Opinion

• Opinion

  Honoring Our Religion

  The quarrel that erupted this week between Moshe Katsav, president of Israel, and Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, could easily be dismissed as a case of wounded pride, an inconsequential squabble over symbols without substance. But that would seriously understate the gravity of the dispute. In refusing to address the…

  3 min read
• Opinion

  Cutting and Running

  Democrats in the Senate tried to flex their muscles this week by capitalizing on popular dislike of the war in Iraq to call for a scheduled American troop withdrawal. What they got instead was a reminder of their own fecklessness as they split their ranks between competing resolutions that Republicans gleefully described as “cut and…

  Jun 23, 2006 | 2 min read
• Opinion

  Only When Women Speak Up Will Organizations Listen

  The controversy surrounding the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute’s recent meeting at Wye Plantation has made clear that women are not coming to the table and telling leaders what the community wants and needs — but it would be a mistake to conclude that we are not involved in community life. Look around at any…

  By Leah Aharonov Jun 23, 2006 | 3 min read

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

  

• Dan Perry A quiet diplomatic shift in the Middle East, with monumental consequences for Israel

  

• Emily Tamkin Is Mamdani bad or good for Jews? Here’s how to tell

  

The Latest

• Opinion

  Gender Bias Is a Fact of Communal Life

  A by-now widely reported accident took place at Wye Plantation last week. The Jewish People Policy Planning Institute convened a meeting of Jewish organizational leaders to discuss the future of the Jewish people — but hardly any women leaders were invited, hardly any were expected to participate before dozens of Jews sent protest letters to…

  By Shaul Kelner and Steven M. Cohen Jun 23, 2006 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  He Who Could Command Legions of the Faithful

  It often occurred to me when Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson was alive, that he was the one person, aside from the Israeli prime minister and the Israeli military’s chief of staff, who commanded a Jewish army. Who else in Jewish life could instruct a young man or a young couple to go to a specific…

  By Joseph Telushkin Jun 23, 2006 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  Time To Hang Up My Track (II) Shoes

  Israelis and Palestinians have been conducting informal talks about resolving their conflict for several decades now. The first such contacts between Israeli intellectuals and Palestine Liberation Organization stalwarts took place some 30 years ago. These meetings picked up steam in the late 1980s, after the PLO officially accepted the principle of a two-state solution. Since…

  By Yossi Alpher Jun 16, 2006 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  A Kosher Storm

  It seems the Forward has kicked up quite a storm with our May 26 report from Postville, Iowa, describing working conditions at AgriProcessors, the world’s largest kosher meatpacking plant. Our Letters page this week and last carries a sampling of the response we’ve gotten from readers across the country, most of them wondering how a…

  Jun 16, 2006 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  Homeland Insecurity

  There isn’t much left to say that hasn’t already been said about the Bush administration’s nonsensical decision to cut nearly one-third of its federal counter-terrorism assistance to local governments, and then to take what’s left and redistribute it from the places where it’s most needed (New York and Washington, down 40% each) to places that…

  Jun 16, 2006 | < 1 min read
• Opinion

  Open Borders Threaten Jewish Clout

  In passing President Bush’s Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act last month, a bipartisan Senate coalition has shown itself to be suffering from the dubious, irresponsible mindset articulated in Yiddish as “Sie machen sich nicht wissentig” and by Thomas Aquinas as “Ignorantia Affectata”: willfully making themselves unknowing while feigning ignorance about inconvenient facts. A majority of Senate…

  By Stephen Steinlight Jun 16, 2006 | 5 min read
• Letters

  June 16, 2006

  Investigate Abuses at Iowa Slaughterhouse A May 26 article on AgriProcessors and a subsequent rebuttal in the Jewish Press by lawyer Nathan Lewin make only one thing clear: A full, fair and unbiased investigation of the working conditions at the Postville, Iowa, plant is needed — and it is needed now (“In Iowa Meat Plant,…

  Jun 16, 2006 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  Push for a Principled Migration Policy

  More than 350 years ago, New Amsterdam Governor Peter Stuyvesant welcomed the first 23 Jewish immigrants with open hostility and threats of deportation. In contrast, President George Washington, while addressing the Rhode Island Jewish community, offered full membership in American society for any newcomer who embraced American constitutional principles. This tension in immigration policy has…

  By Gideon Aronoff Jun 16, 2006 | 5 min read