Soup for the Soul is “Denigrating”
Dear Editor:
In the April 12, 2013 edition of the Atlanta Jewish Times, Rachel LaVictoire begins her article by describing a time when she was babysitting young boys, allowing them to watch what she deems to be an inappropriate TV show.
She writes that the show was inappropriate for a variety of reasons, significantly for a scene in which the teacher on the show changes the teenagers’ grades from a B to an A because the teens did a dance in the hall of the high school.
That was bad enough, but the article from there makes an unrelated transition to the Torah portion of the week that deals with spiritually pure (tahar) and impure (tamai). The Torah portion that LaVictoire quotes refers to childbirth and the spiritual impurity associated with it. From that information, she jumps to her pride in her Judaism and that she believes the process of purification after childbirth in the Torah is “absurd.”
She does not understand what it means for the mother’s spiritual elevation, and for maintaining long-term Jewish practices. In addition, the author says how proud she is for not bathing in a mikveh, thereby trashing the married women who carry on the tradition of the mikveh. She also dishonors keeping dietary laws that have been in effect for 3,000 years.
I don’t argue that she should keep kosher. That’s her personal decision, but she should not be bragging in a public forum that she “clears [her] head to say thanks to G-d before cracking the shellfish in [her] hands.”
The honor of our Jewish religion has been handed down from generation to generation. Judaism should never be denigrated by an author of any standing in a community-wide Jewish newspaper!
Sincerely,
Harriet Cortell
comments