Opinion

• Letters

  September 21, 2007

  Israel’s Debt to Sudan The suggestion by opinion writers Stephen Solarz and Rafael Medoff that Israel should welcome Darfur refugees for humanitarian reasons is a good one (“Create a Temporary Israeli Haven for Darfur Refugees,” September 7). I would suggest, however, that apart from humanitarian considerations, this would allow Israel to recognize its 25-year-old debt…

  4 min read
• Opinion

  Syrian Airspace

  Only time will tell whether the alleged Israeli air attack on Syria two weeks ago was reckless bravado, a cynical blow to peace or a bold strike that makes the Middle East and all of us a bit safer. From the available evidence, though, the smart money is on bold and safer. It’s true that…

  Sep 19, 2007 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  Atonement and Food Stamps

  The Talmud teaches us that we must not judge our fellows until we have come to stand in their place. That’s an important lesson to remember whenever we participate in the primal human ritual of repentance and forgiveness. We are obligated to atone and to ask forgiveness for the wrongs we have done to others….

  Sep 19, 2007 | 2 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 There’s a shocking new report on civilian deaths in Gaza. If only it were accurate.

  

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

  

• Dan Perry Israel is not deliberately killing journalists in Gaza. But it does bear responsibility for their deaths

  

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

  

The Latest

• Opinion

  I Will Stand Up for the Muslim Brotherhood

  The first time I went to interview the Muslim Brotherhood, in 1995, an officer manager at their headquarters on the Nile opened the door with one hand and gave me a headscarf to wear with the other. The second time I went to interview the Muslim Brotherhood, in 2005, no headscarf awaited me. I was…

  By Mona Eltahawy Sep 19, 2007 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  Let’s Put Out A Communal Welcome Mat

  I am both an insider and an outsider in the Jewish world. Because of my last name, Jews accept me warmly around the world and across the Jewish spectrum. But I am also an outsider. My Jewish education was limited as a child. I did not participate in communal or institutional Jewish life. The concept…

  By Adam Bronfman Sep 19, 2007 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  Every Good Under the Sun Must Be Paid For

  I’m always stirred by the seemingly primitive features of Jewish religious observance. On Yom Kippur, celebrated this Shabbat, we read from the book of Leviticus about the sending away of a sacrificial goat to the Judean wilderness, bearing to its death the combined sins of the people. Judaism’s insistence on animal sacrifice must strike many…

  By David Klinghoffer Sep 19, 2007 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  Going East by Going West

  Ever since mankind discovered that the Earth is round, daring souls have attempted to get to the east by going west and vice versa. Columbus was one of them. When in 1492, he sailed the ocean blue, he was looking for a western route to India. There was a lively trade between Europe and India,…

  By Gus Tyler Sep 18, 2007 | < 1 min read
• Opinion

  Where Senility Is No Barrier to High Office

  The news from Israel has a surreal quality these days, half farcical, half simply bizarre. Last week, Christian crosses and the words “Hitler is the messiah, long live Jesus” were spray-painted on the walls of the Pahad Yitzhak synagogue in Eilat and on the second day of Rosh Hashanah, swastikas were painted on the walls…

  By Leonard Fein Sep 17, 2007 | 4 min read
• Letters

  September 14, 2007

  American Jewry Is At a Crossroads Asking whether Conservative Judaism suffers from malaise may be addressing the wrong issue (“Conservative Judaism at a Crossroads,” August 31). I believe a compelling argument can be made that what we are really witnessing is a realignment of the American Jewish community — to which the old categories of…

  Sep 14, 2007 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  The Great Big Rosh Hashanah Moose Hunt

  When we adopted our kids, they were already 6 and 7, and we were scared of Christmas. I’m Jewish and my wife’s an atheist, so celebrating Christmas was out of the question but, improbably, we’d adopted a couple of blue bloods — they had ancestors on the Mayflower — out of the foster system. Our…

  By Jeremy Weir Alderson Sep 12, 2007 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  My Grandmother’s Gravestone in Vienna

  In 1975, I gathered a few clues from my mother and, after searching for hours among jumbled row markers and dense underbrush, found her mother’s grave, dating from 1915, in the Jewish part of the Zentralfriedhof, the main cemetery in Vienna. I took my mother there in 1983 and we made a rice-paper rubbing of…

  By Yossi Alpher Sep 12, 2007 | 3 min read