Dear Editor:
In the May 9 issue of the Queens Jewish Link, Izzo Zwiren’s article “B’Rov Am Hadras Melech” and AY’s Letter to the Editor “Don’t Mistakenly Vote Anti-Israel in Primary Elections” both have suggestions on how we should cast our votes for President in the upcoming June 25 primary elections.
The office of President will not be appearing on the June 25 NY State primary election ballots since the Presidential Primary Election for our state was already held this past April 2.
Sincerely,
Ronald Herschaft
Hillcrest, New York
Dear Editor:
Once again, I read another distressing article from Goldy Krantz. While there are myriad problems in the dating world with enough blame to go around for all – singles, parents, shadchanim, and the community – what purpose does finger-pointing serve? It won’t change things.
Perhaps all of us can start to change things by changing ourselves. There may be some truth to some of the things a rude matchmaker says. They may be describing things the way they are instead of the way one wishes them to be. Nevertheless, it may still be rude and offensive, but one can always walk away and not look back. Preaching or ranting never helps.
I do want to recommend a memoir I recently read because the author deftly tells her story of navigating the shidduch world without assigning blame. Unmatched: An Orthodox Jewish woman’s mystifying journey to find marriage and meaning, by Sarah Lavane, is groundbreaking in that it tells the story of the author’s journey in the shidduch world without rancor or bitterness. I was pleasantly astonished to read a book that assigned no blame, was not preachy or whiny, and was a beautifully crafted well-written story to boot. I could not put it down. I bought it online and am surprised I hadn’t heard of it sooner.
I wish this was assigned reading for all, because there is much to be learned from it. Everyone should read this, including rabbis, married people, and all others who think this book is not for them. It is an eye-opening story that can teach the community more than the run-of-the-mill talks and articles on the topic by so-called experts.
This one book has given me much food for thought and plenty of words of chizuk. I very much wanted to recommend and share it with this paper’s readers.
Sivie Reiss
King Biden
Dear Editor:
Joe Biden has wrecked this once great country. His puppet masters are hellbent on maintaining control of their power this November, but Biden clearly cannot run on a platform of any accomplishments, given the current state of the country and the misery he has inflicted on its inhabitants.
Biden’s handlers cannot focus on any legislative successes, as inflation is at a 40-year high, violent crime is up, illegal immigration is at a record high, gas is pushing $4/gallon again, and literacy and math proficiency have not been this low in decades. Instead, Biden is forced to play his last card: Trump as a threat to democracy.
This is a particularly ironic card to play for Biden considering his own dictatorial behavior the last three and a half years. After all, it was Biden who used the CDC to pass an unconstitutional rent moratorium. It was Biden who used OSHA to pass the unconstitutional vaccine mandates. And it was Biden who passed the unconstitutional transfer of wealth known as student loan forgiveness. All of these Biden mandates were struck down by the Supreme Court, though Biden, ever the dictator, has continued on with his unconstitutional loan forgiveness scheme, Supreme Court be damned.
But the Supreme Court is not the only branch of government that Biden has ignored with impunity. Just this past week, Biden ran afoul of the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 by refusing to spend the $17.6 billion that both houses of Congress approved for Israel. Perhaps Biden’s most dictatorial act of all was unleashing the Department of Justice on his political opponent, Donald Trump. Does anyone really believe Trump would be facing felony charges for an eight-year-old misdemeanor (at best) that the Statute of Limitations tolled on long ago
Biden has turned this country into a borderless, genderless, lawless, third-world Banana Republic while simultaneously tanking the economy. Talk about multi-tasking. At this point, I don’t know how any reasonable person votes for Biden, but polls have shown that Trump will lose a significant portion of independent voters when he is inevitably convicted of the nonsensical charges brought against him by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg. Biden and his minions insist that it is Trump who is the dictator, but our holy Gemara in Kiddushin 70a has instructed us “Kol ha’pasul, b’mumo pasul,” loosely translated as, “He who charges others as defective is defective himself.” No one is more defective and less qualified to be President than our current Dictator-In-Chief.
