The Real Reason You Crave That New iPhone

Apple’s shiny new iPhone X is being delivered to early adopters this week. East Coast enthusiasts set their alarms to 3 a.m. local time on Oct. 27 to buy this magical new device promising to connect them to all the information in the world – for $999 and up.

Apple sold out its preorder stock within minutes.

It’s easy to be cynical about our obsession with the latest greatest technology. We are spending thousands of dollars on incremental upgrades, and there is no indication that our thirst for new tech devices ever will be quenched. Next year, Apple will release another new iPhone and everyone will want it all over again.

Why? Yes, it’s a shiny new toy, and we love shiny new toys. Perhaps Freud would say it’s one way of overcompensating for an unfulfilled youth. Or maybe needing a new phone is a modern form of hedonism. It’s possible that intense enthusiasm for new gadgetry is a symptom of the moral rot in our society. But is there something deeper about our insatiable yearning for a new iPhone? Does this yearning connect to a more sublime yearning in our souls?

Yes.

Our generation is the first to live in a world where addiction to information is possible. We are literate, and we can access nearly all the information known to man in the palm of our hand. Two generations ago, the idea that every person on the planet could easily connect to all the data in the observable universe was not even a dream. It was outside the realm of possibility. Literacy was a luxury and information was shared slowly in small bites instead of gigabytes.

The world is different now. We are overwhelmed by information overload. We can’t escape the deluge of data. Nothing is secret, and sometimes it feels like nothing is sacred. Information tantalizes us. Who is doing what? What is going on over there? When did that happen? How does this work? Who made that? Stolen pictures of that famous person? Celebrity gossip? Secret recordings? We need to know.

We are the first generation to lust after total knowledge.

That means, we are the first generation to understand the primordial story of Man. Adam and Eve lived in the Garden of Eden, where everything was available to them, save for the fruit of one tree, the Tree of Knowledge. Faster than Kramer lost “The Challenge” on Seinfeld, Adam and Eve succumbed to temptation and ate from the Tree of Knowledge.

The yearning we feel for knowledge is the same yearning that Adam and Eve could not resist. The rush we get when we imbibe in the endless sea of data is the rush that Adam and Eve wanted to feel. They wanted knowledge – all of it. Until very recently, this was not something humans could understand. It was impossible to truly unlock the meaning of this story. We could say the words, but we could never really get what it feels like to lust after knowledge. Today, we understand.

Unlike Adam and Eve, Apple is not our forbidden fruit. In the garden, Adam and Eve were given the chance to live a life without information. That life would have been a supercharged spirituality, but they we banished from the garden and the life of the garden was lost forever. Ever since that moment, the quest for knowledge beckons to us but knowledge is no longer forbidden.

For us, knowledge is power; power to choose, power to grow, power to live, power to build, power to love. The actual information is not forbidden, but the way we use information can be forbidden. When we use information the wrong way, we banish ourselves and others from our world.

Enjoy your new iPhone X and the all-access pass it grants you to the knowledge party. A bit of mindfulness about the soul of our information addiction, though, will help us use our knowledge to grow the Tree of Life.

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The Balfour Declaration at 100 and How It Redefined Indigenous People

It has been 100 years since the Balfour Declaration – issued by the British government on Nov. 2, 1917 – offered the first international recognition of Jewish national aspirations. In many ways, its importance is obvious: it encouraged some 400,000 European Jews to emigrate to Palestine in the years 1917-1940, and made it possible to lay the groundwork for the State of Israel.

But there is another significance that has not been fully recognized among modern historians, even though it tells us more about the current obstacles to peace than any of the usual explanations. I am speaking of the politico-philosophical precedent set by the Balfour Declaration regarding national identity, land ownership, self determination and the notion of “indigenous people.”

