RE “A time of moral reckoning’’ (Op-ed): “The meaning of moral reckoning this year’’ is between people of faith and their God, not James Carroll.
The Jewish High Holy Days are a time of introspection, atonement, making peace with one’s God and, indeed, “moral reckoning.’’ Surely we can all support Carroll’s contention that “Jews and non-Jews who love Israel’’ hew rightly to a diversity of opinions. And whatever one thinks of the United Nations report on the Gaza war, from the commission led by Judge Richard Goldstone, Carroll’s defense is adequate and incisive.
Yet it is but a short leap from Carroll’s exhortations to the eerie suggestion that Jews, as a people, must atone for the alleged sins of the Gaza operation and the government that executed it. This sort of logic has led to marked increases in violence against Jews in Europe and elsewhere.
In bracketing his defense of the Goldstone report with admonitions about Jews and the meaning of moral reckoning this year, Carroll improperly and irresponsibly conflates the actions of the Israeli government with the personal character and morality of an entire religious group.
Carroll ought to relegate policy arguments to that sphere.
David Wittenberg
Cambridge 
