Opinion

• Opinion

  Make Sure Oberammergau’s Passion Won’t Inflame

  The most prominent Passion play in the world will be performed next year in the Bavarian village of Oberammergau. Will the organizers finally rid the play of inflammatory portrayals of Jews and Judaism? Passion plays are theatrical dramatizations of the last days and hours in the life of Jesus based on narratives in the Christian…

  By Noam E. Marans

  3 min read
• Letters

  December 11, 2009

  Right and Wrong at the Western Wall In her December 4 first-person article “The ‘Crime’ of Praying with a Tallit, and a Plea for Tolerance,” Nofrat Frenkel admits that she entered the area at the Western Wall reserved for traditional women’s prayer along with 41 other women, wearing tallitot “hidden under our coats” and with…

  Dec 2, 2009 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  The Madoff Accounting

  A year ago, Bernard Madoff’s name was known mainly on Wall Street, in the toniest neighborhoods of Manhattan and Palm Beach, and by the few ordinary folks who thought they were unusually lucky to have tapped into his investment genius. Now, they know better. Everyone knows better. Now, his cocky visage made for Halloween masks…

  Dec 2, 2009 | 3 min read

Columnists View All

• Alyssa Katz My summer plans prove it: The Jewish Catskills are alive and kicking

  

• Rob Eshman ‘Remember the Liberty’ has become code for ‘Israel Is Evil’ 

  

• Dan Perry The Iran war ended terribly for the US, and even worse for Israel

  

• Emily Tamkin Outrage over Nicholas Kristof’s op-ed on sexual assault of Palestinians is missing the point

  

• Jay Michaelson When it comes to Israel/Palestine, everyone is sure that everyone else is a bigot

  

The Latest

• Opinion

  A Light in the Dark

  Hanukkah is a topsy-turvy holiday that often seems more commercial than spiritual, more exciting to children than adults, growing in importance the closer it is to Christmas. Its central beauty often gets lost in December’s excesses, its message of fierce self-determination at odds with the benign fuzziness of Yuletide wishes. But during this dark time…

  Dec 2, 2009 | < 1 min read
• Opinion

  Not Only for Ourselves

  The story was heart-warming, but instructive in an unexpected way. Jewish families gathered on a Sunday in a warehouse to pack boxes of pasta, canned vegetables and other food supplies and deliver them to needy residents in their region. Parents brought their children to reinforce the message of helping others. A brief dvar Torah was…

  Dec 1, 2009 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  Mea Culpa: For Misrepresenting the Bishops Conference, Ashamnu

  About a month ago I blogged about a document published by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops last June that had drawn sharp protests from several national Jewish organizations. I wrote that the bishops’ conference had responded to the complaints in October by withdrawing two offending sentences from the document, at the Jewish organizations’ request….

  By J.J. Goldberg Nov 26, 2009 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  Palin’s Unsettling Views

  What passes for punditry these days says that Sarah Palin must be taken seriously, not just as a potential talk-show host but a potential presidential candidate. We’re trying. So rather than dismiss her mystifying views on the expansion of Jewish settlements, we sought to understand them. “I disagree with the Obama administration on that,” she…

  Nov 25, 2009 | < 1 min read
• Letters

  December 4, 2009

  In Discussing Mount’s Future, Remember Its Recent Past In discussing the recent tensions between Israelis and Arabs over the Temple Mount, Daniel Seidemann writes: “Regardless of one’s view on the political future of Jerusalem, Israel’s claims to be a responsible guardian of this complex and sensitive city require it to respect competing religious and national…

  Nov 25, 2009 | 2 min read
• 
  Opinion

  When We Were the Vanguard

  Those were indeed the days my friend, and we truly thought they’d never end. We thought the nights would be for dancing and for stars, and the days — the days for making real the dreams, dreams learned from Isaiah and Amos and Walt Whitman and Camus. We loved being precocious and parading our precocity,…

  By Leonard Fein Nov 25, 2009 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  Adults, Who Happen To Be Young(er)

  Rabbi Steven Wernick, the new head of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, has made it clear that one of his priorities for the organization is outreach to Jews in their 20s and early 30s. As Conservative Jews gather for the USCJ’s biennial in Cherry Hill, N.J., December 6 — the first of Wernick’s tenure…

  By Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg Nov 25, 2009 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  Returning to Reform

  Once upon a time, there was a young man, a third-generation American who was raised in a classical Reform temple, who in the Reform manner celebrated becoming a bar mitzvah and who was confirmed in the Reform rite. He was inspired by his temple’s rabbi to himself become a Reform rabbi. He held national office…

  By Jacob Neusner Nov 25, 2009 | 5 min read