Doing the math

The readers are 100 percent right. We apologize for the error in our math.

By LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Letters (photo credit: REUTERS)
Letters
(photo credit: REUTERS)
Doing the math
Your statistics in “Gun battle” (Editorial, June 16) left me confused, removing my shoes and socks to recount my toes.
Have I completely forgotten my elementary school math? “According to UN figures... the Japanese own some 710,000 guns, or 0.6 per person. In contrast, Americans own 270 million guns, or 88.8 firearms per person.”
Doesn’t this mean that the populations of Japan and the US are 1.1 million and 3.04 million, respectively? Or does your paper really think that the average American owns 89 guns? I’m an American, and all I own is a pocket knife and a can of pepper spray.
NOAM COHEN
Efrat
With the Japanese population at around 124 million and the US population at around 320 million, your per-person rates are clearly wrong. They would have been correct had you written “per 100 persons.”
LEWIS ROSEN
Jerusalem
The editor responds: The readers are 100 percent right. We apologize for the error in our math.
Kosher isn’t kosher
I’m a big fan of Tzohar, having used its services, so I was surprised to read “When kashrut isn’t kosher” (Comment & Features, June 16). Rather than work with the Chief Rabbinate, Yakov Gaon, Tzohar’s executive vice president, suggests that the whole process be opened to competition so that “we will be able to assure customers that their interests are being protected.”
As a person who lived in America for most of his life, I can assure you that a multiplicity of kashrut organizations doesn’t guarantee uniformity or honesty. Too often, each organization badmouths the other, with small towns declaring that only their rabbis can decide whose products or stores are kosher. When it comes to kashrut, creating more choices could lead to more havoc and fail to protect the customer’s interests.
The answer is for Tzohar to do what it has done so well in the area of marriage: work with the Chief Rabbinate. It needs to develop a strong relationship with the rabbinical kashrut organization, giving of its time, effort and social acumen to help businesses that are turned off by supervisors from the Chief Rabbinate, perhaps by developing a new, variable price structure or sending kashrut supervisors that have business experience and can relate to the owners’ needs.
It should do all this in tandem and with the approval of the Chief Rabbinate.
YAACOV PETERSEIL
Jerusalem
So much has lately appeared in The Jerusalem Post regarding kashrut. Without the meeting of an inclusive Sanhedrin, nothing can be resolved. The schisms in our society will go on forever!
S. GELGOR
Tel Aviv
Taking the plunge
With regard to “Plunge freedom” (Editorial, June 15), for over two generations, there have been major but unsuccessful efforts for all American liberal movements to have their ordinations legitimized in Israel. That is the missing context of the current controversy.
Elements of the political campaign by non-Orthodox movements include using the term “American Jews” to determine their primary adherents, ignoring the one-third who declare that Judaism is not their faith, as well as all Orthodox Jews; incitement of their membership by falsely equating non-recognition of their rabbinical ordinations with non-recognition of their members as Jews; and making their recognition in Israel an equal-rights issue.
But here’s some unmentioned reality: Few Reform Jews use a mikve in the US, except as an option while undergoing movement conversions. Conservative mikvaot exist because the movement’s conversions require it, although the practice of Halacha by Conservative Jews is, shall we say, “flexible.”
Has anyone asked how many liberal converts per year there are in Israel? The numbers could be very tiny, so it is shocking that mikvaot are even an issue. One small, private mikve in Tel Aviv could more than take care of these needs.
GERSHON DALIN
Modi’in
By George!
In “What is wrong with the Right?” (Comment & Features, June 15), Moshe Feiglin shines a light upon the malaise of the leadership of the Right, and finds the reason to be that “the Right has never attempted to formulate a policy that revolves around the Jewish identity of the State of Israel.”
Mr. Feiglin, thank you for your concise and precise article in which you astutely analyze the problem and reveal the truth. By George, you got it!
ELISHEVA BORENSON
Jerusalem
Dangers of milk
In response to the letter from reader Jenny Moxham on the morality of drinking milk (“Israelis and dairy, June 9), there once was a natural balance between humanity and its livestock.
Today, in over-crowded factory conditions, our livestock rarely see the sun or grass, or breathe fresh air. They are hardly allowed to move. We ingest this vibration of misery and suffering with their milk and flesh.
On a television program in 2014, it was reported that the level of progesterone was dangerously high in milk produced in Israel. This concurred with findings published by Dr. Ronit Haimov-Kokhman, a senior researcher at Hadassah Medical Center.
Haimov-Kokhman reportedly found that progesterone levels were 30 nanomoles per liter of milk, which is parallel to the range of hormones in the middle of the second phase of a woman’s menstrual cycle, when progesterone is found at its maximum levels. It is believed that such high levels in milk are connected to certain types of cancer that are becoming more and more common, and also to signs of early sexual development among girls, as well as boys.
In 2012, the Ynet news website published an article by Yaron Kelner with the headline: “Study: Major decline in Israeli men’s sperm quality – 80% of young Israelis applying to be sperm donors turned down due to low sperm quality. Cell phones, milk to blame.”
ISAAC ELIYAHU HOLLEY
Mevaseret Zion
A friend
Somehow, I feel obliged to share with your readers my feelings and sympathies. I am a 65-year-old Lutheran. But there is more to it.
For the past 20 or 25 years, I have felt more and more of an affinity for the Jewish people and the State of Israel. I am reading about anti-Semitism everywhere in the world, Israel’s constant fight for freedom, and all the threats from your charming Arab neighbors, who do not leave you alone.
It makes me sad to read all this.
So I have decided to do my part, and I gladly do it, always speaking up whenever there are discussions around me that include anti-Jewish opinions and/or nasty comments about Israel.
With both the Jewish people and Israel so close to my heart, the logical choice was to subscribe to The Jerusalem Post, which I did this past January. I read your newspaper with enthusiasm; after all, I not only want to be well informed, I want to learn about Judaism and the Jewish people. The more I know, the better I can speak up.
I feel enriched having Jews around me. If any of you come to Montreal, look me up. I would like to meet you and learn about Israel. We do not have to agree on everything. But one thing is certain: Israel must fight back whenever Arabs and Palestinians threaten the Jewish State.
Israel needs more friends in the world. Take note: I am such a friend.
ROLF BRAMANN
Montreal
CLARIFICATION
Reader Joel Kutner (“Losing the ‘ultra,’” Letters, June 16) has been a volunteer with the Traffic Police for the past 35 years.