Dear Editor:
The Jewish community has had a strong ally and voice in government through Assembly Member Daniel Rosenthal. Daniel has proven to be the fierce advocate and effective leader we need in these challenging times. This election will be a pivotal moment for our city, and Daniel Rosenthal is the right person to be our representative in the Assembly.
In recent years, we have witnessed an unprecedented increase in anti-Semitism across New York City. Violence against Jews, vandalism on our houses of worship, and discriminatory practices have unfortunately entered mainstream politics. Through his leadership, Daniel Rosenthal has stood against hate every step of the way.
Daniel spearheaded the New York State Assembly’s response against the NYC Democratic Socialists of America, who issued an anti-Semitic questionnaire asking candidates to bar visits to the State of Israel. His letter received national attention while securing support from over 50 Democratic Assembly colleagues against this dangerous rhetoric. As the political tide swings sharply left, Daniel Rosenthal has proven that he has the courage and conviction to fight for what is right, despite current political whims.
Congresswoman Grace Meng is and always has been a champion for our district: tirelessly fighting for our needs, and standing up for the values and ideals that make this community so special. In these tremulous times, it is important to have a representative who is honorable, principled, and has the courage of her convictions.
As a member of the House Appropriations Committee, Congresswoman Meng has demonstrated unwavering support for Israel. While some have called for reducing and conditioning aid to Israel, she has consistently been an outspoken advocate for $3.3 billion in critical security assistance and for $500 million in cooperative US-Israel missile defense programs essential for Israel’s defense. Congresswoman Meng has also secured millions of dollars in security funding for our local religious institutions. She is not merely the representative of our community, she is a friend. Congresswoman Meng broke ranks with her own party to vote against the Iran deal. This solidified her as an independent voice that was willing to do the right thing no matter the consequences.
This letter is not a political ad for any individual, but it is to uphold the integrity and dignity of two individuals who have been serving our nation and community with passion and pride.
David Berger
Sorolle Idels
Meshulam Lisker
Jennifer Martin
Dr. Dini Pelman
Shimi Pelman
Jacob Weinberg
David Steinberg
Dear Editor:
I read Warren Hecht’s article in the October 1 issue of the Queens Jewish Link.
I think he hit the nail on the head, and his comparison to Achashveirosh is spot on.
One thing he mentioned only briefly really bothers me: How can our co-religionists believe in Trump when his behavior and beliefs are so antithetical to Jewish values?
We are taught midvar sheker tirchak. We are also taught that when you get to the Beis Din shel Maalah, the first question you are asked is about your honesty in business dealings. He wrote an entire book, The Art of the Deal, glorifying how he lies and cheats in business. It has also been widely reported that he cheats at golf.
We believe that adultery is one of the three most serious transgressions. He is a serial philanderer. He has cheated on all three wives, multiple times. He has boasted about feeling women’s privates. He has talked openly about lusting after his own daughters. How much lower can you go?
We value life. We may set aside Shabbos, and even Yom Kippur, to save a life. He disregards life by belittling COVID prevention measures and encouraging others to do the same. His position on abortion goes against halachah. He would ban all abortions. We allow an abortion to save the mother’s life. Women will die under his plan.
We value charity. He stole from his own foundation. He belittled Puerto Ricans who needed serious help after the hurricane (Maria?). Throwing paper towels into the crowd was not charitable; it was insulting. I believe (just a guess) that one of the reasons he won’t show his tax returns is that they will show he gave little, if any, charity.
We learn from Avraham Avinu the importance of hachnasas orchim. I realize immigrants at your border are more complex than a simple wanderer at your door. But, tearing apart families, forcing hysterectomies, and caging people are diametrically opposed to our teachings of compassion and respect for our fellow humans.
Sh’mitah was probably one of the first, albeit crude, forms of crop rotation. This protects the soil. We are taught to be kind and compassionate to animals, in various halachos. He works hard to destroy the planet.
I do not believe he is law-abiding while we believe in dina d’malchusa dina. I believe that AG James and DA Vance are putting a lot of effort into investigating him because they already have found quite a bit. They wouldn’t work so hard on a case if they did not believe there would be a successful prosecutorial outcome.
Thank you for letting me sound off. I feel very strongly about this issue. I often feel like I am an island. I live in what is now a red zone (Midwood) and feel I am being punished because those around me wear horse blinders and are letting themselves be led down a derech that is far from Yiddishkeit.
May you, and yours, be blessed for a year of health and happiness.
Frimette Kass-Shraibman, PhD, CPA
Dear Editor:
I would like to respond to Warren Hecht’s opinion, “Life Trumps Supporting the President” (10/01/2020). He makes a comparison between King Achashveirosh of Purim and Trump. His argument is that Trump and Achashveirosh were evil even though they helped Jews. As we know, Achashveirosh gave Haman permission to commit genocide against the Jews. Hecht claims that Trump is even worse because he used COVID-19 to murder over 200,000 people in the US. Hecht further claims that Trump is responsible for many deaths in the frum community. Unfortunately, Warren’s unbridled hatred for Trump and the Republican Party has caused him to take leave of his senses. Warren is entitled to his own opinion, not his own facts.
