Letters to the Editor: October 18, 2019

Letter to the editor:

Sermon at Ohr HaTorah!

Rabbi Adam Starr’s sermons over Rosh Hashanah were just so awesome. He sure hit a home run. First day was about regretting and loneliness. I posted my comment on my Facebook page and the response was overwhelming agreeing with me.

Since I am in my 70s and attend shul regularly, this was the best I have ever heard. I am 74 years old and have heard many sermons. This “knocked it out of the park.”

Lynn Koffsky, Atlanta

Letter to the editor:

Columbia University amplified hate speech instead of condemning it.

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad defended his right to express anti-Semitic views in the name of free speech in remarks to Columbia University students during an event at the university on Sept. 25, 2019, saying, “When you say, you cannot be anti-Semitic, there is no free speech.”

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres sees things a little differently. At the launch of the United Nations Strategy and Plan of Action on Hate Speech, he observed that “When the [UN] Charter was drafted, the world had just witnessed genocide on an industrial scale. Hate speech had sown the seeds, building on millennia of scapegoating and discrimination against the Jews, and culminating in the Holocaust.”

He proposed dealing with hate speech “by condemning it unconditionally; refusing to amplify it; countering it with the truth; and encouraging the perpetrators to change their behavior.”

Columbia University, take note.

Julia Lutch, Davis, Calif.