Taps for my people
The recent editor’s column lobbied for the continued existence of the NJJN and cites a reduced interest in reading newsprint, including NJJN (“The future of a community newspaper,” Nov. 27). This in turn has led to diminished ad revenue, a newspaper trade malady.
But there exists a further difficulty, the dissolution of the Jewish people’s Jewish identity as portrayed in the Pew Report and interpreted at length by Dr. Jack Wertheimer. Why read a Jewish newspaper if you have no interest in Judaism? But the survival of the NJJN is the tip of the iceberg. Jewish federations will merge and close as the American-Jewish people dissipate.
I am of the Orthodox persuasion and I have always had a difficult time identifying with the Jewish federations. I do not read your ‘hatch, match, and dispatch’ announcements because your intermarriage
announcements sound like taps being played for my people. And the Pew data conclusively proves that intermarriage does not result in gains for the Jewish people.
Dear editor, for whom will you write your newspaper when tragically the only ones remaining are the Orthodox? Or perhaps you are planning to ride into the sunset with the last of your standard federation readers. The others will be gone.
Do something now to arrest the tide of intermarriage! Only then can the NJJN have a raison d’etre!
Joseph A. Rapaport
West Orange
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