Opinion

• Letters

  June 27, 2008

  Sobibor Wasn’t Polish A June 13 Shmooze article on Holocaust-themed graphic novels refers to Sobibor as a “Polish extermination camp” (“Comic Explores Shoah”). After a relatively long absence of such mindlessly insulting and history-falsifying nonsense, we were shocked to again find it again in print — and all the more so in a Jewish newspaper…

  3 min read
• Opinion

  The Kind of Friend Israel Needs

  President Bush was in this part of the world last month, and I had the opportunity to attend two of his speeches, one at the Knesset, the other at the World Economic Forum in Sharm el Sheikh. On both occasions I found myself standing up and clapping for a president whose feelings of friendship for…

  By Yossi Beilin Jun 19, 2008 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  Then They Came for the Bahai

  In mastering the knowlege that even bigotry is relative and comes in gradations, I was a premature pupil. I learned this lesson when I was only 10. In 1977, in an eclectic neighborhood in Tehran, my Jewish family lived on a narrow, wooded alley in what was then an upscale area, alongside two other Jewish…

  By Roya Hakakian Jun 19, 2008 | 3 min read

Columnists View All

• Alyssa Katz What I learned at a Holocaust survivors’ Purim party

  

• Rob Eshman Trump is backed into a corner on Iran. Get ready for him to start blaming Jews

  

• Dan Perry How Israel became a country where teenagers murder each other in cold blood

  

• Emily Tamkin American Jews have a Hasan Piker problem. Solving it is going to hurt

  

• Jay Michaelson Epstein and Iran are an antisemitism mega-crisis. Here’s what Jewish organizations should do about it. 

  

The Latest

• Opinion

  Beware the Right’s Rise in Hungary

  Hungary is home to one of the most vibrant Jewish communities in all of Europe, some 100,000 strong. Budapest, the capital, features more Jewish schools, synagogues, theaters and social organizations than any other European city east of Paris. For all its vibrancy, though, the second-largest Jewish community in continental Europe now finds itself in the…

  By Eric Frey Jun 19, 2008 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  The Song Remains the Same

  Among my friends, there are several who travel back and forth to Israel four or five times a year, sometimes even more. Perhaps the magic wears off, the trip becomes entirely routine. I manage one or two trips a year, and though there have by now been many trips, stretching back more than half a…

  By Leonard Fein Jun 17, 2008 | 4 min read
• 
  Opinion

  Bush’s Bluffing Has Made Mideast Peace a Bad Bet

  From Taba to Tony, from the Rose Garden to Riyadh, from Geneva to Gaza — in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, no American president has been presented with more opportunities for reaching a true and lasting peace than George W. Bush. But with just a half a year to go before he leaves the…

  By Michael Shtender-Auerbach Jun 12, 2008 | 5 min read
• Opinion

  Courting the Gentile Vote

  America’s Jewish community has a clinical obsession with Israel-related issues. The Israel-related mutterings of political candidates are picked over like the stool of future Chinese emperors. If a candidate forgets a certain phrase, or ventures even a slightly extreme reading of American’s Middle East policy, either too left or too right, such is cause for…

  By Noam Neusner Jun 12, 2008 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  How To Reach ‘Generation Save the [Insert Cause Here]’

  I don’t normally crusade for political causes. In fact, this is the first time I’ve ever been moved to speak out publicly. Granted, I’m only 17 years old, but it’s a milestone nonetheless. I didn’t think it would come to this when I went to hear a recent lecture by Ali Abunimah, a co-founder of…

  By Hannah Niebulski Jun 12, 2008 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  We Ought To Ask Why

  From a multitude of sources comes the disturbing news that far too many of our soldiers are committing suicide upon return to the United States from Iraq, or while still in country. We ought to ask why. Perhaps we may get a clue from a portion of the great novel “Brothers Karamazov,” in which the…

  By Gus Tyler Jun 12, 2008 | 1 min read
• Opinion

  We Live in a World of Judaisms

  At our Seder table, the Four Questions are introduced by a brief commentary noting that they are meant as illustrations of question-asking, be the questions trivial, picayune or cosmic. Anything goes. (Except, of course, “When do we eat?”) In that spirit, I’ve decided that it may be useful now and then to pose questions that…

  By Leonard Fein Jun 12, 2008 | 4 min read
• Letters

  June 20, 2008

  Chaplaincy Takes All A June 13 article accurately notes the growing need for Jewish chaplains in California and the fact that, as Rabbi Lon Moskowitz quite rightly states, there “simply aren’t enough chaplains to fill all the vacancies” (“Demand for Kosher Cuisine Swells Ranks of Jewish Prison Chaplains”). Indeed the need is even greater than…

  Jun 12, 2008 | 2 min read