Letters to the editor March 17

March 17, 2011, 2:29 pm 0 Edit

We all have mothers

The Chronicle periodically warns Israeli politicians to back off from the “Who is a Jew?” debate, and you might wish to take your own advice.

A few years back you erred in implying that then-Councilman Alan Hertzberg was a Jew: now you are pushing Corey O’Connor as a Jew by including — exceptionally — the full name of his mother. But candidates Wecht,

Wander, Daffner, Weinstein, Rabinowitz, Pollock, Butler, and Weinroth — have they not mothers also?

Franklin Toker

Squirrel Hill

Rabbi insults reader

Rabbi Laurie Zimmerman, and her peers, do the Reform movement and its members a huge disservice when they inject themselves into a legitimate and complicated policy debate (“Governor’s plan threatens workers and Jewish values,” The Chronicle, March 3).

Her biased, naive, incomplete and uneducated analysis is an insult to the reader’s intelligence. In the future, the rabbi should be more cautious and thoughtful about invoking the phrase “Jewish Values” to serve her own political, not religious, ideology.

Dan Friedman

Murrysville

J Street organ?

I really do not understand how is it possible that the Jewish Chronicle has fallen in line with various Western media by giving front page attention to Israel’s decision to build in a number of settlement blocs and almost ignoring the horrendous murder that occurred during the Shabbat in Itamar, when two young parents and three of their six children were butchered!

Is it possible that The Jewish Chronicle has become an organ of the J Street gang that it will give more attention to a decision to build in territories that will remain part of the State of Israel even after any peace accord than they would to this heinous act of murder. It’s not like they would be publicizing widely published materials because most of the Western press seems to think, obviously like the editor of The Jewish Chronicle that this is a non-story.

David Rose

Karkom, Israel

(Editor’s note: At the time this letter was sent to the Chronicle — Monday, March 14 — the Chronicle had posted exactly one wire story about the appalling Itamar murders to its website and the first edition since the killings had not yet gone to press.)