While arts editor Aaron Leibel's choice to review Jim Keen's book Inside Intermarriage ("A different view on intermarriage," WJW, Aug. 10) was commendable, his tone was not. In this important new book, Keen details his journey as a Protestant man married to a Jewish woman and their decision to raise their children as Jews. Leibel can barely disguise how ridiculous he finds that premise.
Keen depicts in great detail the Jewish choices he and his wife have made when raising their daughters, from their brit bat to their enrollment in Hebrew school to their celebration of Shabbat. Leibel acknowledges that Keen "insists on taking an active part in teaching [his daughters] about their religion and to be proud of their faith."
Yet Leibel still questions whether they will grow up to be Jewish adults. He suggests that the only way to guarantee Keen's daughters' Jewishness is for their synagogue to "make it plain that for him to continue as a member, he must convert." We have a better question: Who does he think he's kidding?
Leibel's suggestion is as misguided as it is presumptuous. As he says in his review, Keen's Christian faith plays an important role in his life. Keen has considered conversion, but he can't abandon his strongly held religious beliefs. If he were to convert, it would be a lie to himself and his family. Moreover, if his synagogue were to demand that he convert, they would risk alienating Keen's family from the Jewish community, and risk erasing all the hard Jewish work that Keen and his family have done. Leibel's approach would create fewer Jewish families, not more.
Admittedly, as the original publishers of many of the essays in Keen's book, we're a bit biased. But we're no more biased than Leibel, who uses an apparently innocuous book review as an opportunity to express his contempt for intermarriage.
EDMUND CASE, President and publisher of InterfaithFamily.com
MICAH SACHS, Online managing editor of InterfaithFamily.com
Shame on RJC
Shame on the Republican Jewish Coalition for running two ads last week that desperately tried to denigrate the Democratic Party. One equates the Democratic Party positions on Israel with recent statements by Jimmy Carter.
The RJC takes an issue of great bipartisan agreement ‹ support for a strong U.S.-Israel relationship ‹ and turns it into a partisan, wedge issue.
All objective observers of U.S. politics agree that both of our two major political parties are remarkably supportive of Israel. For the RJC, however, it appears that twisting the truth for some partisan gain is apparently more important than maintaining bipartisan support for the Jewish state.
It is true that in both parties, there are a handful of politicians who are not part of this bipartisan consensus. Jimmy Carter is one of these "outsiders."
Yet leave it to the RJC to bring further shame on itself by playing games with Carter's quotes from a long interview. The ad truthfully quotes one sentence in which the former president is critical of Israel.
But then it further quotes him as saying, "I represent the vast majority of Democrats." The implication being that Carter represents the views of the Democratic Party on Israel. Yet this "vast majority" quote comes much later on in the interview when Carter is talking about other issues.
Leave it to the RJC to cut, paste and connect two completely unrelated sentences and then link them together as if they are one. Joe McCarthy would be proud.
Jewish newspapers, like all newspapers, have an obligation to not print false and misleading ads. We hope that in the coming weeks, as RJC slings more mud, this newspaper will fact-check its ad copy to make sure the RJC doesn't continue to use these pages to violently twist the truth.
MARC STANLEY
First vice chair, National Jewish Democratic Council
Poor analogies
The recent advertisements in WJW by the Republican Jewish Committee illustrate how little this group knows about history and foreign affairs. As to its analogy of Democrats being appeasers because of the war in Iraq, historically it has been the Republicans who have implemented "cut-and-run" policies in all American wars since World War 11.
Dwight Eisenhower ran on a platform of ending the Korean War, and established a truce that has lasted 50 years. The Nixon/Ford administration stopped fighting and left South Vietnam to the North Vietnamese. Ronald Reagan withdrew the Marines from Lebanon rather than fight Hezbollah. George Bush, the First, fought a 90-hour battle in Iraq and then withdrew American forces.
Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were major policy makers in the Ford and the first Bush administrations. So, were all of these presidents appeasers?
Neville Chamberlain's appeasement consisted of trading off existing countries in Europe to Hitler, so that Europe would not be overrun by the Nazis. He did this before England went to war.
The opposition to the current war in Iraq, however, is based on the incompetence of the war planners in the second Bush administration. The difference is that England survived because American war planners, at that time, knew how to mobilize American resources and then went on to defeat both Germany and Japan in the same amount of time that the current American forces have been tied down in Iraq.
WWII ended with the unconditional surrenders of Germany and Japan. When, if ever, will we get an unconditional surrender from the insurgents in Iraq?
GENE SADICK
Silver Spring
Misuse of the Holocaust
The two ads of the Republican Jewish Coalition that appeared in the Sept. 7 edition should elicit the cry of "Shame, shame on you, have you no sense of human dignity left" from all Jews who honor the holy memory of those murdered in the Holocaust and those who seek truth and justice.
The first ad links Neville Chamberlain, Hitler, appeasement and our 6 million souls with those of us who think that President George W. Bush's policies and programs have been failures.
It is a classic misuse of the Holocaust for political purposes. It is a McCarthyesque strategy. Its simple vulgarity and desecration of memory, truth and martyred souls is almost beneath our contempt, but we must register our disgust.
The second ad attempts to suggest that President Jimmy Carter's comment published in Der Spiegel magazine demonstrates that the vast majority of Democrats do not support Israel and her right of self-defense. This is another example of sleaze, blatant attempts to smear millions of Americans and Jews and outright telling of a "big lie."
First, most congressional Democrats issued strong condemnations of the actions of both Hezbollah and Hamas. Second, the vast majority of Democrats and the official statements of the party have and continue to support Israel, to strongly condemn and fight anti-Semitism and to wage war against terrorists. Third, to criticize the president's handling of the war against terrorism is by no means appeasement or a sign of weakness. Quite the contrary, it is an attempt to stop the path toward a worldwide cataclysmic war of destruction that will endanger Israel's existence.
It is time for the Republican Jewish Coalition to pull itself out of the muck of hatred, confusion and deliberate lying to enter into a respectful dialogue with those who have differing views.
ROBERT E. AGUS
Chevy Chase