On the surface, the declaration’s text touches on none of these issues. Known as “history’s most famous letter,” this 67-word text actually reads like a holiday greeting card: “His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice that civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

A close examination, however, reveals two asymmetries which, by today’s standards, would probably evoke bitter objections. First, the words “people” and “national” are attached to Jews, not to the non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine, who are referred to as “communities.” Second, the non-Jewish communities are assured “civil and religious” rights, not national rights, let alone a “national home.”

This asymmetry is probably what infuriated Columbia professor Rashid Khalidi who, in an emotional lecture on Sept. 25 this year, reportedly pounded the table and blasted the Balfour Declaration as “a declaration of war by the British Empire on the indigenous population of the land it was promising to the Jewish people.”

Khalidi’s outrage at former British Prime Minister Arthur Balfour and his Declaration is hardly justified. First, the idea that the Arab population of Palestine harbors national aspiration would have been news to Balfour, just as it would have been to any political observer in 1917. Khalidi admits as much in his book, “The Iron Cage,” in which he labors to explain why Arabs did not develop a ripe sense of national identity until the late 1920s, when it was too late to “crush the Zionist Movement.”

Second, the Balfour Declaration did not preclude the creation of a “national home” for other national groups in the region, side by side with the Jewish polity. Ottoman Palestine, as we recall, embraced a huge territory which included Jordan and parts of Syria. Various partitions and coexisting constellations were proposed in the course of time, most notably by the Peel Commission of 1937 and by the United Nations in 1947. While Khalidi’s book never mentions these proposals as options, and we understand why, it was in effect the Balfour Declaration that opened these opportunities for Palestinian statehood.

Third – and this is critical – the concept of “indigenous population” has undergone a profound transformation since 1917, which Palestinian society refuses to accept to this day. By championing the Jewish plight for a homeland, the Balfour Declaration made it absolutely clear that there are other claimants to the title “indigenous population of the land” and that the arguments of those other claimants are no less defensible and no less supported by hard evidence and trust deeds.

The Balfour Declaration overturned the narrow conception of “indigenous people” as a group of tribes or families who happened to own land in a particular geographic location and pass it to their heirs over a number of generations. By focusing on the Jewish narrative, the declaration broadened the concept of indigeneity to include peoples who have maintained vivid collective memories of past civilizations and who shaped their identity through dreams of returning to the cradles of those civilizations.

This shift in the definition of indigineity was only implicit in the 67-word declaration. It was made explicit two years later, however, in Balfour’s introduction to Nachum Sokolow’s book, “History of Zionism, 1600-1919. ”

“The position of the Jews is unique,” Balfour wrote. “For them race, religion and country are inter-related, as they are inter-related in the case of no other race, no other religion, and no other country on earth. … In the case of no other religion is its past development so intimately bound up with the long political history of a petty territory wedged in between States more powerful far than it could ever be; in the case of no other religion are its aspirations and hopes expressed in language and imagery so utterly dependent for their meaning on the conviction that only from this one land, only through this one history, only by this one people, is full religious knowledge to spread through all the world.”

A man of wisdom and character, Balfour considered himself primarily a philosopher, not a historian or a statesman. It is amazing how this multifaceted individual managed to take time off his duties as Britain’s Foreign Secretary and study carefully the role that the Land of Israel had played in Jewish life through the ages. He captured this essence better than some of our most revered history professors, for whom Zionism is a 19th century invention that started with Theodor Herzl in 1896 and ended with the Six-Day War of 1967.

Balfour understood that Eretz Israel is an inextricable part of Jewish identity. Accordingly, he also understood that indigeneity is based on intellectual attachment and historical continuity no less than on physical presence or genetic lineage.

In 2014, when peace negotiations seemed somewhat hopeful, Palestinian chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat was reported in The New York Times as saying: “the Palestinians could never accede to Israel’s demand that they recognize it as the nation-state of the Jewish people. … I cannot change my narrative.” A few months later, when pressed to explain what narrative defines his position Erekat told the Times of Israel: “I am the proud son of the Netufians and the Canaanites. I’ve been there for 5,500 years before Joshua. ”

On this centennial celebration of the Balfour Declaration it is worth reminding Erekat and Khalidi that the declaration’s most profound imprint on the world’s conciousness has been a universal understanding that the essence of indigineity is cultural and intellectual, not genetic or geographical.

