City Council's resolution about the vigils at Beth Israel Congregation still claims they interfere with "religious worship" despite the avowed nationalism of Conservative Judaism. Judaism can restore its religiosity by condemning Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories and US support for it, as the World Alliance of Reformed Churches condemned apartheid and expelled the South African Dutch Reformed Church in 1982. The vigilers do not "confront worshipers and ask passersby to honk their horns and cause a disturbance", as the resolution falsely claims. Last Saturday a woman carrying a sign "End US Military Aid to Israel" was called a "fascist bitch" who should be "forcibly removed" by a male congregant.

Holocaust educator Hedy Epstein, who left Germany as a Jewish child in 1939 and never saw her family again, protested Israel's Wall in the West Bank this spring, and joined the vigil on October 2. Noam Chomsky was asked to stay and join the vigil after his lectures at U-M October 28-9, and replied, "I'm deeply impressed with what you are doing, and know that it is not easy, to put it rather mildly. I really wish I could join you. It would be a privilege." Rabbi Jeremy Milgrom wrote from Jerusalem, "I wanted to convey my support in challenging the silence of the Jewish community to what is going on in the Middle East."

Polite society is by definition wrong on the big questions, and if the vigils have only exposed its complacency and hypocrisy they have done a great service.

Harry Clark
Ann Arbor, Fifth Ward