May 27, 2005/Iyar 18 5765, Volume 57, No. 39
Letters to the EditorMay 27, 2005
'Concerned students' - too little, tooEditor:I was an invited guest on the occasion of the bat mitzvah when the "Shande at the shul" occurred (In the Mail, Jewish News, May 13). My friends and I were enjoying the service and taking pride in the outstanding performance by the bat mitvah when several young girls came into the sanctuary and sat directly behind us. The girls never looked at a prayer book and did not stop talking and laughing from the moment they entered the sanctuary until they finally left. They were loud and completely out of control. The "concerned students" who wrote to the editor ("Students seek forgiveness for shul disruption," Jewish News, May 20), expressing sorrow and forgiveness, stated that being reprimanded by the Jewish News letter-writer embarrassed them, their families and their school. Were they not embarrassed when the rabbi pointedly interrupted the service at least three times to try to quell their behavior? The writer of the "Shande at the shul" letter need not be blamed for raising the issue. The students felt it would have been more appropriate if the rabbi had addressed their misconduct. In fact, besides the rabbi, several audience members as well asked the girls to be quiet and respectful. Being self-described "kids with a lot of energy" is no excuse for flagrant misconduct. Younger children who were in attendance did not find it impossible to behave responsibly and respectfully. The student letter writers' missive conveyed an insincere apology, and displayed neither respect nor humility. The students shamed themselves, their parents and their school. Gayle Smilack Scottsdale The RJC is 'spinning' its statistics Editor: Last week's commentary ("Jewish vote still strongly Democratic," Jewish News, May 20) by Steve Israel was an excellent article for all to read. I find it amazing how Republicans can spin the demographic studies, as demonstrated by Les Cherow of the Republican Coalition of Arizona ("Numbers of Jewish Republicans increasing?" Jewish News, May 20). It was actually the Kerry pollster Mark Mellman who found a strong link between religious observance and partisan behavior, in a survey made prior to the election. According to Mellman's surveys, Jews who attended religious services weekly will split their votes evenly between Bush and Kerry, while Kerry amassed big leads among those who attended less often. But actually, Frank Luntz, a respected Republican strategist with experience in analyzing the Jewish voting behavior, sampled Jewish voters in Ohio and Florida and found that 25 percent of them had voted for Bush. Moreover, Luntz parsed the vote as follows: The more religious a Jewish voter, the more likely he or she was to vote for Bush. Thus, following trends for non-Jews, 40 percent of Jews who attended synagogue weekly voted for the president, as did more than two-thirds (69 percent) of Orthodox Jewish voters, compared to 23 percent of Conservative and 15 percent of Reform Jews. Young Jewish men trended more heavily toward President Bush than the Jewish population as a whole. An estimated 39 percent of Jewish men aged 18 to 49 voted for Bush; only 21 percent of Jewish women over age 50 did so. Generally, the younger the Jewish voter, the more likely he or she was to vote for the president. (In contrast, exit polls of the general population found young voters were more likely to support Kerry; the only age segment in which the senator won majority support was among 18-to-29-year-olds, where he led the president 54 to 45 percent.) Not since the 1980 election of Reagan (39 percent) has the Jewish vote exceeded 24 percent Republican. Since the Clinton years, the Republican Jewish vote has hovered around the 20 to 24 percent range. Lenore Velinsky-Stravitz Phoenix Republicans the party of progress?!Editor:In response to Les Cherow's claim that more Jews are gravitating to the Republican Party ("Number of Jewish Republicans increasing?" Jewish News, May 20), I am appalled that free-thinking people today would even consider entertaining the nonsense that Republicans represent American progress or freedom. The greatest threat to America is not foreign terrorism, but the Christian theocracy of the right. Today's Republican leaders seem intent on eliminating constitutional rights and progress in the spirit of the 17th century, when those who dared to think independently were quickly led to the rack or burned at the stake. Clearly today's target of the right wing is the gay population. Once they've accomplished that goal, who's next? The Jews? The blacks? The Latinos? Given the hypocrisy of the "culture of life," where the only life that's sacred is that of the unborn, where the poor and disadvantaged are quickly sacrificed in the war on terror and poor children and families are deprived of any compassion or much-needed help, while middle America is rapidly being pushed into poverty to advance the agenda of the right, I am left bewildered as to why some members of a free society would bind themselves to a party whose obvious intent is to destroy what our ancestry gave their lives in building: the future of real progress. Mark Merkow Tempe
|