Palestinian resistance to accepting their neighbors as equally indigenous to the region has been so obsessive and so counter-productive that it begs to be enlivened through a hypothetical scenario, however imaginary. I can’t resist imagining Balfour attending Khalidi’s lecture at Columbia, raising his hand and asking politely:

“Professor Khalidi, can you name a Canaanite figure that you are proud of? A Canaanite poem that you enjoy reciting? A Canaanite holiday that you celebrate? A Canaanite leader who is a role model to your children?

Replace the word “Canaanite” with “biblical” and you will find four questions that every Israeli child can answer half asleep.

There is merit and wisdom in hypothetical scenarios. In this case, I would hope it could mitigate the Palestinian claim to exclusive ownership of a claim to being an “indigenous people” title and, God-willing, usher a genuine reconciliation effort based on mutual recognition and shared indigeneity.

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JUDEA PEARL is Chancellor’s Professor of Computer Science and Statistics at UCLA and president of the Daniel Pearl Foundation.

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What I Learned From Rebbe Nachman and Mr. Miyagi

I thought I understood the power of prayer, until I went to Uman.

Long before I reconnected with Judaism, I felt connected to God. It made no sense to me that a whole universe popped into existence out of nothing for no reason. I wanted to know our Creator. I tried many paths: philosophy, meditation, endurance sports, trance music, martial arts.

Here and there I’d catch hints of the Divine, but prayer was rarely part of the picture.

Twenty years ago, I returned to observant Judaism. My connection to prayer grew more solid as I put on tefillin and prayed every morning. But the moments that most moved me came when I was part of a rowdy congregation, especially with groups that danced and sang in the style of Reb Shlomo Carlebach.

Then, this fall, I traveled to Uman, Ukraine, to pray at the grave of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov. And I experienced another level.

Many people pray fervently, but the Breslovers, Rebbe Nachman’s Chasidic followers, add a personal component: hisbodedus. In short, they pour out their hearts as if they’re talking with a best friend. They do it out loud, every day, often with tears. Watching this, some people think they’re nuts. I don’t.

The gathering in Uman has been likened to a Jewish Burning Man festival. There’s certainly creativity, but the decadence and mind-altering substances are mostly limited to single-malt scotch. The Uman experience is intermittently loud, holy and contemplative.

Two moments stood out. Around the kever, the grave, of Rebbe Nachman, there’s a large synagogue where people pray around the clock, individually and in small groups. You hear cries of wrenching sincerity. I’ve visited the tombs of many holy figures in Israel. Each has its own energy. Rebbe Nachman’s was electric. At the tomb itself, I felt a rush of light coursing through me, and when I asked for guidance in knowing what to pray for, the answer came immediately.

As the Accidental Talmudist, I share what I love about Judaism with a large audience on a daily basis. So I prayed fervently that I should be a clean conduit for God’s light, neither obscuring it nor limiting it from a place of ego. This prayer now gives me strength before every live webcast.

The second moment was in a huge tent, singing a nigun (wordless prayer) with 2,500 guys in a tribal roar that must have pierced the firmament. It was ecstatic, rejuvenating, and I wanted it to go on forever. Every guy around me was my brother, and we were hugging strangers all day long.

Together, those moments aroused a sense of clarity.

In Uman, I didn’t just pray for life, health, love and success at work. Those blessings are crucial to everyone, and it’s good to ask for them, but all too often they are out of our control.

What I prayed for was clarity of purpose, strength to achieve it and open-minded humility in place of arrogant certainty. And as soon as I asked for help with those qualities, I felt the physical sensation of having my prayer answered.

In the 1984 film “The Karate Kid,” a bullied teenager asks a maintenance man and karate master, Mr. Miyagi, for a karate lesson, only to receive a can of car polish and a sponge.