Doniel Behar
The Sound of Silence
Dear Editor:
As an avid reader of this newspaper, I tend to notice trends. I’ve noticed a disturbing one that seems to be repeating itself again. It goes like this: There is a subject of controversy. Columnists and readers write their pieces taking either side of an issue. Months go by, sometimes even years, but eventually evidence emerges proving one side to be correct and the other side wrong.
If one were to examine the response to Covid-19 from three-to-four years ago in this newspaper, you would see readers writing letters shaming others for not masking and later for not getting the Covid shot. Some QJL writers penned columns advocating for the exclusion and segregation of those who refused to submit to the jab. One prominent writer even called for the criminalization of those who would not follow the government’s advice and take the Covid shot. Then a (not so) funny thing happened. A huge swath of the population took the Covid shot and almost all of them got Covid anyway. Worse, many of those who took the Covid shot suffered severe side effects and the uptick in “mysterious deaths” the subsequent year after the shot was rolled out were through the roof.
Over time, most people came to the realization that Covid was mainly affecting the obese and those with comorbidities, masking without an N-95 mask is completely useless, and that the government’s insistence on everyone taking the Covid shot was based on nefarious lies and Big Pharma’s insatiable appetite for yet another windfall. But once this all became known, what was the reaction of those who supported these erroneous measures in this otherwise wonderful publication? Silence! Those who advocated for these horrible mandates skulked away, pretending all is well, never owning up to their horrible and sometimes life-altering policy prescriptions.
I have yet to read even one apology from those who shamed their neighbors for not complying with the government’s nonsensical mandates. Nor have I seen even one retraction or some humility and/or contrition from those who advocated that our community follow the advice of defrocked leaders such as Dr. Fauci and his local foot soldiers, masquerading as our “communal leaders.”
The trend of non-accountability seems to be repeating itself again. Multiple letter-writers and one columnist in particular have supported Joe Biden for years within these pages. They overlooked his obvious signs of dementia on the campaign trail in 2019-2020. They implored us all to vote for a man lacking any moral compass, a man who has lied about everything big and small from riding a train (miraculously, without tracks) over the Francis Scott Key Bridge, to his academic record to the cause of death of his son. They overlooked his corrupt ties and lies regarding all the shady business deals his derelict son engaged in. They excused his pathetically planned, ill-fated Afghanistan withdrawal. They covered for him despite his financial policies putting our economy on the brink of disaster. Their Trump Derangement Syndrome let them believe that despite the world being on fire, thanks to our feckless president’s foreign policy, it was all fine as long as Donald Trump was no longer president.
Then October 7 happened. At first, Biden appeared to be on the correct and moral side of this conflict, but then, reverting to form, he caved to political pressure and assumed his current abhorrent stance of drawing a moral equivalency between a democratic country and a bunch of terrorist thugs. He has opposed the attempt to eliminate Hamas from Rafah and is withholding weaponry from Israel. This man, whom supporters within this newspaper championed as a pro-Jewish supporter of Israel, has shown zero inclination to do anything to try to save the five Jewish American hostages from captivity, and has completely abandoned Jews being threatened and harassed on college campuses here.
We heard from Biden supporters in this newspaper that he was a great friend of Israel, that he has the moral clarity that Trump lacks, and he will always have Israel’s back. What these imperceptive writers failed to recognize that I have pointed out on many occasions is: 1) Biden has no principles; he does what he believes is in his own best interest. Every position he has taken has been one of political expediency, and 2) Biden is weak-kneed and has been wrong on every foreign policy stance he has taken over his 50-year political career, from supporting the war in Iraq, to opposing the raid on Osama Bin Laden to the botched Afghanistan withdrawal. Now that Biden’s predictably (at least by me) repugnant positions on Israel have come into focus, I have noticed the trend I mentioned above repeating itself yet again: Silence.
