Overwhelming response
To the thousands — yes, thousands — of you who joined us at the First Annual Kansas City Kosher BBQ Festival, we want to offer a genuine, meaty thank you on behalf of the Vaad HaKashruth and the entire volunteer committee. The response from the community was overwhelming. There is no other word for it.
We are incredibly grateful to Temple B’nai Jehudah, the Torah Learning Center, Kehilath Israel Synagogue, our sponsors, to the dedicated teams who tended their smokers all night long, and to all the supporters who came to cheer them on and, yes, wait in line for delicious kosher brisket, ribs and burnt ends. We look forward to learning from the experience of this first-ever event, honing the details, building on this amazing outpouring of enthusiasm, and growing the festival into a Kansas City tradition — like BBQ itself.
Rabbi Mendel Segal
Executive Director/Rabbinic Coordinator
Vaad HaKashruth of Kansas City
Dr. Jason Aaron Sokol
Chair, Kansas City Kosher BBQ Competition and Festival
Vaad HaKashruth of Kansas City
Debbie Sosland-Edelman
President, Board of Directors
Vaad HaKashruth of Kansas City
Don’t discount Koch
In response to Gloria Schlossenberg’s virulently hate-filled letter, your readers should know that David H. Koch is a founder of a charitable institute — the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. The Koch Institute emphasizes basic research into how cancer is caused, progresses and responds to treatment. The Koch Institute has identified five areas of research that it believes are critical for controlling cancer: developing nanotechnology-based cancer therapeutics, creating novel devices for cancer detection and monitoring, exploring the molecular and cellular basis of metastasis, advancing personalized medicine through analysis of cancer pathways and drug resistance and engineering the immune system to fight cancer. This is tikkun olam, i.e., repairing the world.
As to Mitt Romney, I regard him as a decent man and I am happy he chose Paul Ryan as his vice presidential running mate. He’s got my vote.
Marc Birnbaum
Overland Park, Kan.
Be careful
The real problem is not the presidential candidate but rather the do-nothing Congress. We keep electing the same incumbents over and over again. It is time to enforce term limits and to make provisions for non-multi-millionaires to have an equal and fair chance to run for office.
All the negative campaign tactics you will see are designed to push your buttons. Insist on a campaign of substance. This week both sides are playing the race game while thousands more lose their jobs and homes.
Seems like anything goes. Whites for Romney would be racist. Jews for Romney would be interesting although there are not too many of us. In the meantime people in the United States are starving, losing their jobs and homes, people remain unemployed and the people in Congress are counting their millions.
Our leadership does not understand that gas prices are now back to high levels, the climate has changed, rivers are at all-time lows, glaciers are melting and genocides are occurring throughout the world, especially in Syria, on a daily basis. Both sides are to blame.
This message is not meant to be part of the continuing propaganda circus but rather a stern warning that our planet is in danger.
Rabbi Dr. Bernhard Rosenberg
Edison, N.J.