“Wax on, wax off. Left hand, right hand,” Mr. Miyagi tells him.

The kid thinks he’s being bullied again, until those circular motions deflect an incoming punch. Then he realizes he’s been training all along, and that he can now protect himself with force and grace.

Prayer is like that. Our words and motions can easily become rote. We fulfill the commandment, but it’s only in moments of intensity that we feel its power. I experienced that intensity in Uman.

Alas, such heights are short-lived, and I have to pray regularly to keep developing those much-needed qualities. Yet, a trace of the Uman energy returned with me. I feel it now as I write these words. I feel it more when I pray.

That kind of prayer is action. It heals. It repairs. And it increases peace in the world.

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Salvador Litvak shares his love of Judaism with his followers every day at http://ift.tt/2xNgOjC.

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The Courage to Confront Our Shadows

Walking through the densely wooded fields and forests near Rava-Ruska, Ukraine, where wildflowers and green shoots of grass spring up, one could be forgiven for forgetting what remains buried underground. Villagers living around that forest still regularly find evidence of the atrocities that took place some 75 years ago, when Nazis regularly marched Jews out to those fields to be executed and tossed into mass graves.

One French Roman Catholic is now working tirelessly to preserve the memories of those victims before they are lost. Father Patrick Desbois is motivated by this urgent call to action to memorialize the victims buried there in mass, unmarked graves, before no eyewitnesses remain.  He is an unlikely hero to shoulder this task, sharing neither nationality nor religion with these victims of the Holocaust. Instead, his connection to the Jews and Roma killed by the Einsatzgruppen, the Nazi mobile killing squads, initially came through family history, as his grandfather was a French soldier held in a camp in Rava-Ruska.

In 2002, while visiting the site of his grandfather’s imprisonment, he traveled to the site of the massacre of Rava-Ruska’s Jewish population and found no memorials or markers for the Jewish victims murdered there, save the testimony from a small cluster of elderly residents. Father Desbois decided then to dedicate his life to ensuring similar stories from the Holocaust are well documented, transforming the fading memories of the past into lessons for the future.

Today, the world is in need of more heroes like him. He embodies the courage needed to face bigotry and evil, and the drive to teach tolerance and compassion. Father Desbois will share his experiences, insight and courage with the Jewish community of Southern California at the Museum of Tolerance on Nov. 7, at the Chai Event hosted by my organization, Heritage Retreats.  There, he will speak on three lessons he has taken away from his work, which may be applied to our current struggle against bigotry and anti-Semitism:

First, we must recognize the importance of friendship between communities. Without allies like Father Desbois, it is easy for the Jewish community to feel isolated and insecure in uncertain times.  Anti-Semitic hate crimes are on the rise all across the country, and it is difficult to not see parallels between those events and 1930s Germany.  Instead of feeling frightened, however, I am reassured by Father Desbois’ commitment to interfaith solidarity. We should all be similarly inspired to care for those outside our community, country and faith.

Second, we must celebrate every-day acts of heroism. The acts of Father Desbois and his team. The acts of the men and women who recall these crimes against humanity in detail for Yahad In-Unum’s records and lead Father Desbois to the sites.  The acts of individuals volunteering their time and energy to worthy causes. This is why small acts of day-to-day heroism in our community deserve recognition and praise as well. We will celebrate a small fraction of these at Heritage Retreats’s Chai Event by honoring our community members and volunteers who have worked to create a better future for all of us.

Third, we all have stories to contribute to the fight against bigotry. Father Desbois works to record the memories of the last generation of witnesses to the Holocaust, and uses those testimonies to teach the Holocaust to the first generation that won’t have a relative who remembers the war. This is l’dor va’dor in motion. All of us, not just religious leaders, Holocaust survivors, and community leaders, can play a role in teaching two of our community’s most heartfelt beliefs: Never Forget and Never Again.

