Opinion

• Opinion

  Meet the New Rabbis — Class of 2007

  Michal Woll, a candidate for ordination at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, brings to the rabbinate years of experience dealing with medical care and quality-of-life issues. Woll, 43, began her career in the sciences, earning undergraduate degrees in chemical and biomedical engineering before completing a Master of Science in chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of…

  3 min read
• Opinion

  D.C.-Based Minyan Mixes Shabbat With Activism

  Washington – Tikkun Leil Shabbat, a participatory prayer group, or havurah, may soon have to find a bigger space. The havurah’s average attendance has increased to upward of 150 from 30 since its founding barely two years ago. Even after halting their advertising on Jewish e-mail lists in Washington, every third Friday night dozens upon…

  By Julia Appel May 4, 2007 | 5 min read
• Opinion

  At Retreat, Y.U. Rabbis Talk God

  In 2005, Yeshiva University established a Center for the Jewish Future, a think tank and outreach organization seen by some as a more flexible counterweight to the university’s affiliated Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary. This year, the center launched a new program that offers a glimpse into how the new unit is attempting to establish…

  By Gabriel Sanders May 4, 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’s new gift to the far right could help end the Gaza war

  

• Emily Tamkin Entering motherhood — and an obsession with the works of an Italian Jewish literary hero

  

The Latest

• Letters

  May 4, 2007

  View Greece’s Wartime History in Context I am perplexed by opinion writer Andrew Apostolou’s general assessment of Greece’s conscience (“Greece Must Acknowledge Its Complicity in the Shoah,” March 23). Though most of the historic data presented in the opinion article are true and correct, I believe it is superficial to isolate a part of history…

  May 4, 2007 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  Israel’s Tough Medicine

  Watching the uproar in Jerusalem this week, following the release of the Winograd report on the conduct of last year’s Lebanon War, friends of Israel must be gripped with profound feelings of sadness and alarm — sadness at the degraded state of public leadership in the Jewish state, and alarm at the report’s gloomy depiction…

  May 4, 2007 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  The Stock Market Can Be Manipulated

  Almost daily, as stocks go up and stocks go down in our market, the stories of the reason why try to relate the vicissitudes on Wall Street to some current happening that is taking place in the United States or almost any other country in the world. But, without fail, the media relate what is…

  By Gus Tyler Apr 30, 2007 | 2 min read
• Opinion

  Whither the Weather?

  It was Mark Twain who, many moons ago, said, “Everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it.” The almost universal assumption was that the quality of the weather was determined by forces beyond human control. That seemingly self-evident view is no longer held either by scientists or by the public according to…

  By Gus Tyler Apr 30, 2007 | 2 min read
• Opinion

  ‘Hatikva’ Regains Its Meaning in Neve Monosson

  It has become a tradition for me to celebrate Israeli Independence Day with my friends in Neve Monosson, not far from Ben-Gurion Airport. Neve Monosson was founded in 1953 by a group of airport employees supported by Efraim “Fred” Monosson, a wealthy raincoat manufacturer and a leading Zionist from Boston. It later became popular with…

  By Uri Dromi Apr 27, 2007 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  Reporting for Duty With Britain’s Israel-hating Mob

  The first thing I did after I started working as a staff reporter at the London-based Jewish Chronicle was to join the National Union of Journalists. Those dependable union reps, I was told, would safeguard my every interest. Holding on to that belief has become rather hard, now that the organization I had considered my…

  By Nathan Jeffay Apr 27, 2007 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  C’est l’Economie, Stupide

  When Nicolas Sarkozy, the conservative frontrunner in the French presidential elections, goes into the runoff with his socialist rival Ségolène Royal on May 6, he can count on strong support from the largest Jewish community in Western Europe. Many of France’s 600,000 Jews like Sarkozy’s outspoken (and somewhat un-French) support for Israel, but some are…

  By Eric Frey Apr 27, 2007 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  Cease Citing Bible To Defend Bush’s Immigration Bill

  It would be virtually impossible to unearth a single statement by a mainstream American Jewish leader in support of President Bush’s “Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act” that does not cite Leviticus 19. Citation of the passage is as ubiquitous as mainstream Jewish organizational support is monolithic in backing Bush’s bill and its provisions: exponentially increased immigration,…

  By Stephen Steinlight Apr 27, 2007 | 4 min read