Opinion

• Opinion

  A Joyous Holiday Noise

  Hanukkah seems almost anticlimactic this year. There’s been so much talk in recent weeks about the blurring of holiday messages and the proper place of religion in the public square that making a joyous holiday noise right now seems, well, a bit rude. Now isn’t the time to make trouble. In a way, though, that’s…

  < 1 min read
• Opinion

  Europe Must Act in Union To Influence Iran

  This week Great Britain, France and Germany resumed talks with Iran over its nuclear program. All eyes are now watching whether the European Union, when it comes to Middle Eastern affairs, can play and not just pay. For the first time in its short history, the E.U. has a real opportunity to play a crucial…

  By Antonio Ferrari Dec 23, 2005 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  The Outrageous Silence Of George W. Bush

  In calling the Holocaust “a myth,” as he did last week, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has drunk from the bloody cup shared by the malevolent enemies of equality and justice, the ultra right-wingers and haters who live in history’s shadows. Need it be said, again? The gas chambers, the bureaucratic system of murder, the efforts…

  By Teresa Heinz Kerry Dec 23, 2005 | 3 min read

Columnists View All

• Jay Michaelson What can really be done to prevent antisemitic attacks like Bondi Beach?

  

• Rob Eshman American Jews can’t agree about anything — except Iran

  

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

  

• Dan Perry Trump’s new Gaza plan marks a radical break from Israeli policy — can it succeed?

  

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

  

The Latest

• Letters

  December 23, 2005

  Article on Young Israel Unfair to Eliot Spitzer A December 9 article airs complaints from a disgruntled former employee of the state attorney general’s office (“Probe of Shul Group Had N.Y. Crimebuster’s Office in Tangles”). The article was misleading and unfair. Here are the facts about this matter: In 1999, the National Council of Young…

  Dec 23, 2005 | 5 min read
• Opinion

  If You’re Really Offended, You Gotta Go Caroling

  It’s been a year since Bill O’Reilly publicly accused me of being part of the “War on Christmas.” When I called into his radio show to express concern about the effects on Jewish children of celebrating Christmas in the public schools, he infamously advised me that, “If you’re really offended, you gotta go to Israel.”…

  By Joel Friedman Dec 23, 2005 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  A Cut Above?

  Nauseating stories of what goes on in meatpacking plants — from those in Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” in 1906 to Eric Schlosser’s “Fast Food Nation” in 2002 — have caused us to pass up, if only temporarily, the occasional steak or hot dog. One year, I even forwent turkey on Thanksgiving. But while our stomachs…

  By Kathleen Peratis Dec 23, 2005 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  Spielberg’s List

  the debate as it unfolds on screen is an Israeli disputation, framed almost entirely in the words and deeds of Israelis: carrying out their deadly mission, questioning whether it will make things better, wondering whether it squares with their Jewish values, talking endlessly of home and family and the need to defend them. Arabs hardly…

  By J.J. Goldberg Dec 23, 2005 | 2 min read
• Letters

  December 16, 2005

  Oldest Bat Mitzvah Girl In History Was 101 While Esther Eisner sounds absolutely wonderful and should be lauded for becoming bat mitzvah at the age of 99 (“Oldest Bat Mitzvah Girl in History! [Or So We Think]”, December 2), my co-author, Paula Wolfson, and I interviewed and photographed an older woman on her bat mitzvah…

  Dec 16, 2005 | 5 min read
• Opinion

  Torturous Explanations

  There’s a sometime sense that Condoleezza Rice is, well, different from the others. She’s not as malignant as Dick Cheney nor as arrogant as Donald Rumsfeld, not as mendacious as Alberto Gonzales nor as sinister as Karl Rove. Her patron, the cheerleader-in-chief, gives her room to run and she runs hard; she is a respectable…

  By Leonard Fein Dec 16, 2005 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  Poverty, Charity and Justice

  We Americans have widely divergent attitudes toward the meaning of the holiday season, but there’s one thing that brings just about all of us together right now. This is the time of year when we turn our hearts and thoughts to the less fortunate and dig deep to help out. The streets are clogged with…

  Dec 16, 2005 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  Austria Comes to Terms With Its Past

  Last week, after a federal judge in New York dismissed the last major Holocaust restitution case against the government of Austria and several private Austrian corporations, Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel told President Bush that he was declaring “legal peace.” The Austrian leader then called me and said in emotional terms that it was a “moment of…

  By Stuart Eizenstat Dec 16, 2005 | 5 min read