We all can learn from the example of Father Desbois. I hope many of you will join me when Father Desbois delivers his remarks at the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles on November 7th.  While the spread of anti-Semitism today is frightening, we can respond with courage, compassion, and a little help from friends such as Father Desbois.

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What I Learned From Rebbe Nachman and Mr Miyagi

I thought I understood the power of prayer, until I went to Uman.

Long before I reconnected with Judaism, I felt connected to God. It made no sense to me that a whole universe popped into existence out of nothing for no reason. I wanted to know our Creator. I tried many paths: philosophy, meditation, endurance sports, trance music, martial arts.

Here and there I’d catch hints of the Divine, but prayer was rarely part of the picture.

Twenty years ago, I returned to observant Judaism. My connection to prayer grew more solid as I put on tefillin and prayed every morning. But the moments that most moved me came when I was part of a rowdy congregation, especially with groups that danced and sang in the style of Reb Shlomo Carlebach.

Then, this fall, I traveled to Uman, Ukraine, to pray at the grave of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov. And I experienced another level.

Many people pray fervently, but the Breslovers, Rebbe Nachman’s Chasidic followers, add a personal component: hisbodedus. In short, they pour out their hearts as if they’re talking with a best friend. They do it out loud, every day, often with tears. Watching this, some people think they’re nuts. I don’t.

The gathering in Uman has been likened to a Jewish Burning Man festival. There’s certainly creativity, but the decadence and mind-altering substances are mostly limited to single-malt scotch. The Uman experience is intermittently loud, holy and contemplative.

Two moments stood out. Around the kever, the grave, of Rebbe Nachman, there’s a large synagogue where people pray around the clock, individually and in small groups. You hear cries of wrenching sincerity. I’ve visited the tombs of many holy figures in Israel. Each has its own energy. Rebbe Nachman’s was electric. At the tomb itself, I felt a rush of light coursing through me, and when I asked for guidance in knowing what to pray for, the answer came immediately.

As the Accidental Talmudist, I share what I love about Judaism with a large audience on a daily basis. So I prayed fervently that I should be a clean conduit for God’s light, neither obscuring it nor limiting it from a place of ego. This prayer now gives me strength before every live webcast.

The second moment was in a huge tent, singing a nigun (wordless prayer) with 2,500 guys in a tribal roar that must have pierced the firmament. It was ecstatic, rejuvenating, and I wanted it to go on forever. Every guy around me was my brother, and we were hugging strangers all day long.

Together, those moments aroused a sense of clarity.

In Uman, I didn’t just pray for life, health, love and success at work. Those blessings are crucial to everyone, and it’s good to ask for them, but all too often they are out of our control.

What I prayed for was clarity of purpose, strength to achieve it and open-minded humility in place of arrogant certainty. And as soon as I asked for help with those qualities, I felt the physical sensation of having my prayer answered.

In the 1984 film “The Karate Kid,” a bullied teenager asks a maintenance man and karate master, Mr. Miyagi, for a karate lesson, only to receive a can of car polish and a sponge.

“Wax on, wax off. Left hand, right hand,” Mr. Miyagi tells him.

The kid thinks he’s being bullied again, until those circular motions deflect an incoming punch. Then he realizes he’s been training all along, and that he can now protect himself with force and grace.

Prayer is like that. Our words and motions can easily become rote. We fulfill the commandment, but it’s only in moments of intensity that we feel its power. I experienced that intensity in Uman.

Alas, such heights are short-lived, and I have to pray regularly to keep developing those much-needed qualities. Yet, a trace of the Uman energy returned with me. I feel it now as I write these words. I feel it more when I pray.

That kind of prayer is action. It heals. It repairs. And it increases peace in the world.

---

Salvador Litvak shares his love of Judaism with his followers every day at http://ift.tt/2xNgOjC.

