Opinion

• Opinion

  Love Is Not Blindness

  Since the publication of “How I’m Losing My Love for Israel,” a personal essay describing my fatigue as a liberal Zionist, the most disturbing responses have not been the vitriolic e-mails or online comments, nor the thoughtful and well-reasoned replies from the likes of Daniel Gordis and Jonathan Sarna. Rather, I have been most troubled…

  By Jay Michaelson

  4 min read
• Opinion

  Where Is the Love for Israel?

  In the September 25 issue of the Forward, we published an essay from columnist Jay Michaelson titled, “How I’m Losing My Love for Israel.”  In it, he wrote that defending Israel’s actions in his liberal social circles had grown “exhausting.” Michaelson explained that he has begun to “second-guess” his love for Israel, a love that…

  Oct 21, 2009 | 7 min read
• Opinion

  The Rope Goldstone Threw to Israel

  Like sharks entering a cove teeming with frenzied fish, loathers of Zion have opened their jaws wide and then, with delight, gripped their prey. For them, the Goldstone report is delectable, albeit it merely whets but does not satisfy their appetite. It confirms what they have known all along, that Israel is a criminal state,…

  By Leonard Fein Oct 21, 2009 | 3 min read

Columnists View All

• Jay Michaelson What can really be done to prevent antisemitic attacks like Bondi Beach?

  

• Rob Eshman Australia shooting terrifies Jews worldwide — and strengthens the case for Israel

  

• Nora Berman Did crypto-Jews invent the modern tarot deck?

  

• Dan Perry An Israeli media mainstay is crumbling. Will liberal democracy go with it?

  

• Emily Tamkin The fundamental miscalculation behind the GOP’s antisemitism crisis

  

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  Opinion

  The Brain Behind Ahmadinejad

  On December 14, 2005, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became the first senior Iranian official to deny the Holocaust. “They have created a myth today that they call the massacre of Jews and they consider it a principle above God, religions and the prophets,” he said in the city of Zahedan. Until that date, leaders of the…

  By Meir Javedanfar Oct 21, 2009 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  Straight-Talk About Assimilation: An Exchange

  In an October 2 opinion article, “Time for Straight-Talk About Assimilation,” Jewish Theological Seminary historian Jack Wertheimer weighed in on the controversy over an Israeli television commercial that warned of high rates of assimilation among young Diaspora Jews. The ad, produced for the Jewish Agency’s Masa program, which brings young Jews to Israel for educational…

  By Adam R. Bronfman and Jack Wertheimer Oct 21, 2009 | 6 min read
• Opinion

  Reframing Liberal Judaism

  The Union for Reform Judaism convenes early next month in Toronto for its Biennial Convention, and the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism will follow with its biennial in December. These gatherings are opportunities for the two largest denominations in North American Judaism to take stock of the big picture. Looking at the big picture should…

  By Ben Dreyfus Oct 21, 2009 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  An Israel Espionage Drama, Sans Israel

  Fans of Israeli espionage melodrama are having a hard time digesting the latest episode, the October 19 arrest of scientist Stewart David Nozette on charges of trying to spy for Israel. From what’s known so far, the case seems to defy traditional understandings of Israel as either victim or menace. For that sub-group of Israel-boosters…

  By J.J. Goldberg Oct 21, 2009 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  The Invisible Soldiers

  After Debra Nussbaum Cohen’s story on Jews in the U.S. military was published last week, a reader asked: “How can synagogues here in the U.S. lend support to our Jewish American soldiers?” First, by acknowledging their existence. In many Jewish communities, it’s easier to name an American serving in the Israel Defense Forces than in…

  Oct 21, 2009 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  Saving Sudan

  President Obama’s predilection for finding diplomatic compromises for knotty world conflicts won him the Nobel Peace Prize, but it doesn’t always play well at home, where engagement can be ridiculed as naïve or wishy-washy. Sometimes, though, it’s the only way to thread the needle. And the president seems to have done just that with his…

  Oct 21, 2009 | < 1 min read
• Opinion

  Who Are You Calling Nazi? Why, Pretty Much Everybody.

  The Anti-Defamation League reports in an October 15 press release that it has received an apology from the president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Liberty Commission, Richard Land, for a September 26 speech to the Christian Coalition in which he described the congressional Democrats’ health care reforms as “exactly what the Nazis did.” In…

  By J.J. Goldberg Oct 19, 2009 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  Mysteries of the Church: The Bishops Blink … Sort of

  America’s Catholic bishops, responding to Jewish protests, are backing away from a controversial policy statement they issued last June in which interfaith dialogue was portrayed as a forum for promoting Christianity. Jewish organizations that partner with the church in ongoing, formal dialogue, here and in Rome, had warned in August that the controversial June statement…

  By J.J. Goldberg Oct 18, 2009 | 4 min read