Desposing of God's name

Never let it be said that the media is insensitive to Jewish concerns. In fact, for an exquisite example of such sensitivity, refer to the Correspondence page of the current New Republic, where three letters (out of a grand total of eight) protest the magazine's decision to put the tetragrammaton on the May 1 cover.

The letters are written by men with names like Yair Rosenberg and Daniel Levin, and range from the irate to the amusing. Any one of them would have sufficiently represented the issue, but the magazine chose to print three, giving over 37 percent of the letter column to this one issue. Truly astounding. My favorite one:

At first I was disturbed by the cover art, but then I recognized your brilliant effort at self-promotion: First, those who take Jewish law seriously will carefully dispose of the cover in a geniza (burial location for holy writ)to prevent the desecration and destruction of God's holy Hebrew name. A thousand years from now, archeologists will uncover a genizah and declare that TNR was the leading publication of the twenty-first century! Second, those who, like me, read TNR in the bathroom, will now have to read it in more public and respectable places. You are clever indeed, but I hope you do not do this too often.

Richard Dine
Silver Spring, Maryland