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Look at the following picture published today (November 10, 2005) in the Detroit Jewish News.

 

I am saddened and hurt personally by this negative, mean-sprited, nasty portrayal of Orthodox Jews. If this picture appeared in the Detroit Free Press, New York Times, or any other publication, the outcry would be swift and universal. The fact that it appears in a Jewish newspaper only makes it more distressing.
 
I encourage you to:
1. Communicate your dismay about this picture to either Editor Robert Sklar (rsklar@thejewishnews.com), publisher Arthur Horowitz (ahorwitz@jnonline.com) or both
2. Please forward this email message to any Jew who feels that stereotyping other demographic groups is wrong, and ask them to do the same.
 
Rabbi Reuven Spolter
Young Israel of Oak Park

My message to the editors of the Detroit Jewish News:

When the Pistons played the Sacramento Kings, the team was introduced against a backdrop of burnt out buildings and intercity blight - a stereotype that was completely unacceptable.  Management of the Sacramento Kings apologized for the impropriety and placed a full-page ad in the Detroit papers apologizing to the citizens of Detroit . 

This past week, the Detroit Jewish News contains a cover showing a caricature to highlight an article concerning a dispute in Israel between a reform Jewish woman who seeks recognition of her rabbinical credentials against Israeli law which has only, to this point, recognized Orthodox rabbinical authority.  The cover of the paper displays Orthodox Jews as bearded, angry black garbed individuals gesticulating and, in one instance, making a profane hand gesture. 

If you want to write about legal disputes involving the differences between the reform movement and the Orthodox movement in Israel , that is your right.  To demonize and misrepresent Orthodoxy as if you were the author of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is another.  You owe the Orthodox Jewish community and the entire Jewish community an apology for your unacceptable and unthinking presentation.  For all of your editorial discussions of working as one Jewish community with the interests of all jews as paramount, your actions bespeak prejudice that is no less deplorable than the epithets of the worst anti-Semite.