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What Happens In Jerusalem Does Not Stay In Jerusalem

Israel is tritely known as the start up nation, the incubator for ideas and products that change our lives – usually for the better – in an increasingly high-tech world. Your ever-smaller cell phone, that GPS app that saves you 7 minutes on your commute to work, that suddenly non-invasive medical procedure and those persimmons that magically never seem to go bad, those were all created in Israel, and tested on Israelis before getting the OK to go global.

So too, alas, with the modern scourge of undiscriminating Jihadi mass murders, occasionally referred to as terrorism by Western media. Like the most famous of technology companies, Jihadi terror tragically also uses Israel as its R&D center, and the Israeli populace, it pains me to write, as its guinea pigs.

After doing so with suicide bombings in the 90s, Palestinian Jihadists (whether of the admittedly religious Hamas variety, or of the “secular” Al Aqsa Martyrs brigades of the PLO) invented, tested and made ever more lethal truck terrorism, stabbing rampages and mass shootings through Israeli “experiments”, that is, through attacks on Israeli moms, dads, sons, daughters and grandparents. Palestinians saw that those indiscriminate and savage murders of Israeli innocents going about their day not only didn’t backfire politically or trigger any meaningful western outrage, they instead earned Palestinians and endless stream of gushing profiles in liberal media outlets, a global pulpit, wall to wall political support, and the permanent benefit of any moral doubt with western intelligentsia. There are many psychological reasons why this is so, why so many who might be expected to know better instead respond to plain evil with moral acrobatics, overwrought compassion and Orwellian understanding. Regardless, it is no coincidence that the mass-killing tactics developed in Ramallah, tested in Jerusalem and rewarded in Norway are becoming ubiquitous in London, Nice and, now, New York City.

If we don’t grasp that the mass murders committed by ISIS have their genesis in Yasser Arafat being rewarded for mass murder with global (including, at times, liberal Jewish) adulation, we will fail – whatever else we do to fight Jihadism. The usual methods when terror hits the west — vapid prayers, outdated diversity sloganeering, misplaced concerns over ever-yet-to-materialize “backlashes”, and narcissistic hashtags — have been turned by their sheer frequency into rancid insults that just pile onto fresh and never ending injuries. They are at best an impotent form of self therapy, at worse, an encouragement to terrorists, a sign that nothing need change in their macabre strategic calculus. It is clearly past time to look at more forceful solutions.

But killing ISIS thugs in Iraq and Syria, while laudable, is not enough, as this Uber driver on a legal visa turned Jihadi ought to show. Cluster bombs in Kabul and Raqqa have done little to protect those walking about on London bridges, in Paris markets or on Catalonian esplanades.

Closing borders will also do little: homegrown terrorists abound, whether they be second-generation immigrants or native converts to Islamist nihilism.

Rather, and as a first step, it is high time that we partner with Arabs and Muslims who have an interest in such and wage a concerted psychological war on the rabid religious ideas that underlie Jihad. It can be done, though explaining how exceeds the scope of this column. What is clear is that any assault on Jihadi ideas must attack that poisoned tree at its root not selectively prune only some of its most obtrusive jagged branches. There can be no exceptions in fighting terrorist ideas: the fetid poison of Hamas and Hezbullah are the same as that of Boko Haram and Al Qaeda. That remains true whether or not the former dress their primitive, supremacist savagery in talk of occupation and human rights in order to disable part of our moral immune system. That, along with the usual military means, may well make a difference. Because if Jihadist lunacy can be exported by Saudi Arabia and others via madrassas, so too can a version of Islam that is hostile to terrorism and shames it as cowardly, unmanly and sinful.

But that too, while desperately needed, isn’t enough. Which brings me at long last to my point: it is time to stop giving the Palestinians a free pass. If terrorism is rewarded or even explained away when it targets Israeli innocents, the record is unequivocal that the same terrorism will then spread to Europe, Canada, India, the US… If despicable apologists for Palestinian Jihad like Linda Sarsour and BDS are for no logical reason treated like paragons of humanism (including by how many Jews?), then so too will apologists for terrorism in Paris and Barcelona become normalized. Our willful, convenient moral blindness to the depredations of Palestinian terrorists operates as a tactical beacon to other Jihadis.