Trump was the one who stopped the flights from China in January 2020. At that time, all the experts, including Dr. Fauci, said the virus was a dud. Biden, Pelosi, and the rest of the Democrats criticized Trump for being a racist, and claimed that he just hates Chinese people. It was Trump who showed leadership in taking action to help develop therapeutics and vaccines. I spoke to a prestigious MD recently who told me that Trump has done an incredible job with the therapeutics. Trump shut down the economy when he had to. But he is working to bring us back. Biden would have kept the coming in from China and there would have been more deaths. Biden would have shut the economy down until the country went bankrupt.
Schumer, Biden, and Kamala would support the filibuster and pack the courts. This means that the liberal Democrats would simply add liberal judges to the courts until they were in absolute control. They could also add new states and gives illegals the right to vote. This would give the liberal Democratic Party absolute permanent power. This would be a disaster for the US. We must pray that this does not happen. The Democratic Party is the party of Farrakhan and Soros. It would be a disaster for the Jews and this country if they ever get into power (chas v’shalom). I pray that that will never happen.
Trump has strengthened our military and furthered the cause of world peace. In particular, Trump has dealt a heavy blow against terrorism. Suicide bombers are no longer paid by the US to murder Jewish children. Biden promises to restore these payments. Trump has stood up to China and Iran. Biden will lick their shoes. Biden promises to end tariffs on China and restore the Iran Agreement. Biden caters to China because his son gets millions from them. Trump has been the most pro-Jewish president in history. We must give him our support.
Martin Berkowitz
Dear Editor:
The article in your paper by Joseph Frager saying no to sainthood for Pope Pius XII gives a good part of the reason the Pope should not be considered for sainthood. There are other reasons that go beyond the silence when Rome’s Jews were deported. Rather than considering him for sainthood, he really deserves the title of Satan of his generation. He was the world leader of Christianity. If he believed in or cared about his religion, he would have been the loudest voice to oppose Hitler and Nazism. Instead, he became the greatest enabler of Hitler, before, during, and after the war. The Vatican now claims “the church is not afraid of history.” The church is not afraid because they have falsified history.
Hitler’s main goal was a total world war against Jews, physically destroying Jews and any vestiges that Jews ever existed. Germany was an all-Christian country, so Hitler turned Christianity into a form of paganism. Dorothy Thompson was a foreign correspondent in Germany in the early 1930s. She offered an exposition on how Hitler’s Germany was systematically engaged in “the pulverization of nations.” She explained that this process had also destroyed the essential ingredients – “law, culture, institutions” – that had once constituted the German nation. In its place, there now was “a race of people, held together, not by a state... but a tribe, held together by a secular church, a pagan religious order, the Nazi party.” This was ignored by the Pope in those years.
One of the biggest cover-ups between the church and Nazism is carried on to the present time in the English-speaking world with the word “swastika.” The definition given for the word in the Oxford English Dictionary is: “an ancient symbol in the form of an equal-armed cross, with each arm continued at a right angle, used as an emblem of the German Nazi Party.” This explanation is a total lie. The Germans called it a “hackenkreutz,” a chopped cross. Hitler took the basic symbol of Christianity, the cross, and broke it.
As a result of the silence from the Pope, it is on record that 80 percent of religious leaders openly embraced the new Nazi religion and willingly rewrote their bible to conform to Mein Kampf, Hitler’s “bible.” Only a small group of active members from a variety of denominations, called the Confessing Church, struggled to survive and maintain their loyalty to their region. A book by one of them, Pastor Wilhelm Harnisch, tells the story in the title of the book – Out of Step.
Communism said that you cannot go to any house of worship, even to get married. Germans could go to church in the Hitler era, but they were met at the front door by a sign of “Heil (holy) Hitler” instead of the traditional German sign “Gruss G-t” (Bless G-d). The altar was covered not with the usual paraments, the cross, the Bible, or the presence of the German flag, but with a sword, a standing copy of Hitler’s Mein Kampf, and the “hackenkreutz.” The pastor was no longer allowed to preach, for the intention of the State was to have pulpits used for orations given by agents of the Third Reich. Hitler’s ultimate goal was to replace all current religion with the ancient Germanic gods of Odin, Thor, and Freia, with himself as the leader. The defenders of their religion received no support from the Vatican.
A Catholic priest, Yosef Speaker, who defended his church during a sermon, was thrown into a concentration camp. He was almost beaten to death “not by barbarians, but his fellow civilized, German-speaking countrymen.” During his ordeal of trial and arrest, none of his peers or superiors helped him.
After the war, the Vatican facilitated the escape route for many of the top Nazis, like Eichmann and Mengele. The German bishops opposed the Nuremberg trials. Their attitude was that “they were only doing things for the Vaterland and Let G-d punish them.”
