ACROSS THE STREET BUT WORLDS APART
In the Fall 2025 issue, two of our longtime columnists, Fania Oz-Salzberger and Naomi Ragen, filed unusually passionate and sweeping essays that, Opinion Editor Amy E. Schwartz remarked, “seemed to have been written from and about two completely different Israels, or possibly two different planets.” Oz-Salzberger, a left-leaning historian and essayist, offered an anguished plea for Israel’s friends to shun its government as illegitimate. Ragen, a right-leaning novelist and playwright, argued that Israel has emerged stronger than ever from the two-year war and has never been more united.
Schwartz decided to send each of them an advance proof of the other’s column, asking the same question: “I’m curious if there’s an Israel in there somewhere that the two of you would (conceptually, anyway) agree on?” While their responses confirmed nearly diametrical positions, Schwartz was more surprised to learn that they literally live across the street from each other in the town of Zichron Yaakov in northern Israel. What’s more, they’re both members of a neighborhood WhatsApp group where people mainly ask for plumber recommendations and the like, but where Ragen had posted a political comment others considered extreme. In sharing her version of events with Schwartz, Ragen wrote:
I went to the Kotel a week later and had a long talk with God. Afterwards I realized that no matter our differences, we are the beloved people of Israel, and that my neighbors who had welcomed me so warmly, and who every day were willing to help each other, were good people, and I had insulted them. So I uploaded an apology saying these things and adding that we were going through difficult times. That we all wanted the same thing, but had different opinions on how to get there…I apologized and asked for forgiveness. Fania sent me a lovely reply thanking me for my post.
“What did I learn from this exercise?” Schwartz asked in a Moment Minute newsletter. “First, that Israel is an even smaller country than most of us Americans realize. Second, that if two people from different political spheres can’t find common ground in the realm of ideas, or even in the idea that they share common ground, maybe they will occasionally still find it in the literal common ground of the street, the neighborhood, the borrowed cup of sugar, the expression of human decency. And since politics is at some level an argument about how to order our lives together, maybe this is somehow relevant.”
But can it be enough? she asked. “Maybe a better question is: Enough for what? Enough to keep sharing the block without utter conflagration? Enough to get us through the next tempest?”
DO THE RIGHT THING
AKA DERECH ERETZ
In her last column (“What We’ve Won in this War,” Fall 2025), Naomi Ragen recalls a chill going down her spine when a woman objected to sex-segregated seating at an outdoor Kol Nidre reading in Tel Aviv. A chill went down my spine reading Ragen’s pejorative identification of the woman as “secular.” This was a public gathering, and no member of the public (read: women) should be separated. This was outdoors and not in a shul with a mechitzah. Kol Nidre is not a prayer but a declaration to absolve one of unfulfilled vows. If there were men who objected to the proximity or presence of women, they could have self-isolated or separated themselves. “Was there nothing left that we all held sacred?” she asked. Indeed! Derech Eretz takes precedence over Torah. That seems to have slipped Ragen’s mind.
Rabbi Leonard S. Berkowitz
Boca Raton, FL
AN ISRAELi’S PLEA
SHUNNING BIBI
I am in full agreement with Fania Oz-Salzberger (“Friends of Israel, Shun Its Leaders,” Fall 2025). Benjamin Netanyahu and his government cannot claim to be the sole protectors of Israel after dropping the ball on an across-the-border attack that had been telegraphed well in advance to anyone paying attention. I am not saying the attack was Bibi’s fault. It was perpetrated by evil and sadistic individuals without morality. Nor am I saying he does not love Israel, but that doesn’t make him a good leader or someone who knows what’s best for the country and Jews. We had the world’s sympathies and held the moral high ground (which Israel prides itself on) after October 7. Bibi gave all that away. From a military perspective, his plan has been a disaster according to his own military brass. Israelis have been protesting by the tens of thousands.
