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Scandal

The latest corruption scandal in New Jersey including rabbis should send a loud message to all those who think it is good for Jews to vote in a bloc. I have repeatedly warned the Jewish community that some political leader will use the leadership of the Jewish community to make deals that benefit both parties involved.

This scandal gives ammunition to anti-Semites who repeat Hitler's horrific statements about the Jews and their control of world commerce and industry. It is ironic that the news broke during the Nine Days, a time of mourning for Jews worldwide because of the destruction of the Temple and other horrific events. Please note it was a corrupt Jew who turned in the politicians and rabbis. Does anyone truly believe that this scandal goes unnoticed among those who already hate Jews with a passion?

Rabbi Dr. Bernhard Rosenberg
Congregation Beth-El, Edison

Christianity vs. Islam

I'd like to respond to Aliza Alperin-Sheriff's letter from the July 17th issue.

She intoned this: Taking the view that Islam has been nothing but evil is just as historically problematic as taking the view that Muslims have done no wrong. This of course was never written by me, but she used this as her assessment, after stating that "Neither Imam Ali, my mother, nor I, would deny that Islam's history has at times been vicious and destructive, but that was not the purpose of the talk."

She simply refuses to assess the realities of history and theology. She said: "...Similarly, Mr. Goldberg will need to learn to face what, for him, are uncomfortable truths regarding the history of Islam. All religions have similarly prickly pasts they would rather forget."

But all religions do not have similarly prickly pasts they would rather forget. As for Christianity, her example uses the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition, but that's a false comparison. The Christian religion evolved and gave us not only its worst, but its development of such as became the U.S. Constitution. Likewise, her comparison fails in that the founder of Christianity did not call for the subjugation of all non-believers as did Mohammed specifically, and the killing of those who wouldn't. Also, unless you happen to be a Hittite, Girgasite, Amorite, Canaanite, Perizzite, Hivite, or Jebusite, the Hebrew biblical (Torah) passages don't refer to you. Meaning no one.

The Quran, on the other hand, exhorts believers to fight unbelievers without specifying anywhere in the text that only certain unbelievers are to be fought, or only for a certain period of time. Thus taking the texts at face value, the commands to make war against unbelievers is open-ended and universal in Islam. The existence of "bigotry," as she mentioned, in the south and north in the U.S., the results of slavery of black peoples, exists far more today in Muslim culture and nations than it ever did in the worst of the southern U.S. For example: in the Sudan, some 500,000 women and children of black Christian and black animist religion, have been forcibly enslaved, raped, and many have been murdered in the tens of thousands in the last 19 years there. Vastly more than ever done in 400 years in the West.

Furthermore, early American history shows an aggressive jihad was already being waged against the United States almost 200 years prior to America becoming a dominant international power in the Middle East by the Barbary pirates. Moreover, these jihad depredations targeting America antedated the earliest vestiges of the Zionist movement by a century, and the formal creation of Israel by 162 years -- exploding the ahistorical canard that American support for the modern Jewish state is a prerequisite for jihadist attacks on the United States.

We should agree that all should be, in our United States, and elsewhere, civil to each other -- courteous and without giving hint to our feelings when we meet and interact. I for one have acted in proper accord as such and will do for all my life. This is primarily because the Jewish faith teaches not anywhere to submit others in the name of the Torah or God, but rather to be an example. And the Christian teaching has vastly changed and removed it's political conquest, which has allowed huge streams of development that make me proud to be a part of that American experience, and governance.

And those Crusades, that were so harmful to us Jews -- they were primarily a response to the Muslim destruction of the entire Christian world, cultures and nations of North Africa, all of the Middle East, including the Persian world. The Muslims were the crusaders and the slaughterers. And the imam who's assertion that it was the sword of the spirit that spread Islam is silly nonsense, suitable to speak to the naive, who wish to pretend that Jihad is about spiritual elevation when it is 99 percent historically and theologically about the submission and if necessary, glorified slaughtering of the infidel.

Tough stuff for anyone to consider. But if we love ourselves and value freedom, liberty, and national sovereignty, all these must be remembered and recounted.

Mark Goldberg
Aberdeen

Unique nature of the Holocaust

I support Assemblyman Dov Hikind (D-Brooklyn) who said, "The Holocaust is a uniquely Jewish event." The term Holocaust should refer only to what happened to the Jewish people because they alone were singled out.

During World War II, as many as 50 million people were killed because of Nazis and their collaborators. Millions of soldiers and civilians died in battle or as casualties of war.

The Nazis annihilated gypsies, the physically and mentally disabled, homosexuals, Jehova's Witnesses, socialists, communists, trade unionists, and political and religious dissidents.

None of these groups, however, were the primary targets of the Nazis. The Nazis were motivated to kill the Jews, to wipe them off the face of the earth.

Rabbi Dr. Bernhard Rosenberg
Congregation Beth-El, Edison