Letters to the Editor | March 11, 2025

I would like to record my vigorous objection to the recent article that glorifies high-end bar and bat mitzvah party expenditures, but that is not the purpose of this letter.

The number of celebrations that do not run into many thousands of dollars far exceeds those that do. There is little mention of the years of study the student undergoes, the majesty of the ritual when the child is called to the Torah to assume Jewish adulthood, the mitzvah project designed to help others in some way that most synagogues require of their students, and the pride family members feel when they see their children beginning maturation. For most of our families, the mitzvah is the goal and not the bar.

I think the article in question does a disservice to the families who take this coming-of-age ritual seriously.

Rabbi Richard F. Steinbrink, Philadelphia

In a recent letter to the editor, Dolly Constable berates the Democratic Party for not applauding President Donald Trump’s guests during his speech.

She mentions, for instance, the boy who survived cancer and the service members who lost their lives in Afghanistan. I submit, however, that Trump was merely using these people as pawns for his own benefit, as he is known to do. If Trump was truly a champion of children with cancer, why has he cut funding for childhood cancer research? If he was a champion of our soldiers and lawmen, why has he called them “suckers” and “losers”? Why did he free more than a thousand convicted criminals who attacked not only police during the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, but Congress itself? Time and again, Trump proves to the American public that the thing he values most is his own image, and during his speech, he dared use these people to further that cause. I, for one, cannot condone that, and applauding would only further his wrongdoing.

Steven Schwartz, Springfield

It appears likely that the U.S. Supreme Court may be the last institutional bastion left to protect our nation from the presidential erasure of all we hold dear as a constitutional democracy. Donald Trump, the man who would be king, impounds our money, neuters Congress, and overrides the Constitution. He purports to cancel birthright citizenship, replaces the competent with unqualified loyalists, and trammels the rule of law.

Let us hope Chief Justice John Roberts will choose to go down in history as one who held the line against the destruction of our Constitution and our country, rather than as one who caved and gave it all away.

Justin Loughry and Leah McGarry Morris, Haddonfield

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