Opinion

• 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…

  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

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

  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
• Opinion

  Circumcision Invades Africa

  Circumcision has a long and fascinating history. The latest chapter is being written in Africa. The Wall Street Journal reports “circumcision dramatically reduces the risk of contracting HIV.” In some areas, such as Kenya, the circumcision rate is a high 80%. While Kenya is an exception, there is good reason to believe that ultimately the…

  By Gus Tyler Sep 9, 2007 | < 1 min read
• Letters

  September 7, 2007

  Double Standard Applied To Armenian Massacre I might be able to buy into the realpolitik argument that suggests we ought to be more concerned with Turkey as Israel’s ally than with a theoretical and extremely retrospective condemnation of the Armenian deaths as genocide (“Of Genocide and Morality,” August 31). But in that case, how can…

  Sep 7, 2007 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  Mid-Term Madness

  In the last national election in 2006, the Democrats captured control of both houses of Congress. Their margin of victory, however, was insufficient to override a presidential veto that requires a two-thirds vote. Which means that the Republican Party really was still in control of legislation. Despite this, the present Congress did enact a raise…

  By Gus Tyler Sep 6, 2007 | 2 min read
• Opinion

  The New Chancellor

  With the installation this week of Arnold Eisen as its seventh chancellor, the 120-year-old Jewish Theological Seminary of America is poised at an unusual moment in the life of a historic institution. The seminary is being offered a rare opportunity to re-imagine itself and the larger Conservative Jewish movement that it leads — and in…

  Sep 5, 2007 | 2 min read