Opinion

• Opinion

  Torturous Silence

  There are times he speaks with genuine passion, this president of ours. That’s what he did on the video he sent to the meeting of anti-Castro protesters in Cuba the other day, as also when he pledged to veto any bill that Congress might send to him calling for fetal stem-cell research. But there was…

  By Leonard Fein

  4 min read
• Opinion

  Monitoring The Monitor

  One of the more active sideshows of our time is the tangle of new organizations devoted to uncovering and broadcasting what they see as “the truth.” Now that the Internet has radically simplified the work and lowered the cost of getting such messages out, it seems a wonder that there’s room in cyberspace for all…

  By Leonard Fein May 20, 2005 | 4 min read
• Letters

  May 20, 2005

  Social Research Needs Strong Central Bodies I am not as convinced as opinion columnist Bethamie Horowitz that the outsourcing of research about critical areas of Jewish life to universities will prove to be a more effective way of gathering and organizing information necessary for the “ assessing the condition of America’s Jews” (“Social Research: Out…

  May 20, 2005 | 5 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 Americans keep getting killed in the West Bank. Here’s how the US could fight that awful trend

  

• Nora Berman First Camp Auschwitz, now Alligator Alcatraz — why the right is obsessed with commodifying brutality

  

• Dan Perry What exactly is going on between Israel and Syria — and is the prospect of peace dead?

  

• Emily Tamkin Zohran Mamdani’s victory proves it: The ‘gotcha’ mode of fighting antisemitism has to go

  

The Latest

• Opinion

  Crippling the Opposition

  Any honest discussion of democratic procedure in the United States Senate ought to begin with a simple examination of how the chamber’s voting members got there in the first place. If it were an honest examination, there wouldn’t be much left to talk about. Republican leaders complain that the minority Democrats’ use of the filibuster…

  May 20, 2005 | 2 min read
• Opinion

  A Smoking Gun

  Among the embarrassing documents that surfaced during the mud-bath that was Great Britain’s parliamentary election this month, one of the most disturbing was a memo indicating that President Bush had his mind firmly set on war with Iraq as early as July 2002, nearly a year before the shooting began, and that America’s “intelligence and…

  May 20, 2005 | 2 min read
• Opinion

  Welcome, Sharon

  When Israel’s prime minister appears before Jewish audiences in New York and Washington next week, he may seem to be facing a Jewish community that’s deeply divided on his policies. That’s not the case. There undoubtedly will be noisy demonstrators in both cities attacking him and his policies. Some will claim he is betraying Jewish…

  May 20, 2005 | < 1 min read
• Opinion

  Teach Children Nonprofit Literacy

  As a community and as parents, we’re passionate about teaching our children such values as charity and loving kindness. Today it’s practically de rigueur for Jewish 13-year-olds to take on a charity project as part of becoming a bar or bat mitzvah — and among American teenagers as a whole, volunteerism has gone way up….

  By Susan Grinel May 20, 2005 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  As Israel Turns 57, New Fights Displace Old War Mentality

  Let’s take a moment, as Israel marches into its 58th and perhaps most challenging year, to ponder the Jewish state’s evolving strategic interests. First and perhaps most significantly, the perception is gradually sinking in that, for the foreseeable future, conventional military attacks on Israel are a thing of the past. The last conventional war imposed…

  By Yossi Alpher May 20, 2005 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  Sharon’s Disengagement From Democracy

  This summer, Israel will withdraw its troops from Gaza and the northern West Bank and remove the 9,000 Jewish civilians who call those places home. While much has been written about Prime Minister Sharon’s disengagement process already, it is worth revisiting how this ill-advised decision was taken, for it holds a very real and threatening…

  By Yisrael Medad May 20, 2005 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  Too Young To March?

  Gingerly, even diffidently; in the form of a question, to lessen the sting: Is the March of the Living, now in its 17th year, which this month brought more than 20,000 young people from all over the world to Poland — yes, to the camps — is the March of the Living good for the…

  By Leonard Fein May 13, 2005 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  Finding the Real Israel

  As Israel celebrates its 57th birthday this week, Israelis and their friends around the world face a challenge unlike any they have encountered since the Jewish state was born. Put bluntly, things are basically okay, and nobody is quite sure what to make of it. The signs are everywhere. Israelis are experiencing a mild economic…

  May 13, 2005 | 3 min read