Restoration is a true blessing
Todah rabah to Friends of Sheffield. Thank you for restoring the exquisite chapel at Sheffield Cemetery.
Your hours of very hard work restoring the chapel — done so with dedication, vision and planning along with lots of love— is so very meaningful to the community and to me! {mprestriction ids="1,3"}The dedication program marking the rebirth of the Sheffield chapel on Sunday, June 7, was so special. It allows us to always remember our loved ones with prayer and “blessed memories.”
I am so proud of Friends of Sheffield, under the guidance of Rickie Haith, in helping restore the chapel. What a beautiful blessing and mitzvah!
We should always work together hand-in-hand for peace in Israel, for our community and for Judaism!
May all of you and your beautiful families be blessed with everything good in life always!
Joyce Bratman, Overland Park, Kansas
Anti-Semitism is a habit
In reference to the rise in anti-Semitism worldwide:
In 1815, Rachel Mordecai (1788-1838), a Jewish woman living in Warrenton, North Carolina, wrote to Maria Worthington objecting to the negative portrayal of the Jewish Mordedai in Worthington’s novel “The Absentee.” In her next novel, Worthington included part of Mordecai’s response. In 1871, Mordecai wrote again, saying in part:
“Can it be believed that this race of men are by nature mean, avaricious and unprincipled? Forbid it, mercy. Yet this is more than insinuated by the stigma usually affixed to the name. … If by scrutinizing the conduct of Jews, they are proved to fulfill in common with other men every moral and social duty, it is to be hoped that the stigma which habit has associated with the name will lose its influence….”
Two hundred years ago, Rachel Mordecai succinctly defined the basis of anti-Semitism and recognized it as a habit.
Mordecai’s letter can be read in “Women and religion in America, Volume 2,” edited by Rosemary Radford Ruether and Rosemary Skinner Keller.
Zelda Reeber, Weston, Missouri{/mprestriction}