One would expect all the Biden supporters to express their opposition, disappointment, and frankly outrage at the president’s despicable actions. I wasn’t expecting a full mea culpa detailing how wrong all QJL Biden-supporters were, but the silence now is both conspicuous and ridiculous. Trump may not be your cup of tea, but it’s long past time for you all to take ownership of the endorsements and excuse-making for this pathetic excuse of a president. No whitewashing like with Covid; this time I say you should own it.
Jason Stark
Age
Dear Editor:
Age: a simple, yet complex word. It’s only one syllable, but it contains a myriad of implications. I admit that I’m not young, but I don’t see myself as old. That is until I attempted the trails in Sedona, Arizona, where the rocky terrain tested my mettle.
Sedona and The Grand Canyon are among the greatest wonders of the world, at which one should recite a brachah. However, without a walking stick (or two), the trek is daunting. All I could think of were, G-d forbid, broken ankles, hips, and knees. I was constantly asking myself why I hadn’t taken this trip 20 years ago. The simple answer was I didn’t have the money.
On a more positive note, the program was sponsored by Chabad, and I found their davening inspiring. True, for a Yeki, it’s hard to imagine t’filah starting at 10 a.m. instead of 9 a.m., and all the references to the Rebbe, the Baal Shem Tov, and the Mashiach were different, but nevertheless, quite moving. Whom I admired most was the shaliach who has spent the past 18 years building a shul and mikvah in Flagstaff with the help of the owner of The Home Depot. Speaking of which, I need to make a trip there now for my summer essentials.
Debbie Horowitz
Dear Editor:
Last week was a microcosm of the Democratic Party truly hating America and Israel. In legislation that was given not much media attention, the Republicans passed a bill that would add a citizenship question to the census. After all, we should want to protect the franchise and only citizens should be represented in our Congress. Well, your congresswoman, Grace Meng, said this: “A citizens-only census, as this legislation intends, is reckless, cynical, and frankly, illegal. It is not the Census Bureau’s job to keep track of immigration status.”
No, it’s the president’s job to protect our borders and he intentionally failed to do so. The framers of our Constitution never anticipated an executive and an administration that would allow ten+ million illegals to waltz into the country on a red carpet. Of course, only citizens should be represented. What this administration has done is artificially added bodies into the blue states who lost representatives in the 2020 census, thereby giving them back the representation they lost when the new count is done in 2030.
The president’s word is utterly meaningless, and his actions have proven that he, too, hates America and Israel. He has no interest in protecting Western values, and we are in tremendous peril if Biden is re-elected in November. After the talking point made its rounds between him, Press Secretary Jean-Pierre, Spokesperson “Admiral” John Kirby, State Dept. Press Secretary Miller, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin that America’s commitment to Israel is “iron-clad,” a day after the president makes a Yom HaShoah (belated) speech to reiterate that point, he goes on CNN and says that he is withholding weaponry already agreed upon to go to Israel should Israel go into Rafah. These boneheaded decisions are extremely costly, and our enemies are watching closely. Liberals, such as actor Michael Rappaport and legal scholar and professor Alan Dershowitz, have come out to say that they no longer stand by the president.
Jewish members of Congress have turned their backs on us, too! Congressman Jerry Nadler and Senator Chuck Schumer refuse to condemn the president, once again proving that Party comes first and they will and must do anything to maintain power. If it means turning their backs on Israel for votes in Michigan and Minnesota, so be it.
I seem to remember in the not-so-distant past that withholding money, or in this case weapons, already approved by Congress is an impeachable offense. So, I expect Democrats, Mr. Hecht included, to call for the impeachment of Joe Biden. After all, it’s not like defying a Supreme Court order, not following the Constitution, and defying immigration laws is impeachable. So, maybe we can finally agree on this one?
Shalom Markowitz
