In freeing the loathsome Arab terrorist Samir Kuntar (and others) in exchange for the bodies of our two martyred soldiers, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, the Israeli government has set the country on a bloody course – more and more kidnappings and killings of its soldiers and civilians, followed by more and more such criminal exchanges (“Israel, Hezbollah reach prisoner swap,” CJN, July 3).
I read the words “justice,” “mitzvah,” “obligation,” and “compassion” in connection with this event, an event that has contaminated the sacrifice of these two young martyrs by forever linking their deaths with this scandalous act of their government and its aftermath.
What about directing those admirable concerns to Jonathan Pollard, a Jew who also risked his life in the service of Israel and has paid for his sacrifice with 23 years in an American prison, and has been betrayed and abandoned by Israel? Where is the compassion, the cry for justice and moral outrage over this monumental injustice?
How can we, especially since the Holocaust, and especially since the establishment of the State of Israel, go about our daily lives when such a blatant miscarriage of justice continues to poison the Jewish world. What value is served by a community that says Yizkor for Ehud and Eldad and ignores its moral obligation to rescue the living Jonathan?
Goldi Steiner and Nomi Winkler
Toronto

The Canadian Guide to Programs and Services for Holocaust Survivors is timely, informative, instructive and esthetic to boot (“Survivors’ service directory published,” CJN, July 31). Most importantly, it will save the health-stricken elderly survivors from running around knocking on unresponsive doors.
The question, however, is whether the listed institutions in the directory will be able to meet the inevitably growing survivors’ requests following the directory’s publication. It would, therefore, be useful to follow up on this commendable effort with a view to finding out whether or not it achieves its intended goal.
Perhaps this booklet will also inspire the Claims Conference to take out a page in the directory and at last reveal the sums of monies kept in Swiss banks’ vaults, in investments, and the intake of the rented properties in eastern Germany.
Eli Pferfferkorn
Toronto

I am concerned that your readers may have gotten the impression that Jews for Judaism offers only “three or four lecture series per year, attracting a couple of dozen people at a time” (“Jews for Judaism counters growing missionary movement,” CJN, Aug. 7). This does apply to our counter-missionary survival seminar, but it’s just the tip of the Jews for Judaism iceberg.
With the help of UJA Federation of Greater Toronto and thousands of generous donors from across Canada, in 2007 alone, Jews for Judaism’s Canadian branch provided a remarkable 13,340 direct client services that included 1,898 counselling sessions on missionary, cult and intermarriage issues; 2,729 requests for help, information or referrals, and 8,614 participants in 159 educational programs at 84 different venues. In addition, we distributed more than 85,000 items of literature, books or audio materials free of charge.
With six international branches of Jews for Judaism, we are having a tremendous impact worldwide and have been an enormous deterrent to the effectiveness of missionaries and cults by preventing countless Jews from falling into their clutches.
Julius Ciss
Executive Director
Jews for Judaism (Canada)

I have been enjoying The CJN series “1948… They were there,” about the Machalniks. We should be very proud of the young people who sacrificed for our great country of Israel.
However, there were others who also fought so we could have a free Israel.
In 1945, as a 17-year-old survivor of the Holocaust, I was recruited through Betar to the Irgun. For three years, I and many other young men helped survivors get to Israel. Unfortunately, some of the boats were diverted to Cyprus by the British, but many made it through. I feel proud that we also contributed to the growth of the Jewish population and to its defence.
Amek Adler
Thornhill, Ont.