By Ira Stoll
A New York Times obituary of Rav Chaim Kanievsky zt”l is drawing furious complaints from the paper’s readers.
A subheadline emphasizing what the Times says was the rov‘s initial response to the COVID-19 virus was one main source of reader anger.
“He initially insisted, ‘Canceling Torah study is more dangerous than the coronavirus.’ But he had a change of heart, even before testing positive,” the Times subheadline said. It struck many readers as snide or flippant.
“Phenomenally absurd subtitle,” tweeted Tzvi Alperowitz, the Chabad emissary on Martha’s Vineyard.
“A ridiculous subheadline in @nytimes obituary for an acclaimed Rabbi and leader of Orthodox Jewry,” Yweeted Joel Petlin, superintendent of the Kiryas Yoel School District.
“This subheadline from the @nytimes is absolutely despicable. At a certain point, we have to have an open conversation about the absurdity & Jew hatred that frequents this rag. Any Jewish person, or any person of good conscience should be embarrassed to work there or subscribe,” tweeted Rabbi Shlomo Litvin, chairman of the Kentucky Jewish Council.
Another source of reader complaints was the obituary’s closing anecdote: “Once, when asked on the spot how many times the name of Moses is mentioned in the Torah, Rabbi Kanievsky performed a mental tabulation and answered: 97. When he was told that a computer had counted 99 mentions, Rabbi Kanievsky pointed out that the extra two words used the same Hebrew letters as Moses but that they had completely different meanings.”
In fact, the name of Moshe is mentioned in the Torah far more than either 97 or 99 times, so the story is nonsensical. “This legend had been garbled,” Gershon Klapper tweeted. “There are more than a hundred mentions of Moshe in the first few chapters of Shemos alone.”
As of Sunday afternoon, the Times hadn’t corrected the obituary. If it does, it would be the most recent in a series of Times corrections on matters of Jewish literacy. The author of the Times obituary was Joseph Berger.
Ira Stoll was managing editor of The Forward and North American editor of The Jerusalem Post.
{Matzav.com}
We had and still have mishugoyim getting vaxxed every Monday & Thursday and wearing their stupid medically worthless disposable masks, so what do you expect from the Slimes? When apikorsim made vaccines and masks their god, this is what you get.
What do you expect from this rag paper. They are DemocRATs who lie and dish out fake news all the time. Most Orthodox Jews don’t read the Times anymore. We have our own dozens of orthodox newspapers and magazines. So who cares what this half dead paper barks.
First of all what did you expect from the New York Times other than ridicule and distortions?
Second of all in this case it is also a case of idiot not valuing diamonds Not only anti torah and Jews
Lastly they correctly quoted the story with the question being about how many times does the name Moshe appear in the GEMORAH . They did not say in the Torah
Thanks Ira for a very important article!
Obit should never have been submitted to NYT. For what purpose???
All things being equal, the obituary was rather decent coming from them minus the mistake
We ought to have bigger axes to grind
Who is this Joseph Nothing-Berger?
no Jew should be reading the NYT – it’s an anti-semitic paper
What’s the issue with the last story other than their numbers being inaccurate?
What’s the issue with the last story other than their numbers being inaccurate?
Who cares what the nyt has to say?