Opinion

• Letters

  October 21, 2005

  Don’t Turn Communal Back on Jewish Felons I am very disappointed that no one in the Jewish community seems willing to help Barry Gibbs (“Out of Jail, Mob Fall Guy Pines for a Shul and Some Shellfish,” October 7). After all, we help Israel, Holocaust victims, Jewish arts and culture, Jewish education, hurricane and tsunami…

  5 min read
• Opinion

  Robert Aumann, Teacher Laureate

  The two winners of the 2005 Nobel prize in economics were announced the other day: Thomas Schelling, now at the University of Maryland, (before that, for many years, at Harvard University), and Robert Aumann of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Paul Samuelson aside, the winners of the Nobel in economics usually are not well known…

  By Leonard Fein Oct 21, 2005 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  The Book of the People

  This coming Tuesday, Jewish congregations around the world will complete their annual cycle of public Bible readings and start the reading anew, and they will mark the moment with the raucous festival known as Simchat Torah, the “Joy of the Torah.” The holiday is noteworthy for a number of reasons, but none more poignant or…

  Oct 21, 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

• Opinion

  In the Beginning …

  In addition to its specific, text-related theme, Simchat Torah has an added significance: It marks the end of the month-long cycle of holidays that begins with Rosh Hashanah. It is an emotional roller-coaster of a month for observant Jews, running from the trumpeting grandeur of the New Year proclamation to the anguished soul-searching of Yom…

  Oct 21, 2005 | 3 min read
• Letters

  October 14, 2005

  Atone for Editorial Sin The October 7 pre-Yom Kippur editorial outlining the Forward’s regrets for journalistic sins committed this past year overlooked your most egregious misstep (“Begging Pardon”). I refer to the recent front-page nonstory about a gifted former educator’s personal struggle to come to terms with his sexual identity and his place in a…

  Oct 14, 2005 | 6 min read
• Opinion

  A Poverty Of Leadership

  Here is a story. It is a story about what the media can accomplish and what intellectual curiosity in high places can produce, and how a crisis that is not an “Act of God” comes to be recognized and to galvanize a nation. In 1960, during his campaign for the presidency, John Kennedy visited the…

  By Leonard Fein Oct 14, 2005 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  The Miers Test

  It’s a sure sign of how low President Bush’s fortunes have sunk that the Supreme Court nomination of Harriet Miers, clearly intended as a deft feint to circumvent Senate mud-wrestling, is instead turning into a first-class political debacle. In its desperation to find some traction, however, the administration appears to have crossed a constitutional line…

  Oct 14, 2005 | 2 min read
• Opinion

  Storming the Gates

  The baroque scenes that unfolded on the Mediterranean coast of North Africa over the last two weeks, described by Marc Perelman in his Page 1 report, seem as though they were lifted from some futuristic end-of-the-world movie epic rather than from today’s headlines. But they are real. In two separate assaults a week apart, hundreds…

  Oct 14, 2005 | 2 min read
• Opinion

  The One-and-a-half-state Solution

  Anyone who has followed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in recent decades knows that mainstream thinking on both sides has evolved considerably, to a point where Jerusalem and Ramallah (and Washington, too) endorse a two-state solution. The advocates of Greater Israel or Greater Palestine — a single Israeli or Palestinian state between the Jordan River and the…

  By Yossi Alpher Oct 14, 2005 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  We the Individuals

  For a generation of American Jewish baby boomers who grew up looking east toward Zion from the West’s leafy suburbs, Israel has always come off as the poorer relation enduring scrappier circumstances. America had what Israel lacked: a Constitution, and good plumbing. American bathrooms were tidy and porcelain, with soft rolls of Charmin; the typical…

  By Bethamie Horowitz Oct 14, 2005 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  Systematic Acts Of Kindness

  Perhaps the most moving prayer of the High Holiday services is the Unetaneh Tokef, the prayer in which we recite that on Rosh Hashanah it is inscribed and on Yom Kippur sealed “who shall live and who shall die, who in the fullness of time and who before his time,” who by water and who…

  By Leonard Fein Oct 7, 2005 | 4 min read