We know that “Ein od milvado” – All things come from Hashem. But looking back at history in a “natural” way: Had the Pope, as top man of his religion, spoken out, to defend his own religion against Nazism, a form of paganism, history could have taken another turn. The letters nun, alef, tzadi – as the word “neitz” (Nazi) appear in three Psalms and is translated as “those who blasphemy Hashem.” They will ultimately lose.
After a month of personal and communal prayers to Hashem, may we see our prayers answered in a good, sweet, and healthy way.
Elli Epstein
Dear Editor:
In last week’s issue of the Queens Jewish Link, Warren Hecht defends Governor Cuomo’s great job in dealing with the COVID pandemic. What he fails to mention is that the governor placed thousands of COVID-ridden patients in nursing homes, thereby killing thousands of seniors! By all standards, it’s not a stellar record!
Warren concludes, “He should be praised instead of vilified, as opposed to Trump’s laissez-faire approach.” Your title was, “What Would You Have Done?” If you are asking me, I would not let Trump derangement syndrome and a love for our Democrat governor cloud my judgment!
Michael Rollhaus
Dear Editor:
As I was reading Mr. Hecht’s latest piece, I kept nodding my head in agreement. However, as is his MO, he was bound to blame Trump, so I was cautiously optimistic that there’d be no mention of the President. Again, he didn’t let us down. Buried in the last sentence: Trump didn’t take the virus seriously, or as he writes, “laissez-faire approach.”
The President doesn’t have jurisdiction over New York; Governor Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio do. Trump did and has done everything in his federal power to protect everyone. He shut down travel from China. He got private businesses to stop what they were doing and produce massive amounts of PPE and ventilators for hospitals and health care workers. Now he has distribution in place when a vaccine is approved by the FDA. He has done unbelievable things to make sure we are safe without overstepping his authority.
Meanwhile, it’s clear that both our governor and mayor are enjoying this new-found power and abusing it to the nth degree. Yes, they’re trying to protect New Yorkers, but it’s clear it’s not based on science. It’s political.
A study was released last week that schools are not super-spreaders. The WHO came out and stated that lockdowns are not healthy and should only be done as last-case scenarios. Well, apparently Cuomo and de Blasio don’t seem to believe the WHO, because it appears lockdowns are their go-to when they need to flex their authority muscles. And keeping schools closed so kids can’t learn seems to be a good thing.
Yes, we should all mask and socially distance. We can have “normal” if we continue to mask and socially distance. To do otherwise is a chilul Hashem and will cause unnecessary sickness or, chas v’shalom, death. But don’t say the President didn’t take this seriously; that is just a smear.
Daniel Grossman
Woodmere
Dear Editor:
It is a rarity that my opinion or submission runs in the Queens Jewish Link despite my position as the advertising manager and co-publisher; I make a conscious effort not to be involved in the content published. The QJL also has a policy, in effect since its inception, of not endorsing any political candidate.
During our eight years, I have become the recognizable face of the paper, and am fortunate to count many of our elected officials as friends. To this end, I receive much of the praise, as well as the criticism.
We pride ourselves on showcasing conflicting opinion articles highlighting the diversity of our esteemed community. Complaints from the political Right-wing question, “Why is this column still in the QJL?” The same goes for the political Left who demand, “Why is that column still in the paper?”
At the QJL, we attempt to place each letter submitted. Some weeks we receive many, while others we get none.
Last week, we printed a letter concerning two of our elected officials. I preface this reiterating that the Queens Jewish Link does not endorse any candidate for office.
Firstly, I would like to take a moment to congratulate my good friend Assembly Member Daniel Rosenthal on steadfastly helping our community. Last week, there were summonses issued to two yeshivas in our area for violations they did not commit. Assembly Member Rosenthal and Council Member Rory Lancman were able to rid these institutions of their unwarranted fines. I also understand the parking situation spanning forty years in front of Rosenblum’s of Kew Gardens was resolved by Dan Rosenthal.
Additionally, in my admiration of Assembly Member Rosenthal, I feel it important to mention that he makes sure to consult with da’as Torah on his efforts in the State Assembly.
Next, I want thank U.S. Representative Grace Meng for her poignant statement in support of the Jewish community when our ZIP Codes were recently singled out by local government officials.
Since elected to office, Congresswoman Meng has remained dedicated to our community’s needs, from assisting small businesses with loans to receiving security grants for our schools and institutions. No federal matter is overlooked, and the needs of Israel and the Jewish people remain paramount in her daily civic duty.
This week, our readers will find Manny Behar’s interview with Congresswoman Meng. The Representative is also scheduled to partake in a Zoom call with Young Israel of Kew Gardens Hills congregants on October 22.
The fundamental purpose of our periodical remains to link all our communities. My hope and prayer is to accomplish this in our neighborhoods – and beyond. We hope to be together in Yerushalyim Ir Hakodesh with Mashiach shortly.
Thank you,
Yaakov Serle