Letters to the editor

Newfound freedom
I feel compelled to tell you how Jewish Family Services’ JET Express has changed my mother’s life for the good. She has always been a very active person, to the point that my brothers and I have joked, “If you want to see mom, better call and make an appointment.” Lately, however, her life has changed significantly because of her failing eyesight.

As she can longer drive, she must ask for rides and live within the time constraints of others. This has resulted in a slower pace of life, which has also hampered her health, making her less able to exercise — sometime causing fear of getting out among strangers.

JET Express has changed her life significantly. Not only can she be more active, but she does not have to depend on me or other family members to get to appointments. Her priorities are determined by her and not by others, and I can see and often hear about the return of joy in her life from this new freedom.

In addition, mother says that the volunteer drivers are “wonderful people.” Hardly a week goes by that I don’t hear about a new and interesting person who gives her a JET Express ride. That should not be much of a surprise, as people who volunteer are often from a special place in society.

I know my mother appreciates JET Express. But let me tell you, my family is in debt to this service, and we believe it will extend the life of our mother.

George Baggett
Kansas City, Mo.

Recycling hearing aids
I’d like to commend the Menorah Women’s Foundation of the Jewish Community Foundation on their Hearing Aid Recycling Program, or HARP. In this program, Menorah Women’s Foundation is collecting used hearing aids and paying for them to be refurbished and refitted by KU Medical Center Audiology clinic. The goal is to provide hearing tests and hearing aids at no cost to those who qualify through the Jewish Senior Network program [For information on JSN, call (913) 327-8105].

I work with the Menorah Women’s Foundation in my professional capacity at the Jewish Community Foundation, and I think the HARP program is a wonderful, economically savvy way to assist our community. On a personal level, it is providing me with some much-needed closure.

Last year I lost my mother, and it was a terrible blow. My mother had been legally deaf since she was in her 40s, and her hearing aids were an essential part of her life and her identity. At the same time, she was always crusading for those who needed assistance. My siblings and I donated her clothing to Goodwill, her household items to a battered women’s shelter and her books to the library. But we couldn’t figure out what to do with her hearing aids. Although we didn’t dream they would ever be of use to anyone else, we couldn’t bear to throw them out. They were so much a part of how she lived her daily life, and it seemed crazy to throw such expensive items away. So my brother tucked them away, high on a shelf in a closet where he wouldn’t see them because they made him sad.

With the Menorah Women’s Foundation HARP program, we now have a place to donate them and help others as well. I know my mother would be thrilled.

I will drop off my mother’s hearing aids at the Jewish Community Center’s Heritage Center. Other drop boxes are located at most local synagogues. For more information on locations, call Shirley Nelkin, (913) 451-9136.

Beatrice Fine
Kansas City, Mo.

Ignorant comments
As a student of Rabbi Margolies 20 years ago when he taught history at the University of Kansas, I find it extremely disconcerting to read some of the Web site comments responding to his column week after week.

I was physically sickened by one commenter’s disgusting attempt earlier this month to compare President Obama and his supporters to Richard Wagner, or, by implication, his infamous son-in-law/protégé Wilhelm Marr and The Anti-Semitic League he founded, which was a precursor to Hitler. If the commenter does not know Jewish history well enough to distinguish these two groupings, he could use a few classes from Professor Margolies himself.

Rabbi Margolies holds a Ph.D. in history from Columbia University. But that only scratches the surface of his scholarly credentials. He is something quite rare in our modern world of over-specialization — a true polymath. Anyone who does not have an obvious ideological axe to grind, and who has ever had the privilege of taking a course from Professor Margolies, or even one who regularly reads his columns in The Chronicle will immediately recognize this fact. There are few subjects of interest to learned people on which Dr. Margolies does not have something of value or interest to contribute. There are some in which he has few equals.

In the 12 credit-hours of history which I had the pleasure to accumulate under his guidance, I never knew Professor Margolies to be anything other than a principled, balanced, humane and devoted scholar, who loves the Jewish people and their history and is committed to maintaining their identity and ensuring the survival of the Jewish faith and culture. He is a published author. He is fluent in Hebrew and Yiddish, among other languages. He is a veteran of the Korean War. He lived through a terror attack while a child in Palestine — the subject of one of his recent columns here, but a story I had heard on several occasions from his own mouth. He experienced what is now a nearly unimaginable richness and diversity of culture in New York City as a youth.

Before taking Professor Margolies’ courses I was already a committed anti-fascist and anti-anti-Semite. But I had never been taught the true origins of anti-Semitism, nor the important roles in Western history played by Jews and Judaism, nor, for that matter, by anti-Semites and anti-Semitism until I studied the subjects under him.

History will have the final decision about where — on the scale of criminality writ large — to place your beloved G. W. Bush and your increasingly Southern-dominated, Christian fundamentalist and radically exclusionist Republican Party. As for crimes against humanity, we will wait for the fullness of historical time to judge those things.

I count myself fortunate to be able to read Professor Margolies’ calm and rational words of wisdom here in The Chronicle every week. It is a poor substitute for my real desire to sit once again in a classroom with him for three hours each week, absorbing his knowledge and wisdom, but I will take what I can get. Consider yourselves lucky to have him, Kansas City. May he continue to reach out and teach those of us willing to learn for many, many more years to come.

Daniel Parkinson
Scott City, Kan.

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