Letters Daily Edition

• Published in: The Jerusalem post
• Main Author: B. Solomon, J. Cohen, Maurice Hirsch, Joseph Hersh, Abe Krieger, Michael Greenberg, Rabbi Reuven Hammer, Claudine Azoulay, Claire Lee, Mark J. Fox, Trudy Gefen
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: Jerusalem The Jerusalem Post Ltd 05.10.2004

Sir, - I am a child of Holocaust survivors who were inmates at Auschwitz. Normally, I have an aversion to anything "German." Nevertheless, when I read about Alexander Laesicke and Aaron Blankenburg cycling all the way to Yad Vashem from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, through Arab countries openly hostile to Israel, I thought: What tzaddikim! Sir, - In "Thou shalt be vengeful?," reviewing Remember Amalek (Books, September 3), historian, talmudist and Jewish philosopher Myles Brody writes: "Perhaps no biblical commandment discomfits Jews more than the decree to exterminate the nation of Amalek." Citing what some see as a problem with the Bible - that while vengeance is indeed recorded there - he points out that the Torah states "Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor shall children be put to death for their fathers; a person shall be put to death for his own sin" (Deut. 24:16). Israel would be wise to keep as far away as possible from the internal religious disputes of the Jewish people. Just as it has recognized all conversions from overseas for the purposes of the Law of Return, so it should recognize conversions done in Israel for the same purpose. There is no logic in the distinction between them.