‘Passion of Mel Gibson’

[Shmuley Boteach, Opinion, August 1, 2006] Mel Gibson’s apology is insincere. “I am not a bigot!” he told news organizations throughout the world. That made all the headlines. The appropriate response should have been, “I am an alcoholic. I am a bigot. I need help on both these things.” How can he want help for a problem he doesn’t admit having?

BARRY POPIK
New York, N.Y.

‘Roth’s False God’

To anathematize Human Rights Watch’s Kenneth Roth as you have done repeatedly, and with a perverse glee, is a classic example of blaming the messenger for the message. Unfortunately, the message is that the present moment blind support of Israeli aggression in the part of 95% of the American Jewish community makes well-neigh moot the integrity of the concept of “Jewish Values.” Thankfully, insightful people such as Kenneth Roth remind us that, again at the present time, the term “Jewish Values” need not remain an oxymoron.

Roth’s just rebuke of the “eye-for-an-eye” outlook is correct: Indeed, why would we wish this baleful vestige of a primitive justice not to be superceded? In this connection M.K. Gandhi noted sagely “an eye for an eye leaves people blind.” Mr. Roth is a good human being for having us attend to the devastation wrought by Israel upon the civilian population of Lebanon and, by and by, consider the present condition of, as well, “Jewish Values.”

I thank the Sun for bringing Mr. Roth’s words to our attention.

ROBERT REISS
New York, N.Y.

---

Please address letters intended for publication to the Editor of The New York Sun. Letters may be sent by e-mail to editor@nysun.com, by facsimile to 212-608-7348, or post to 105 Chambers Street, New York City 10007. Please include a return address and daytime telephone number. Letters may be edited.