Sarsour and the walkout
I just came back from a couple of weeks in Coral Springs, Fla., a community adjacent to Parkland, Fla., where the mood of the entire community was sadness and anger after the shooting at the local high school.
While reading “Local day schools respond to national walkout” (March 15), I could not resist but react to excuses made by Rabbi Eliezer Rubin of Rae Kushner Yeshiva High School, who stated that he “cannot encourage” his students to participate in the walkout because of Linda Sarsour’s involvement; Sarsour is a well-known advocate of extremely anti-Jewish and anti-Israel causes. It is unthinkable for anyone in a leading institution of Jewish learning to associate his or her political views on the Middle East conflict with such a tragic domestic event.
Instead of providing support consistent with our Jewish values, Rubin, unfortunately, preferred to qualify his personal reluctance with some far-fetched reason relating to the Israel-Palestine conflict. There is no need to link every single tragic event in the U.S. to the conflict.
It is about time our religious and school leaders prioritize the interests of our local Jewish communities regardless of any other considerations, political or otherwise, in order to continuously stress our Jewish values in the United States in accordance with biblical and halachic principles.
Maurice de Picciotto
Chatham Township
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