Opinion

• Opinion

  Recognizing Ourselves in One Another

  More than all the eloquent phrases and the snippets of wisdom that marked President Obama’s inaugural address, I remain in the thrall of words he spoke at the Lincoln Memorial just two days earlier: “[I]f we could just recognize ourselves in one another… maybe, just maybe, we might perfect our union in the process.” Obama…

  By Leonard Fein

  4 min read
• Opinion

  ‘The Price and the Promise of Citizenship’

  Well into his somber, stirring inaugural address, after pointedly repudiating the policies and behaviors of the past eight years, President Obama set out a new task for his fellow citizens — a return to America’s animating values of hard work, honesty, courage, fair play, tolerance and curiosity to anchor a time of renewed responsibility and…

  Jan 21, 2009 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  Agony and Urgency in Gaza

  When Israel opened fire on Gaza December 27, its stated goals were limited ones: weakening the rejectionist Hamas, stopping the rocket fire on Israel’s south and checking the underground flow of new weapons into the coastal strip. Three weeks later, when the shooting stopped, none of those goals had been reached unequivocally. But something bigger…

  Jan 21, 2009 | 3 min read

Columnists View All

• Jodi Rudoren This is my last column as editor of the Forward

  

• Jay Michaelson American Jews were played — now what?

  

• Rob Eshman Charlie Kirk and Alan Berg: 2 murders, 41 years apart, show the painful perils of polarization

  

• Nora Berman ‘A long record of failure’: Is it time to put the two-state solution to rest?

  

• Dan Perry Israel’s strike in Qatar: An audacious bid for victory, or just another foolhardy provocation?

  

• Emily Tamkin Trump’s attack on George Soros is ludicrous. It also endangers Jews (and everyone else)

  

The Latest

• Letters

  January 30, 2009

  Emulating Iran? It is a sad commentary that Israel would imitate the Islamic Republic of Iran in disqualifying political parties from coming elections (“Citing Disloyalty, Knesset Bans Main Arab Parties From Elections,” January 30). It was once a point of pride that Israel included Arab parties in the Knesset. It is in the present day…

  Jan 21, 2009 | 2 min read
• Letters

  January 23, 2009

  Clarifying Madoff’s AJCongress Relations The casual reader might understand from one unintentionally ambiguous sentence in your report on the impact of the Madoff scandal on the American Jewish Congress that Madoff was a member of its investment committee. He was not, and he has not had any personal involvement with us since the early 1980s…

  Jan 16, 2009 | 3 min read
• 
  Opinion

  The Long Arm of Halacha: Jewish Law and the Madoff Scandal

  The case against Bernard Madoff appears relatively straightforward. But the sheer magnitude of losses means that no individual claimant is likely to recover more than a few pennies on the dollar. As a result, hoping to recover a bit more of their investments, a number of affected parties have shifted attention from Madoff to managers…

  By Chaim Saiman Jan 16, 2009 | 6 min read
• Opinion

  First the PLO, Now Hamas?

  Just over 20 years ago, as Ronald Reagan passed the presidential baton to George H.W. Bush, the United States reversed a decades-long policy by initiating open diplomatic contacts with a group that it had long decried as a terrorist organization. The announcement in December 1988 by Reagan’s secretary of state, George Schultz, that American diplomats…

  By Jonathan S. Tobin Jan 16, 2009 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  Our Next President’s Debt to a King

  Oh happy coincidence: The congruence of this year’s Martin Luther King Day on the 19th of January and the inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama as president of the United States on the 20th offers so rich, if too brief, a respite from the grim headlines of these times. Truth be told, without Dr. King there…

  By Leonard Fein Jan 16, 2009 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  Hebrew School for All?

  New York is about to witness a historic experiment in the nature of Jewish engagement in American society: the planned opening in August 2009 of the city’s first Hebrew-themed public school. The school, to be known as the Hebrew Language Academy, will be organized as a charter school, publicly funded but operated by a private…

  Jan 15, 2009 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  Numbering the Dead

  On January 14, day 19 of the Gaza war, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon faced a press conference in Cairo and flatly declared it “intolerable that civilians bear the brunt of this conflict.” Writing the next morning in an Arabic-language British newspaper, Al-Quds Al-Arabi, Ban pressed the point. “Many have died and the civilians are…

  Jan 15, 2009 | 2 min read
• 
  Opinion

  Swearing on Lincoln’s Bible

  On February 12, less than a month after Barack Obama takes the oath of office, we will celebrate the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth. How fitting that the two events will occur so close in time — the bicentennial of the birth of the man from Illinois who emancipated the slaves and the inauguration…

  By Menachem Genack Jan 8, 2009 | 4 min read