Readers discuss Fattah, Trump and tattoos.
Fattah’s ‘Values’ Not Our Values
The June 30 laudatory article on convicted fraudster and racketeer Chaka Fattah (“Jewish Sympathizer Chaka Fattah Tough Act to Follow”) embarrassingly includes a quote from Harris Dever which states, in part, that “the Jewish community can identify with him as a guy who had similar values.”
This article also presents him as a stalwart friend of Israel, yet it omits the fact that the former congressman voted in favor of the Iran deal, releasing billions of dollars to the country which recently sponsored national protests calling for death to Israel.
I would hope that in the future the Exponent will print articles on better exemplars of Jewish values.
Eric B. Greenberg | Elkins Park
Scrutiny of Trump Not Jewish
The referenced image of a six-pointed star was meant to convey that of a sheriff declaring law and order, with FBI Director James B. Comey being the sheriff (“Trump’s ‘Anti-Semitic’ Tweet Sends Outraged Ripple Effect Through Jewish Community,” July 14). Nowhere in the was there a reference to the FBI criminal investigation against Hilary Rodham Clinton and her use of a private email server, let alone its unknown amount of highly sensitive and classified information that was exposed and most likely compromised.
The handling of national security information should be handled in the appropriate manner, and in this case it appears it was not. No indictment was forthcoming, therefore Hilary was found guilty, yet proven innocent. This goes against the Jewish teachings that one should pursue justice.
Missing also from the article is the fact that Donald Trump’s daughter is married to Jared Kushner and had an Orthodox Jewish conversion in order to do so. So, if we have a President Trump, we will have a first daughter who is Jewish, and a president who is a zayde. Hardly facts that would support a position indicating anti-Semitism in the Trump household or campaign.
Neil I. Pohl | Horsham
Ink Spent on Ink a Welcome Reprieve
I found your article on tattoos (“Tattoo This: The Jewish Body Is No Longer Off Limits,” June 30), although of no real-world importance, to be an entertaining break from the media’s endless fascination with our current thoroughly dispiriting political campaigns.
The article noted that the Association of Jewish Burial Societies blames the notion that one who has a tattoo cannot be buried in a Jewish cemetery on an episode of the TV sitcom, The Nanny, from the 1990s. I can think of a considerably earlier but equally unreliable source. The Jewish comedian, Lenny Bruce, popular in the 1950s, did a shtick about his own tattoos, which he got while in the U.S. Navy.
He said that his mother told him he couldn’t be buried in a Jewish cemetery because of a biblical restriction that said a human body that had been altered in any way was prohibited from such a burial. His response to that was that it would put an awful crimp in the mohel’s activities.
Conrad Rosenberg | Silver Spring, Md.
