LettersViewpoints

Appropriate response

By Maurice Friedlander-Shaw, , Seattle

ADL responded appropriately (Sept. 17) to Mr. John Rothschild’s letter (“Blatant discrimination,” Sept. 3), which advocated disruption of its organization. Rothschild’s approach is certainly not a way to “win friends and influence people.”
Needless to say, Mr. Rothschild is unaware of the potential religious conflicts in this country, and the “clash of civilizations” on the international scene.
Rothschild should have suggested that the ADL and the American Jewish Committee pool their resources to monitor and combat prejudice, barbarity and current levels of anti-Semitism now prevalent throughout the world.
Vehemently, I disagreed with the tone in which Rothschild’s letter was submitted because it was my impression if Rothschild received numerous followers, havoc may have spread like a contagion within the local Jewish community and elsewhere.
Reason has overcome a potential spontaneous combustion of misguided emotions.
Now the basic teaching of Jewish historian Ellis Rivkin, the unity principle, has prevailed.