RON SPINNER
Hoshaya

Bleak and hopeful

Sir, - "Gone but not forgotten" (July 15) was bleak and hopeful and heartbreaking all at the same time. It also reaffirmed why I am a Zionist, though a very liberal one. It reminded me of some of my other favorite Zionist voices, like Amos Oz (in his A Tale of Love and Darkness) and Daniel Gordis (in his If a Country Can Make You Cry - Dispatches from an Anxious State).

We may differ in our politics, but the piece conveyed a sense of the tragedy of the Jewish people - and of its unbreakable fortitude; and also of the individual human being carrying on, tenaciously.

Those old slings and arrows of (all too often outrageous) fortune affect us all, but we work through our losses because, as Judy Montagu pointed out, we simply have no choice.

JAMES ADLER
Cambridge, Massachusetts

CLARIFICATION

The op-ed articles by Yossi Alpher and Ghassan Khatib that ran on page 15 of our July 15 edition originally appeared in www.bitterlemons.org and were reprinted by permission.