The United States didn’t win World War II by killing every last German, Japanese or Axis sympathizer. You can’t find and kill every member of Hamas without exacting a humanitarian toll and creating a new generation of terrorists. You can’t keep sending young men and women into battle, ruining the country’s economy and repeating the cycle. The release of the hostages should always have been the number one goal. Netanyahu owed that to those families before using this tragedy for his own political survival or misguided notions.
Mark Plotnick
Libertyville, IL
JEWS AND THE BLACK PRESS
HOW TO BE AN ALLY
The issue containing Dan Freedman’s excellent article “When the Black Press Stood by Jews Against the Nazis” (Fall 2025) came just as I had been chosen to co-moderate a program focused on bringing African-American and Jewish leaders together to rekindle the once powerful and influential relationships that strengthened the civil rights movement. Most Jews my age (yes, I’m a senior citizen) know about how Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., how Jewish Freedom Riders went south at great personal sacrifice (some were even killed) and how others worked for the civil rights of African Americans during the 1960s. Freedman goes further back—to the allyship of African Americans with Jews during World War II and the Holocaust. It opened a new chapter in my understanding of those dark days. How many Jewish or Black Americans know this history? I doubt other citizens have learned about it either.
In today’s dangerous times, Freedman’s story sheds light on how to be an ally and friend to others who are being oppressed, and reminds us that Jews are not always alone in fraught times.
Bob Rader
Glastonbury, CT
TALK OF THE BAGEL
DOUBTFUL ORIGINS
In Jacob Forman’s “Pizza Bagel” (“Talk of the Table,” Fall 2025), he writes that “as far back as 1952, the popular department store S. Klein in New York advertised pizza bagels in their cafe (for 25 cents no less!).” I never heard of them, never ate them, and I was actually working at S. Klein in the early 1950s. Guess I missed out. However, I am sure it was not invented by a Jewish person. Foods with a long cultural history within a group are usually sacrosanct. Growing up, no Jewish person I knew would ever put peanut butter and jelly on a bagel. It was meant to be eaten with cream cheese and lox—salty, not sweet. And if you think about it, few Italians really appreciate pineapple on their pizzas.
Today there are far fewer boundaries around traditional foods; we make matcha ice cream, put soy sauce on everything and eat eggplant in sweet and sour sauce. We live in a whole new globalized world where almost anything goes.
Gloria Levitas
New York, NY
VISUAL MOMENT
YIVO @ 100
I write a column about Judaic treasures for Jewish Federation newspapers in the major cities along Florida’s southwest coast from Sarasota to Naples. So Diane M. Bolz’s recent article “A Grogger, a Bong and a Pair of Red Shoes” (“Visual Moment,” Fall 2025) on the 100th anniversary exhibitions at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York City was of special interest to me. She does a wonderful job of detailing those exhibits. Preserving our legacy and paying tribute to those who came before us is paramount to how the Jewish people will be remembered.
Arlene Stolnitz
Venice, FL
SADLY MISINFORMED
A FAN WEIGHS IN
Shalom Gittler’s letter to the editor (“Not a ‘Feminization’ Fan”) in the last issue, responding to Letty Cottin Pogrebin’s column (“Tranquility Will Have to Wait,” Summer 2025), criticized her contention that today, few congregants would remark at the sight of women taking on leadership roles in many synagogues. Gittler is sadly misinformed when he says he is “equally sure that virtually none of those congregants in non-Orthodox synagogues attend services outside of Rosh Hashanah/Yom Kippur.” I must inform him there are many of us women who attend daily minyan, keep kosher, observe Shabbat, as well as attend services on all major and minor holidays. Our synagogues have a beautiful blend of male and female rabbis and cantors. I do agree with his last line (though, I realize, delivered sarcastically): “Yes, the feminization of non-Orthodox Judaism is a roaring success!” Both my daughters became bat mitzvah and chanted Torah beautifully!
Martha Kahn
West Hills, CA