Opinion

• Opinion

  After Utopia, Loving Israel

  Why are American Jews abandoning us? Why do American Jews hold Israel to a higher standard than they do any other country in the world — including the one they so proudly call home? As an American professor on sabbatical in Israel, I field questions like these on a regular basis. The “waning American Jewish…

  By Jonathan D. Sarna

  3 min read
• Opinion

  Who Can Head Off Climate Change Before the Tipping Point?

  Join me, if you will, in a brief thought experiment. Let’s imagine that John McCain had been elected president last fall. Imagine, too, that Republicans had held their own in the Senate and confidently dominated Washington the way they did two or three years ago. What would be different? Let’s start our search in Jerusalem….

  By J.J. Goldberg Sep 30, 2009 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  Change on the Iran Front

  Israel’s new year got off to a promising start with a rare dose of good news on its most troubling battlefront: the Iranian nuclear threat. As it happened, Iran was also high on the agenda in New York when the world’s leaders gathered for the 64th session of the United Nations General Assembly, right after…

  Sep 30, 2009 | 2 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

  

The Latest

• Letters

  October 9, 2009

  Defending Democracy In Honduras The rule of law and democracy must be restored in Honduras (“Jewish Groups Take Sides in Honduran Strife,” October 2). Rep. Howard Berman, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, is correct in his statement that, regardless of how we view a deposed leader, coups d’etat are unacceptable and the United…

  Sep 30, 2009 | 4 min read
• 
  Opinion

  Ahmadinejad Was Heard — Were We?

  And then the shofar was sounded. For the first time the crowd stood still. The sound carried to the United Nations building across First Avenue. First a long blast and then the short staccato wailing sounds, reflecting the brokenness of too many in Israel and the world today, and then again the long tekiya, as…

  By Avi Weiss Sep 25, 2009 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  It’s Race

  When David Letterman asked Barack Obama the other night whether he shared Jimmy Carter’s view that much of the venom directed at him could be explained by racism, the president replied with his best applause line of the show: “First of all, it’s important to realize that I was actually black before the election” —…

  By Leonard Fein Sep 23, 2009 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  Time for Straight-Talk About Assimilation

  From now on, Jewish groups will likely think twice before using any variation on the word “assimilation.” That’s one lesson learned from the recent brouhaha over a 34-second commercial on Israeli television promoting the Jewish Agency’s Masa program, which brings young Jews to Israel for sustained periods of work, study and volunteering. The advertisement, which…

  By Jack Wertheimer Sep 23, 2009 | 4 min read
• 
  Opinion

  In Defense of Transgression

  Clergy sin, but they rarely advocate sin. There is an apparently apocryphal story about the famously reticent President Calvin Coolidge: Upon returning from church and being asked by his wife what the preacher spoke about, Coolidge is supposed to have answered “sin.” His wife persisted: “What did he say?” “He was against it,” Coolidge replied….

  By David Wolpe Sep 23, 2009 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  The Goldstone Disconnect

  Justice Richard Goldstone and the three other members of a panel commissioned by the United Nations Human Rights Council want Israel to investigate all the war crimes they attribute to its military operation in Gaza last winter. Otherwise, Goldstone threatens, a global court that tries such cases should judge Israel for war crimes and possible…

  By Yossi Alpher Sep 23, 2009 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  London Calling, With a Mideast Message

  In the swirl of diplomacy, intrigue and back-channel deal-making that accompanied the annual opening of the United Nations General Assembly in late September — urgent world summits on the climate and the economy, frantic Iranian nuclear negotiations, Israeli-Palestinian non-negotiations — perhaps the most unlikely mission was that of Ivan Lewis, the British deputy foreign minister…

  By J.J. Goldberg Sep 23, 2009 | 4 min read
• Letters

  October 2, 2009

  Desmond Tutu Was Not Wrong About Israel In your September 18 editorial “Despairing Words,” you take Desmond Tutu to task for “implying that Israel resembles apartheid.” Under the South African apartheid policy, blacks had to present identification periodically to legitimize a presence or activity. Today, in the West Bank, there are dozens of internal Israeli…

  Sep 23, 2009 | 2 min read