It is very comforting to think “oh, that’s different… that can’t happen to us, those attacks are not the same.” But they very much are the same. And for terrorism to fail in the West, as it must if we want to keep enjoying the fruits of the enlightenment, it has to fail everywhere. If Europe wants its streets back, it must help Israel secure hers. It has to become taboo to target any civilians, for any professed cause, at any time — not just those in European and American nightclubs.

Alas, what happens in Jerusalem does not stay in Jerusalem.

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Letters to the Editor: Harvey Weinstein, the Kurds, Taxes and Iran deal

Weinstein-Jewish Connection

One of the few positive things to come out of the discovery of Harvey Weinstein’s serial predatory side is that all of the reports I have seen and read refer to Weinstein as an alleged “serial sexual predator,” not a “Jewish serial sexual predator.”

I still wish his last name was O’Leary, or something similar, however.

Michael Gesas, Beverly Hills

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Take a Closer Look at the Kurds

Jonathan Spyer presents a compelling and fascinating description of the case for Kurdish independence (“Kurdish Independence Movement Deserves the Support of Western Nations,” Oct. 20). Spyer asserts “the West should recognize its failure in Iraq and embrace Kurdish aspirations.” That is an oversimplification.

The Iraq War yielded mixed results. Saddam Hussein, the late-20th-century mass murderer/monster (under whom the Kurds suffered) is no longer. (Saddam’s stated desire to destroy Israel and develop nuclear weapons is beyond dispute.) It is the U.S. handling of the aftermath of the Iraq War that provokes much discussion today, including the premature withdrawal of U.S. troops eight years ago, which left a power vacuum enabling the creation of ISIS.

However, the Kurds gave us the most inspiring tale of all. While Hollywood produced comic book movies like “Wonder Woman,” the Kurds transformed this legend into reality. The Kurdish female Peshmerga soldiers fearlessly confronted ISIS, the most evil military on the planet since the Nazis, while instilling terror and fear into their enemies, who believe that death from the hands of a female condemned them to eternal hell. Now there’s a good start.

Richard Friedman, Culver City

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Talk About Taxes

I appreciated the recent op-ed on tax reform, “Republican Proposals Are a Good Start,” (Oct. 27) by Larry Greenfield.

While I consider myself a left-leaning, bleeding-heart liberal, I also am open-minded and willing to change my opinions if a better idea is put forward. I have come to realize that perhaps our welfare and tax systems are in need of some reform and that our current trajectory is set to fail.

I note Greenfield’s suggestions for workable changes that could be implemented to put things on a better course.

Spencer Miller via email

I think Larry Greenfield offers true and courageous points. For example, he recommends a GOP plan that focuses more on cutting income taxes for high- and middle-income earners, instead of handing out more breaks to corporate billionaires or to low-income taxpayers who don’t pay any income taxes at all. He also is fair in promoting that blue state taxpayers deduct state and local taxes on their federal returns.

Who can disagree with a call to simplify the tax code? I’d like to see a flat tax in my lifetime. I applaud his reasoned analysis.

Rick Montaine via email

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Kaplan’s Artful Discussion

Marty Kaplan’s column (“When Bad People Happen to Good Art,” Oct. 27) is rational, balanced and important.  At a time when our people are dysfunctionally polarized and unable to have nuanced discussions on controversial topics, it is a pleasure to read such a reasoned argument.

Al Jerome via email

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Inspired by David Katz Story

In a few days, I will be turning a third of a century old. And until I read the story by Deborah Danan about David Katz, I never “met” anyone who has the same visual situation as me (“Legally Blind Photographer Comes Into New Focus,” Oct. 20). I have 15 of the 17 markers of albinism.

Danan wrote from the heart and medical know-how to express Katz’s life as someone legally blind. Tears still come prolifically when I watch his video, “Through My Lenses,” over and over again. I would like to send a personal note of thanks to Deborah and David, but know I have to start here.

