” While his facts about the Pope may be correct, nowhere does he show what Shapiro himself said or did. If this were an English essay, a high school debate, or a legal argument, it would flunk.
Boteach’s entire case rests on a podcast by Michael Knowles, aired on Shapiro’s Daily Wire. Knowles is a sometime actor and commentator, not a historian, and his work cannot be compared to serious researchers like David Kertzer (The Pope and Mussolini), who drew directly from Vatican archives. Anyone with basic historical acumen knows this podcast is junk. To pin it on Shapiro is idiotic.
And if Shapiro and Boteach ever met in a public debate, my bet is Boteach wouldn’t last past the opening bell.
Herbert Burack
Teaneck
Suicidal empathy
Jews like Mr. Nelson and Rabbi Blau suffer from suicidal empathy as Professor Gad Saad coined the term. Hamas has promised to repeat October 7th — as often as needed until Israel is annihilated, to this day a huge majority of Gazans support Hamas according to surveys and unlike some Germans who helped save Jews during the Holocaust no Gazans have helped the hostages. In fact, many hostages were held by Gazan ‘civilians’. To empathize with them is quite literally suicidal.
I am not sure where Jews’ suicidal empathy emanates from. Certainly not from the Bible which records Moses’ anger when Jewish soldiers let the male Midianite children live. Or when the Bible discusses besieging a city. If the city accepts peace overtures no one is harmed, but if they refuse we are to besiege the city and presumably starve them and kill all the males.
Anything other than clearing Gaza of Hamas and its ilk guarantees future massacres of Israelis. Israel could carpet bomb Gaza and be done with it. Instead it sacrifices the lives of its soldiers by fighting house-to-house. Rabbi Blau’s letter and Mr. Nelson and his suicidal empathetic allies provide comfort to a genocidal enemy and that is shameful.
Michael Milchen
New Milford
More objections
I vehemently object to both the position taken by Rabbi Blau and, more so, the defense offered by Jack Nelson. I don’t doubt Rabbi Blau’s scholarly standing and right to express his opinion, even though he has no in-depth knowledge about the Gaza war and how the military should operate. Rabbi Blau and Mr. Nelson seem to have forgotten that the reason we have and need a Jewish state is to protect Jews of the world by fighting back viciously when annihilation of the Jewish people is confronted.
All Jews are free to express disagreement with the tactics used by the Israeli government to fight this difficult war. Yet there is a difference between constructive criticism and providing comfort to the enemy, an enemy who is effectively using propaganda to cause more death (on both sides) and assisting its goals (one, to survive this war, and two, to lay the foundation for the next).
Rabbi Blau’s open letter and Jack Nelson’s support is not the way forward. It is a stab in the back of those risking their lives and giving their lives to put an end to the conflict
Howard Gluckman
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