Opinion

• 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

  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

Columnists View All

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• Rob Eshman The case for Jewish optimism in 2026

  

• Nora Berman Did crypto-Jews invent the modern tarot deck?

  

• Dan Perry It’s a classic trick of liars and crooks — and it’s shaping Israel’s response to war and disaster

  

• Emily Tamkin The Holocaust survivor writer who can help us through this ominous era

  

The Latest

• 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
• Opinion

  Imagine Living on $21 Per Week

  This month, Jewish communities across the United States will come together and start a yearlong campaign to highlight and address the albatross of poverty that our society carries around its neck. With the holiday season now upon us, a time of year when Americans reflect on the blessings we are all given, I would like…

  By Steve Gutow Sep 12, 2007 | 2 min read
• Opinion

  Amusements and Diversions From a Relentless Swamp

  Let’s change the subject, as befits the season of renewal. We know too well the dreadful aspects of the year just ended: the violence in Iraq, Darfur, Afghanistan, Gaza, Virginia Tech and countless others just below our horizon; the deadly hurricanes and the coal mine disasters, the floods and fires and all the rest. Goodbye,…

  By Leonard Fein Sep 12, 2007 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  Delivering a Deal

  It’s hard to imagine a less likely pair of statesmen to carry off a sensitive, historic peace negotiation than Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas, respective leaders of Israel and the Palestinian Authority. For months, skeptical observers on both sides have watched with mixed bemusement and contempt as the two men, both weak leaders with little…

  Sep 12, 2007 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  A High Holy Day Story: Reward for No Temptation?

  My rabbi loves challenges, so he loves my halachic questions. “So, Ted,” he says, “any arcane questions today?” We go to his office, where he keeps, in a secret drawer, his wife’s delicious plum cake. Now that I’ve got him in a mellow mood, I begin. “Okay, here’s a tough one tailored for Yom Kippur.”…

  By Ted Roberts Sep 12, 2007 | 2 min read