Letters to the Editor 6-12-09

Issue of June 12, 2009 / 20 Sivan 5769

The article was overrated too?

To the Editor:

According to an article in last week’s issue (Flipping out in Israel is overrated; June 5, 2009), “only” 25 percent of the 600 students in the study had a dramatic or transformative change in their religious values after a year of study in Israel. Only? That is one in four!

The study then goes on to explain away the significance of this conclusion by stating that of those students in the 25 percent group, most reported coming from families with stronger conflict and less cohesion than students who experienced less change, or, stated more frankly, from more dysfunctional families. That would also imply that the remaining 75% of the students who came from families with less conflict and more cohesion would not be expected to experience dramatic or transformative change. One would not have to conduct a study to recognize the conclusion and its implication as dubious.

Also, in light of the subjective standards used as criteria for the study and the bias shown in its conclusions, one may wonder if even the “only” 25 percent figure is understated.

If you feel flipping out is overrated, ask the parents and friends of those who have. It appears that it is the study (or the prominent reporting of it) that is overrated.

Jacob Steiner

Woodmere

Obama’s Cairo speech misguided

To the Editor:

President Obama’s misguided pairing of the Holocaust and the Jewish right to a homeland portrays an inaccurate and misleading justification for Israel’s existence.

The Jewish nation has centuries old Biblical ties to the Holy Land, promised by G-d himself to the children of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. This unassailable guarantee trumps all other legitimate Jewish entitlements to the land.

Arab appeasement — or today’s politically correct term, moral equivalence — serves only to hand Holocaust deniers and anti-Semites further fodder for their intractable bigotry, a despicable insolence that fifty Presidential missions to Buchenwald won’t ever change.

Chaskel Bennett

Hillary was welcomed in Five Towns

To the Editor:

It was not so long ago that, unknown to its general membership, a group of prominent Five Towns individuals went to meet and greet Hillary Clinton at a local shul. This is the same Hillary Clinton who now, as a response to a latter day Hitler attempting to get control of weapons of mass destruction, has demanded in effect that not a single additional Jewish baby should be born into the so-called West Bank.

Lawrence