To the editors…

The December issue of The Shofar offered a theme grounded in the world-wide presence of Jews. Starting with Rabbi Gadi’s beginnings in Israel and concluding with his citizenship ceremony in New York, The Shofar then offered the story of an Afghan synagogue, the Jews of Laramie, Wyoming, and a convocation of Chabad Rabbis living in 100 countries. Jews seem to know and main connections with Jews everywhere. Our history tells us there are traces of synagogues in Western China, Surinam, South America, and in the Pampas of Argentina; we know there are active synagogues in Australia, Singapore, and Hong Kong, also throughout Europe, the Near East, the United States, and even in Greenport, Long Island. Perhaps the real news should be citing a place without Jews, now or in the past. So much the poorer such places must be.

As Mordechai Kaplan so correctly observed, we are people who live in two worlds (and sometimes even more than two) and, I would add, in the whole world.

—Stephan Brumberg