No fee, no shame
Following in the spirit of Peninsula Sinai Congregation’s new practice of voluntary dues (“One donation, no fees, does it all at Peninsula Sinai Congregation,” Sept. 2), Bay Area synagogues that publicize “no one turned away (from attending High Holy Day services) for lack of funds” may want to consider an honor system that doesn’t require financially distressed attendees to declare their inability to pay.
Alan Wald | Pacifica
Tall tales from Alon Tal
In Alon Tal’s Aug. 19 op-ed (“Israel’s growing population is not sustainable”), he writes that Israel needs to deal with its overpopulation problem and then, strangely, adds that world Jewry has replaced the 6 million lost in the Holocaust.
Israel was not founded to replace those murdered Jews. It is the fulfillment of a 2,000-year-old dream to re-create the Jewish nation. Moreover, if replacement of lost Jews was the goal, the measurement of success would be the scores of millions of descendants those 6 million would have created.
Tal argues that Israel’s density is high and that we need to preserve green space. The center of Israel is dense. However, the choice is not between stopping aliyah and destroying forests. There are many opportunities for infill development and other smart-growth strategies in the center of Israel. More population does not require destroying virgin territory.
The Galilee and the Negev can certainly accommodate many more people, and the demographics argue for it. Many of us have argued that increasing the Jewish population in those areas should have been the priority over the years rather than new communities in the territories. Again, smart planning and modern transportation can encourage more population as well as environmental values in those areas.
There are often arguments about which Israeli issues American Jews should get involved in. Israelis have gotten into the habit of running to New York and, in the case of Tal’s op-ed, San Francisco, with their disputes.
Of all the issues that I would think are exclusively a domestic dispute for Israelis, I would have thought population growth was one. I wondered why Mr. Tal would take the argument to the U.S. Then I noted that he is promoting his book. I give him credit for being blunt about it.
Alan Edelstein | Jerusalem & Sacramento
Israel travel warning insulting
On Aug. 23, the State Department updated its “Israel, The West Bank and Gaza Travel Warning” on its official web site. (https://travel.state.gov/content/passports/en/alertswarnings/israel-travel-warning.html)
The warning begins by advising against travel to the Gaza Strip, which it laudably notes is controlled by Hamas, a “foreign terrorist organization.” However the next paragraph, concerning the Palestinian Authority-ruled West Bank, refers to “a spike in violence,” while obscuring the fact that Palestinians are behind the terror and Jews are being targeted. And the travel warning’s next sentence expressly condemns Israel for casualties resulting from its efforts to defend its citizens.
The reference to the rise in tensions from October 2015 also ignores Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s role in inciting the terror wave with his Sept. 16, 2015 speech in which he declared “we welcome every drop of blood spilled in Jerusalem” and denounced Jews visiting Jerusalem’s Temple Mount because “they have no right to defile it with their filthy feet.”
The State Department warning misleads U.S. citizens and is unfair to Israel. It also insults the memory of murdered American citizens Eitam Henkin, Ezra Schwartz and Taylor Force, as well as Israeli victims like Aharon Banita-Bennet, Rabbi Nehemia Lavi, Dafna Meir and 13-year-old Hallel Yaffa Ariel. It should be changed immediately.
Stephen A. Silver | San Francisco