Jewish Post, Indianapolis, Marion County, 8 January 2003 — Page 19

Letters

January 8. 2003 NAT 15

FREEDOM OF THE PRESS — The Post and Opinion encourages readers to send letters. All letters to the editor should be addressed to The Jewish Post and Opinion, 238 S. Meridian St., Suite 502, Indianapolis, IN 46225, or by e-mail: [email protected].

Meat-milk mixing OK for Abraham Dear editor, The Algemeiner Journal's Joseph Jacobson is too much the apologist for the biblical Abraham in stating that Abraham first gave his guests milk and cheese and then meat in Genesis 18:8. The text clearly states "He took curds and milk and the calf that had been prepared and set these before them..." The Plant "Torah" commentary states: "The text is of course oblivious of later Jewish dietary laws which forbade serving milk and meat at the same meal." The Etz Hayim Torah commentary states: "... they ate milk and meat together (which was forbidden only after the giving of the Torah at Sinai). Serving milk and meat together was undoubtedly a Canaanite custom which Abraham followed. Edward J. Klein Jamaica, NY

Time to speak out Dear editor, Silence is betrayal. We urge American Jewish leaders: SPEAK OUT! One generation ago, Dr Martin Luther King and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel said, "A time comes when silence is betrayal. That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam." Today that time has come again. We ourselves must speak out, and we call on our Jewish leaders to speak out: Speak out against the march to a U.S. war against Iraq. We know that Iraq is not Vietnam. Iraq must not be allowed to pour death upon the world. But we also know that this war would endanger America and Israel and the entire world much more than Vietnam did and that peaceful means are already at work toward peaceful ends. Dr. King, April 4,1967, precisely one year before he was murdered: "1 speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it

stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." Rabbi Heschel said: "For many years I lived by the conviction that my destiny is to serve in the realm of privacy... [But] in regard to cruelties committed in the name of a free society, some are guilty, while all are responsible. I did not feel guilty as an individual American for the bloodshed in Vietnam, but I felt deeply responsible. And so I decided to change my mode of living and to become active in the cause of peace in Vietnam." Most of the American Jewish leadership has failed to speak out vigorously against the march to war, even though the war will endanger many Iraqi, American, Israeli, and other lives; will take hundreds of billions of dollars from America's own people, from health care for our seniors, schools for our children, healing for the earth; will increase the unaccountable power of the oil companies and regimes that have provided money to both the Bush Administration and the A1 Qaeda terrorists, that have corrupted American politics and robbed American stockholders, that poison the air and befoul the seas and scorch the earth; has already deeply wounded human rights and civil liberties not only for Arabs and Muslims in America but even for Persian Jewish immigrants who along with Muslims were rounded up, imprisoned, and threatened with deportation to the regimes they fled; has occasioned (as reported by the Washington Post, front page, December 26) the torture of U.S. prisoners held overseas by the CIA. Some leaders may be silent out of personal belief. Others may be under pressure to keep silent, as indeed were both Dr. King and Rabbi Heschel 35

years ago. King and Heschel spoke anyway. Today we firmly, gently, seriously urge our leaders to do the same. So let us speak out: For continuing vigorous steps of unimpeded inspection to free the world from fear of Iraqi weaponry; For a Marshall Plan of food and medicine to free Iraqi children from disease and malnutrition; For transferring one hundred billion dollars at once from the super-budget for this war to meeting our needs at home; For strengthening instead of slashing civil liberties, for halting the Bush Big Brother programs that will shatter our rights and privacy, for restoring open government where the Bush Administration has sealed the public out; Against worsening this crisis and endangering us all by a reckless, destructive attack upon Iraq. We ask our Jewish leadership to speak out. Please call one of these people: Rabbi Jerome Epstein, executive vice-president, United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, 212-533-7800; Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (Reform), 212-650-4000; Hannah Rosenthal, executive director of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, 212-684-6950. Also call your own rabbi or the director of your Hillel or your Jewish Community Center or JCRC. Remind them politely, with concern rather than anger. The time has come when silence is betrayal. To paraphrase the words of the prophet Isaiah (62:1): For Zion's sake, I will not hold my tongue. For the children's sake I will not stand in silence. For America's sake I will not hold back my wailing, Until the vindication of humanity goes forth as brightness, And healing for the earth as a shining torch. Arthur Waskow The Shalom Center Philadelphia

Hofmann Continued from prev. page The Christian concept of prayer is somehow inextricably bound to supplication, again reinforcing that personified image of a God/Father. Jewish prayer, on the other hand, is more a template, a structure, a means of creating a habit of continuous appreciation for the wonders of life. The endless blessings that constitute the bulk of Jewish prayers position a person to stop and smell the roses all the time and to draw strength from doing so. I hearken to the meditation in Gates of Prayer that goes: Prayer invites God to let his presence suffuse our spirits, to let his will prevail in our lives. Prayer cannot bring water to parched fields, nor mend a broken bridge, nor rebuild a ruined city; but prayer can water an arid soul, mend a broken heart, and rebuild a weakened will. What prayer can do, always, is to center the self, to be a vehicle for gathering strength from a universal energy source as well as from each other, and using that strength to move forward. We are, in this paradigm, choosing to gain strength and support by opening ourselves and letting our vulnerabilities show so we can accept and absorb that strength. Yes, in a way we are "giving ourselves over to a higher power," because

alone we cannot control our destinies. But by making that choice and allowing ourselves to be vulnerable to each other and to a universal source requires the strength to risk, to feel, to grow, and to be present in our lives at all levels while acknowledging our tininess as individuals. Philosophers play with ideas and manipulate concepts. While I, too, recoil at the prospect of "handing my problems" over to a "higher power" that watches over me like a benevolent Big Brother (how helpless and pathetic that makes us feel), I have no trouble — now that I understand how — in quieting myself, shutting out the clutter and noise of the world, and opening myself up to calmness, healing, and the positive energy found in caring relationships and in meditation or prayer — whether that prayer is in the form of verbal blessings or totally nonverbal silence at the center of myself. 1 don't believe in fate. I don't believe in a God who can control my actions or give me cancer — or cure me of it. That doesn't preclude, however, my believing I can access a power from which I can draw strength and beauty and a better way of coping with tht clutter. And I found this in Judaism. Man/ Hofmann mail be reached at P.O. Box 723, Merced, CA 9534(1. [email protected].

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