To the editor: Visitor contributors David N. Myers and Salam Al-Marayati as soon as once more properly articulate the best way Islamophobia is bolstered by the hateful rhetoric that’s so widespread in our society, and the way simply it morphs into Jew hatred and hatred of each different non-Christian group (“Combating Islamophobia and antisemitism is a shared responsibility,” Sept. 5).
For Jews, this can be a time of yr, culminating in Yom Kippur, through which we’re obligated to look inward, each as people and as a group. So lots of the sins that we articulate and ponder in our prayer service need to do with speech.
It’s actually an abomination that the Jewish American Summit, held on Aug. 30 (through the pre-Rosh Hashanah Hebrew month of Elul), would enable a speaker to say that he doesn’t need Muslims in America, amongst many worse feedback. Who’s the viewers for such a presentation?
It’s time for these of us who care to do a severe inner reckoning and take into consideration how phrases matter. “Cheshbon hanefesh” is a Jewish non secular apply that includes deep self-reflection and ethical stock, and is most famously executed throughout this current month of Elul main as much as Rosh Hashanah. The aim is to ponder the place we would have made errors with a view to inspire us to be the most effective sort of human beings we may be.
Myers and Al-Marayati mannequin for us how Jews working along with our Muslim brothers and sisters (and likewise our Christian siblings, for that matter) is the one option to overcome the local weather of hate and violence that toxins our society.
Annette Gottlieb, Los Angeles
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To the editor: Myers and Al-Marayati ought to take better care and present extra ethical and civic duty at a time of dramatically rising anti-Jewish hate and violence to keep away from pejoratively generalizing the Jewish group of L.A. and, extra broadly, of California and the U.S. Such discourse will increase the marginalization and vulnerability of Jews.
There are lively packages of interfaith solidarity that join the Jewish and Muslim communities in L.A. and within the Bay Space. In these packages, each communities assist one another, share vacation celebrations and keep ongoing dialogue and connection. They maintain long-term relationships of mutual engagement and shared advocacy for frequent values of advancing civil rights, entry to justice, non secular freedom and security of worship. Synagogues in Berkeley, for instance, have nurtured shut relationships of care over a few years with numerous Muslim communities. This op-ed, sadly, erases these.
Much less institutionally — however no much less importantly — constructive interfaith relationships between Jewish and Muslim communities exist on a person and neighborhood stage in Berkeley and in different group settings within the Bay Space and in L.A. at universities, in cultural gatherings of music and the humanities, within the enterprise sector and in numerous friendships. Slightly than casting aspersions on Jewish communities in an essentializing, homogenizing and reductive approach and depicting them inaccurately as detached to the rights and welfare of their Muslim co-citizens, they may take into account studying in regards to the huge interfaith communities that they name for however appear uninformed about.
Noam Schimmel, Berkeley
This author is a lecturer in world research at UC Berkeley.
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To the editor: One factor the authors don’t tackle is how we acquired right here. We acquired right here in 2015 with the presidential nomination of Donald Trump. That’s when the hate speech ramped up. That’s when it grew to become OK (or at the very least, accepted) to spew hatred towards all kinds of individuals and teams; anybody whose faith was not Christian, anybody who disagreed with the concepts put forth by Trump, anybody with a incapacity, anybody who had been a prisoner of conflict, anybody who’s a girl or an immigrant.
If all of us disavowed this type of speech, irrespective of our politics, and mentioned, “We is not going to vote for you when you proceed these lies and this hatred,” think about the place we may be right this moment. As a result of we didn’t do that, we should do it now and vote with what’s left of our morals to place an finish to this hatred. We’re so significantly better than this.
Barbara Busch, Santa Barbara
