---

CANDLELIGHTING

---

THE JEWISH VIEW

---

HOLIDAYS

---

JUDAISM 101

---

{weblog_name} - A Word Of Thanks
Comments (1)

Sometimes, it does the conscience good to say thank you to someone who helped you along your journey. Even if it’s by accident and almost three decades overdue. But I’ve always run a little late. Let me explain. A few months ago, I wrote a cover story for the Jewish Times on the UMBC chess team, which is considered the finest college chess team on the entire planet. Of course, as an alumnus of UMBC, I was quite proud to write about the team, even though I know virtually nothing about chess. And naturally, walking around the campus during my reporting of the story set off major flashbacks and a supreme sense of shock about the way my old school has changed. At one point, I had the honor of interviewing Dr. Freeman A. Hrabowski III, UMBC’s dynamic president… read more

This is a “not bad” blog entry. Its nice to see a writer at The Jewish Times understands something about gratitude.

However, it is highly personal and self-absorbed, and thus is rather typical of the writing of top 4 men who have blogs here. Check their archives, and count how frequently what they write revolves around the first person singular and/or plural. It is also far from relevant to current news pertaining to Jewish interests or Israel.

For example, last week Helen Thomas exhorted the “Jews to get the hell out of Palestine,” and go back to Germany and Poland.

Thomas’s anti-Semitic outburst evoked nary a bleat from Messrs. Buerger, Jacobs, Rubin, or Feiler. This surprised me regarding Mr, Feiler, because last year he wrote twice about the minuscule Westboro Baptist Church. Andrew Buerger has also written about this “church,” though his silence surprised me far less.

I made the meaning of my juxtaposition of Westboro and Thomas clear in an email I sent to Mr. Feiler on June 8th, which, to date, has elicited neither a substantive response nor even a mere acknowledgement from him.

Here is email I sent; perhaps Mr. Feiler might yet muster the energy and intelligence to write something explaining why he hurriedly wrote both a regular news article and a blog entry about the Westboro Baptist Church, but nothing about the liberal sacred cow, Helen Thomas:

June 8, 2010

Mr. Feiler,

It is my recollection that you wrote about the Westboro Baptist Church twice last summer. Loathsome as they are, the Phelps lunatics represent but a very, very tiny percentage of Christians in America, and they garner media coverage precisely because they are beyond-the-pale outrageous.

You seemed to wrestle intelligently with this question of whether to afford them coverage or not in your blog entry of 07/01/09, and, as someone who is not quite a fan of The Jewish Times, I was impressed with your reasoning.

Thus, I am wondering when you will write about Helen Thomas. Unlike the Phelps family, who speak for virtually no one, it seems to me that Thomas blurted out what many leftists, liberals, and Democrat Party members today believe about Jews and Israel to the depth of their souls.

Stuart Sachs