Opinion

• Opinion

  Slamming the Door on Converts

  Every year, thousands of non-Jews make the fateful decision to convert to Judaism. Some are seeking spiritual fulfillment. Many are married to or planning to marry a Jewish spouse. Others have a Jewish father or grandparent and desire a full sense of belonging to the Jewish people. Some have discovered Jewish ancestry and wish to…

  By Marc D. Angel

  4 min read
• Opinion

  We Cannot Forget Jerusalem

  People often ask us why we, as leaders of a largely North American Jewish organization, should take such a deep and personal interest in the fate of Jerusalem, a city nearly 6,000 miles away. It’s a fair question: Why should we care whether Jerusalem is divided into Jewish and Arab zones? The answer is simple:…

  By Stephen Savitsky and Tzvi Hersh Weinreb Nov 7, 2007 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  Why Must We Be the Loudest Drum-Beaters?

  It may be going too far to call Norman Podhoretz, the venerable editor at-large of Commentary, a “warmonger.” After all, his repeated call for the United States to bomb Iran would not, as he sees it, begin a new war; he has been arguing for some time now that we are already engaged in World…

  By Leonard Fein Nov 7, 2007 | 4 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

  When Will They Learn?

  The Democrats who won control of Congress last year, riding a national wave of disgust with the Bush presidency, are beginning to find themselves as helpless as the rest of the nation, and the world, in the face of President Bush’s implacable stubbornness. They have passed an increase in the S-CHIP children’s health program three…

  Nov 7, 2007 | 2 min read
• Opinion

  Investigate This

  With the 2008 presidential season heating up and the Bush presidency slipping into its twilight, President Bush appears determined to draw bright lines to remind America where he stands. His eye on history, he means to leave his mark for posterity. Oddly, the place he’s chosen to make his stand is in the nation’s emergency…

  Nov 2, 2007 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  Calling Our Ethiopian Ally to Account for Abuses

  American Jews stand at the forefront of the international campaign to stop the ongoing genocide in Darfur. The coalition of conscience that the Jewish community helped build is pressuring Sudan’s patron, China, to put an end to the slaughter. Next door in Ethiopia, meanwhile, another humanitarian crisis is unfolding. Ethiopian troops are burning villages inhabited…

  By Daniel Hemel Oct 31, 2007 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  Fear Not ‘Islamo-Fascism,’ Nor Ahmadinejad

  Last week was Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, the brainchild of David Horowitz, conservative political gadfly and self-effacing founder of the David Horowitz Freedom Center. Friends of mine and other writers I admire spoke on college campuses around the country, garnering impressive media coverage. The week was a big success, if measured by how much awareness of…

  By David Klinghoffer Oct 31, 2007 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  Accepting a 73-Year-Old Invitation

  On one side of the faded but well-preserved invitation it is written that the groom’s parents “tienen el agrado de invitar a Usted”; on the other side the bride’s parents “hobn dem koved aykh ayntsulaydn” to the wedding of their children, Chanale and Baruch. The date of the nuptials: “el 1 de Diciembre de 1934,…

  By Steve North Oct 31, 2007 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  For Israel’s Sake, Replace Politics of Either/Or With Both/And

  Dualism is built into us — perhaps part of our neural make up, surely part of our cultural inheritance: light/dark, war/peace, hot/cold, wet/dry, joy/sorrow. Fortunately, we know that there’s a continuum between the antipodes, that things can sometimes be neither hot nor cold but simply lukewarm, neither wet nor dry but simply moist. And in…

  By Leonard Fein Oct 31, 2007 | 4 min read
• Letters

  November 2, 2007

  For Jerusalem’s Sake The letter sent last month by the Orthodox Union to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert with regard to the possibility of his government ceding sections of Jerusalem to the Palestinian Authority was not, as your editorial asserts, motivated by “anger and insecurity” (“Holier Than Thou,” October 26). Rather, it was a reflection…

  Oct 31, 2007 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  One People

  Reports from Jerusalem, where the Jewish Agency for Israel was holding its quarterly board meeting this past week, indicate a spike in tensions within the institution designated under Israeli law as the formal link between Israelis and their Diaspora Jewish cousins. A group of wealthy American philanthropists is reportedly threatening to cut off support to…

  Oct 31, 2007 | 3 min read