Message from R’ Schonfeld: R’ Yoel Schonfeld

I am very gratified that I receive much positive feedback for the articles I write in this paper. It makes it worth some of the challenges that come with writing in the public, including occasional biting criticism.

My article last week recalling Eugen Gluck a”h generated a host of compliments, written and oral. Why not? The subject matter was an easy one.

The story is told of a man named Yankel whose wife had just given birth to a baby boy. All excited, he decided to share the good news with his brother Berel, a butcher.

I will admit I was disappointed. I was at the levayah for Eugen Gluck and many of the speakers representing the family spoke about how he would greet everyone with a huge embrace and made them feel that for the moment they were the most important person in the world. Whether this was an old friend or someone he was meeting for the first time, that welcome was his trademark… and genuinely offered. And here I was thinking that only I got such special treatment.

A few weeks ago, I wrote an article critical of Reform Rabbi Joshu a Davidson who had written an article in The Jerusalem Post critical of the Bible, worthy of some of history’s worst anti-Semites.

This Shabbos, I was 0-for-2 in private discussions I had in shul following davening. Before I addressed a bar mitzvah boy, I opened with the following question to the audience: Imagine if David Duke, of KKK fame, succeeded in becoming a Republican congressman, G-d forbid. He then decides to visit South Africa. The South African government rejects his entry on the basis that he is a notorious hate-filled racist. Would anybody in the world have a problem with the decision of that country to keep that harmful person out? Would Republican colleagues have rallied behind him? Would there have been a threat to our bipartisan relationship with South Africa? The answers are obvious, as is the point. I did not need to spell out what I was driving at.

In just a few short weeks, Queens will elect a new District Attorney for the first time in 28 years. As criminal justice issues have come to the forefront of mainstream attention, the DA race has become the campaign to watch for those with their finger on the political pulse of the city.