Letter-Writers Maintain Sanity at NYT

1. "Letters: My 'Good Book'"; BK Review; 8
2. "Letters: Obama's Rabbi"; NYT Mag; 8
   

Once again, readers carry the day in NYT print through the the Letters' sections. Rabbi Ariel Stone thrashes David Plotz, author of Good Book, which was reviewed nearly a month ago in NYT's Book Review. 

Calling Plotz an "alienated modern," Rabbi Stone demonstrates a respect for the Tanakh combined with a modern sensibility, the mark of a good Jewish teacher. Unphased by Plotz's "casual condemnation" of the Jewish holy text, Rabbi Stone praises the "profound impressions" of our teachers. 

In the Magazine, Zev Chafets, who wrote "Obama's Rabbi" on April 5, also receives a lashing - from Holly Rothkopf. Chafets "[glosses] over the whole Black Hebrew Israelite movement...[and] doesn't come close to explaining why the world's Jewish community might be unwelcoming or suspicious of [the] movement," writes Rothkopf.

A second letter-writer, Susan Kessell, expresses disappointment with another hateful association maintained by Michelle Obama's cousin, Capers Funnye - Louis Farrakhan.

Most lamentable with regard to Chafet's piece and the response to it, however, is the printing of a letter expressing a fringe view about Ashkenazi Jewry and its relationship to the Khazar converts of the eighth and ninth centuries. The way the letter-writer frames the relationship borders on a kind of hate speech, as it seeks to delegitimize American Jewry.