Opinion

• Opinion

  Obama Would Bring Out the Best in Us

  At a time when America is facing great economic turmoil, we need a president who is steady, mature, responsible, thoughtful and clear-thinking. We need a president who is deliberate, not volatile. We also need a president who can inspire Americans to listen to their better angels — who understands that the hopes that unite us…

  By Peter Dreier

  4 min read
• Opinion

  McCain Offers Substantive Solutions

  As we head into the final stretch of the presidential campaign, the challenges confronting the next president on the domestic front look dramatically different than they did just a few months ago when the Republicans and Democrats concluded their primaries. The summer months saw a painful spike in the cost of living for American families,…

  By Yuval Levin Oct 24, 2008 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  Amen to This Election

  If you are one of the many millions of Americans eligible to vote before Election Day — and this year that amounts to about one-third the electorate — the long, contentious presidential campaign of 2008 may have already come to a close. For the rest of us, the end is near. Who will miss the…

  Oct 23, 2008 | 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

• Opinion

  The Conference’s Bad Call

  More than half a century ago, the heads of a dozen national Jewish organizations formed a loose forum to approach the federal government as a unified American Jewish voice on Israel and the Middle East. The initiative initially came from the Eisenhower administration, which hoped — in vain, it turned out — to minimize the…

  Oct 23, 2008 | 2 min read
• Letters

  October 31, 2008

  Feminists Don’t Speak For All of Us on Palin Your October 24 article “Sarah Palin Hits a Nerve Among Jewish Women, But It’s a Raw One” includes the opinion of Baila Olidort, editor of Lubavitch.org, who is quoted as saying that even though Palin’s “views are aligned quite well with traditional Jewish values,” she still…

  Oct 23, 2008 | 6 min read
• Opinion

  The Supreme Issue

  No election in recent history has been more important to the future of our constitutional rights than the current presidential contest. Our next president will have enormous influence on the direction of the Supreme Court. The high court is currently divided into two wings: The right consists of John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and…

  By Alan M. Dershowitz Oct 17, 2008 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  Haider May Be Dead, But His Legacy Lives On

  Jörg Haider was one the most gifted European politicians of his generation. The far-right governor of Carinthia, who died in a car crash October 11 at the age of 58, pioneered a new and dangerous style of politics that shook up Austria’s political landscape and was widely copied across Europe. Even in death, however, his…

  By Eric Frey Oct 16, 2008 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  In Berlin, Where the Past Is Present

  The disposition — mine, at any rate — is to stop before each of the photographs of those who resisted, and were therefore murdered, and to read, word by word, the all too brief paragraph that conveys their story. Not, mind you, because the stories are either all that interesting or informative, but out of…

  By Leonard Fein Oct 16, 2008 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  Getting Beyond Bias

  No doubt by now you’ve seen — or at least heard of — the video starring comedienne Sarah Silverman, in which she employs her trademark bawdy language and edgy humor on behalf of her favorite presidential candidate. That would be Senator Barack Obama or, as Silverman says, the “goodest person we’ve ever had as a…

  Oct 16, 2008 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  A Crisis Foreseen

  A current of astonishment has been rippling through the American consciousness over the past few weeks, since our simmering mortgage crisis suddenly erupted into a full-fledged, category-5 worldwide economic calamity. For years, the drama has been unfolding before our uncomprehending eyes, from the first drop in home sales in 2005 through the cascading foreclosures and…

  Oct 16, 2008 | 2 min read
• 
  Opinion

  The Specter of the Sixties

  As a historian of the 1960s, I feel a bit like Rip Van Winkle when I watch this year’s presidential campaign. John McCain has largely staked his candidacy on the hard lessons he learned during his ordeal in the Hanoi Hilton. McCain and his running mate, Sarah Palin, accuse Barack Obama of waving “the white…

  By Michael Kazin Oct 13, 2008 | 3 min read