Letter

It’s Dunetz who ‘misunderstands’ Rosh Hashana

Posted

To the editor,

I was astounded to learn from Jeff Dunetz (“Obama misunderstands Rosh Hashana’s meaning,” Oct. 3) that the true meaning of Rosh Hashanah was that progressive politics were “antithetical” to “the teaching of personal responsibility embedded in Rosh Hashanah” and that Jewish methods of atonement, apparently, go against progressive values. Jeff keeps repeating the word “progressive” without bothering to provide a definition or any particular examples to illustrate what he actually means.  

Last month, PBS broadcast a wonderful new documentary about the Roosevelts (for Jeff Dunetz, it would have been excruciating TV). The series profiled Theodore Roosevelt, the father of political progressivism, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who considered TR his personal and political hero. TR, and later, FDR, used federal power to enact atonement-killing policies like child labor laws, which were bitterly opposed by many industrialists, and New Deal legislation like Social Security. They were atonement-killing because, before their passage, we all had to atone for allowing small children to work in coal mines and old people to become destitute.

As we all know, after those laws were passed, most children and the elderly immediately stopped going to shul on Yom Kippur, and others proposed replacing Al Chet with Yesh Lanu Zechus.  

The few remaining elderly shul-goers stopped going when Congress passed progressive Great Society legislation like Medicare and Medicaid — obviously, because the New Deal and Great Society deprived synagogues of the opportunity to provide homeless seniors and destitute families with food, shelter, and health care, which had the added benefit of getting them into shul on Yom Kippur to atone.    

Jeff provides other nuggets, nay, tall straw men of wisdom. Progressives apparently believe that all people are created with equal talents and abilities.

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