I want to thank Benjamin Weiner for his thoughtful, impassioned opinion article about the former Atlas Farm’s Store’s political choice [“Store’s apartheid-free pledge alienates instead of unites,” Gazette, Nov. 25]. I was astonished that this wonderful local resource for fresh food would feel the necessity to take a public stance which essentially is only divisive and exclusionary. The owners of the store are certainly free to their opinions about Israel, but I don’t understand why they feel the necessity to impose it on others. In this time of so many national and world-wide abominations, why choose this particular issue, and why feel that this is an appropriate forum for their views? I am deeply saddened by their choice, and as another one of the few Jews in Franklin County, will not feel comfortable shopping there again.
Deborah Sherr
Ashfield