Chief Rabbinate

The arguments employed by Rabbi Menachem Levine (“Making the case for the Chief Rabbinate,” Comment & Features, July 30) could be put up as a textbook example of circular logic.

Rabbi Levine basically is saying that the case for the Chief Rabbinate is established by the fact that it alone can determine whether the decisions of rabbis are valid according its own completely arbitrary decrees. He basically says this in as many words: “Why do [Jews] come to me, out of all the rabbis in the phone book” to perform weddings, divorces and conversions? They do so because the Chief Rabbinate will recognize his actions as being in accordance with its rules.

I’m surprised that a rabbi in America hasn’t read or at least heard of George Orwell’s Animal Farm.

If he did, he would recognize that the Chief Rabbinate in Israel is the same as the pigs ruling the rest of the farm animals, and that he’s just one of the horses, described as having “great difficulty in thinking anything out for themselves, but having once accepted the pigs as their teachers, they absorbed everything that they were told, and passed it on to the other animals by simple arguments.” HENRY KAYE Ashkelon

So the head honchos at the Jewish National Fund consider those little blue and white

pushkes to be their personal bank (“Jewish National Fund execs to repay more than $700,000 in loans from organization,” August 1). How enlightening!

CEO Russell Robinson and CFO Mitchel Rosenzweig needed cash to purchase private real estate, so they got the organization – which they run – to loan them $525,000 in Robinson’s case, and $185,000 in Rosenzweig’s case.

Where was their chief legal adviser? Wouldn’t this person know that under New York State law, loans by charities to their officers are illegal? Does the JNF even have a chief legal adviser?

If it does, maybe this person should be replaced with someone a little more well-versed in the vagaries of state laws. (I do not suggest it consider Israeli lawyer David Shimron, who’s in a bit of hot water over some organizational hanky-panky of his own.)

According to the JNF, Robinson and Rosenzweig have been paying back the loans in what you report to be “regular installments.” Hooray! Regular installments! Just like the rest of us! But wait: They were charged interest at the prime rate, “the rate banks offer well-qualified borrowers.” How

unlike the rest of us. The “bank” in question was those pushkes. I had no idea those little tin boxes are able to discern between well-qualified borrowers like Robinson and Rosenzweig, and less-qualified borrowers like you and me. Will wonders never cease! ARI BEN-SENDER Jerusalem