Thank you for opening the public’s eyes regarding a disability that is not very noticeable on the outside, and for giving a voice to those who do not speak.

Faith Goldman via email

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Dermer and the Iran Deal

Ambassador Ron Dermer began his presentation at Stephen Wise Temple with a plea for unity, for Jews to applaud our differences and to find strength in them (“Ambassador Discusses Israel’s Perils, Success,” Oct. 27). He posited right vs. progressive, secular vs. traditional, and made a compelling case that Israel’s values are strong, at least when compared to its neighbors, and that those values, more than military, economic and diplomatic accomplishments, are the bedrock of our strength.

But then, he dramatically changed course and dove headlong into the most raucous debate that just months ago threatened the American Jewish community, namely the Iran agreement, the unprecedented Benjamin Netanyahu speech before the U.S. Congress, indeed the partisan position taken by our own Federation. He presented strong support for President Donald Trump’s speech to decertify the agreement, to change it, and was presumptuous enough to claim that a better agreement could have been achieved but for the U.S. to join executing the agreement with its co-signatories.

Mr. Dermer, where have you been? Do you realize that you are driving a wedge between those of us who believed then, and still believe, that the agreement was the best possible? That the Netanyahu speech destroyed AIPAC’s years of nonpartisanship and attempted to place the badge of shame on Democrats who supported the agreement? Don’t you understand that the agreement is not the only remedy, that the United States and others can take aggressive action to stem the Iranian threat and still honor the agreement? That the agreement had only one focus — the imminent nuclear threat — and that the agreement succeeded in dramatically reducing it?

We understand that you are Prime Minister Netanyahu’s spokesman here in our country, but we would have thought better of you than to belie your own words and be so divisive.

Louis Lipofsky via email

Regarding Tom Tugend’s report on Ambassador Ron Dermer’s speech at Stephen Wise Temple, Dermer is correct in stating that President Donald Trump should cancel or renegotiate the Iran nuclear deal.

Iran has publicly stated that it wants to destroy the State of Israel. Iranians regularly chant “Death to America” and Iran is the biggest sponsor of terrorist organizations. Iran is responsible for the deaths of over 1,000 Americans. The Iran regime has executed more people then any other country except China.

This deal gave Iran $150 billion, which it can use to fund its terrorist ambitions and its nuclear program. There are legitimate concerns about canceling the Iran deal, but the U.S. still should try to change the terms in order to prevent the deaths of innocent people around the world.

Menashe Benperlas, Los Angeles

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The Heart of a Champion

I read the online article on Tal Flicker (“Israeli judo champion sings Israeli anthem to himself since Abu Dhabi wouldn’t play it,” posted Oct. 26), and I don’t think it is OK to live in a world where two types of people hate each other so much that one of them couldn’t even show the smallest amount of respect by just displaying the flag and playing the anthem of the country the winning athlete represents. I also think this is an act of anti-Semitism because Israel is a Jewish county. I disagree on the United Arab Emirates’ decision on this situation.

Daniel Harpaz via email

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Protesting Kuwait Airways

I want to thank Aaron Bandler for bringing awareness to an important topic with his online story “Germany to Investigate Kuwait Airways for Israeli Discrimination,” posted Oct. 25. I strongly agree that Kuwait Airways is discriminating against Israelis and that there should be no tolerance for this. Kuwait Airways has admitted refusing to carry Israeli nationals. In December 2015, the United States found Kuwait Airways violated the law by refusing to allow Israelis to fly between New York City and London.

I feel, as a community in Los Angeles, we need to protest, as anti-Semitism is still very much alive. We can’t let it continue and have airlines deny people entrance just because they are Israeli. I would like anyone treated like this by these airlines to report it.

Ely Gabbaypour, Beverly Hills

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Letters to the Editor: Harvey Weinstein, the Kurds, Taxes and Iran deal : http://ift.tt/2im4Bfj