Opinion

• Opinion

  The Energizing Power of a Dreamt Tomorrow

  Here’s a true story I made up more than 30 years ago. (Remember, stories do not have to have happened in order to be true.) Later, I will explain why I offer it here, now. It was 1860, or maybe 1861, in Minsk, or possibly in Pinsk. Wherever, whenever, there were a dozen Jews who…

  By Leonard Fein

  4 min read
• Letters

  May 22, 2008

  The Survivor Who Made Schindler Film Happen An April 25 article neglected to mention the person who was the catalyst for getting author Thomas Keneally interested in the story of Oskar Schindler: the late Leopold Pfefferberg, later known as Leopold Page (“Schindler’s 100th Birthday Is Private Affair for Survivors”). A Schindler Jew, Leo urged my…

  May 15, 2008 | 2 min read
• 
  Opinion

  Let Them Change Light Bulbs

  We are told that the earth is overheating and that the burning of fossil fuels and the release of carbons is to blame. We are told that every dollar we spend to import oil props up terrorism-sponsoring and unsavory regimes. We are told that the era of cheap oil is over. We are told that…

  By Noam Neusner May 8, 2008 | 4 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 A billionaire Gen Z influencer is reinventing philanthropy — with this South African rabbi’s help

  

• Nora Berman Is Netflix’s new show the most Jewish cartoon ever?

  

• 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

  Help Others in Israel Follow the Path of the Druze

  It began shortly after I first landed in Atlanta to take my position as consul general. Members of the local Jewish community took an interest in my background and started to visit Israel’s Druze towns. Many traveled to my northern Israeli home town of Isfiya, on Mount Carmel. People wanted to know: What was this…

  By Reda Mansour May 8, 2008 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  Iranians Ought To Be Clear on the Price of Going Nuclear

  Hillary Clinton recently asserted that if she were president and Iran launched a nuclear attack on Israel, the United States would retaliate with strikes that could “totally obliterate” Iran. Here in America her pledge has ignited a flurry of commentary, most of which is likely to be forgotten after the presidential campaign is over. In…

  By Thomas Lippman May 8, 2008 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  A Time for Mourning, A Time To Rejoice

  In this week of remembrance and celebration, some people are having a hard time. The remembering begins with Yom HaZikaron, Israel’s memorial day for those who have fallen in its wars. It is a day of both public and private solemnity. The cemeteries that dot the country are thronged; once, at a small dinner party…

  By Leonard Fein May 8, 2008 | 4 min read
• Letters

  May 16, 2008

  Rabbi Stands By Words A May 9 editorial compares me to Reverend Jeremiah Wright by accusing me of “inflammatory rhetoric” and of publicly hurling “strong epithets” in 1995 at then-prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, including calling his government “the Rabin Judenrat” (“Wright and Wrong”). The latter accusation is false. Here is some of my “inflammatory rhetoric,”…

  May 8, 2008 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  Conversion Blues

  Israel’s Supreme Rabbinical Court acted cruelly and capriciously when it voted to nullify a woman’s conversion to Judaism this month, 15 years after she took the supposedly irrevocable step of casting her lot with the Jewish people. The court’s decision robbed the woman and her Israeli-born children of a lifetime of loyalties and identities. It…

  May 8, 2008 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  Listening to the Storm

  The devastation visited on Burma on May 6 by the cyclone known as Nargis is too vast for the human mind to comprehend. The official toll at press time was 22,000 dead and 42,000 missing, but the number of deaths is expected to reach above 100,000 when the count is completed. Hundreds of thousands of…

  May 8, 2008 | 2 min read
• 
  Opinion

  A Jewish State: ‘Mazel Tov!’

  The day has finally arrived, the day that Jews have awaited with such longing in their hearts — a day for which they have waited 2,000 years. The dream of many generations has become a reality: In the Land of Israel, a Jewish state has been founded. It will be called “The State of Israel.”…

  May 1, 2008 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  Wright and Wrong

  Back in the fall of 1995, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, Abraham Foxman, announced that he was quitting his New Jersey synagogue because of the rabbi’s inflammatory rhetoric on Middle East issues. Foxman and his family had been members of the Orthodox congregation for more than 20 years and had deep roots there,…

  May 1, 2008 | 5 min read