Opinion

• Opinion

  Old Friends, Shattered Dreams

  One day back in the late 1980s, during another interminable cocktail party in another New York Jewish office suite, I had the good fortune to find myself in a quiet corner with Malcolm Hoenlein, then recently installed as executive director of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. It turned into one of…

  By J.J. Goldberg

  3 min read
• Opinion

  A Former Atheist Gives Us a Reason To Believe

  Did you ever ask yourself why God bothered to make Jews? Why did He take the trouble to create us as a people apart, with all the special rules the Torah mandates — eating only kosher food, observing the Sabbath and so on — with their obvious intention of keeping the Jewish people distinct from…

  By David Klinghoffer Dec 24, 2004 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  The Case of Jacob Goldberg v. Father Christmas

  Plaintiff’s Attorney: Sir, it says here that you deliver toys to ALL the good boys and girls. Is that correct? Claus: Yes, but it’s not like it’s a contract. It’s just… Plaintiff’s Attorney: It does use the word “ALL” doesn’t it? Claus: Yes, it does. Plaintiff’s Attorney: In fact, you don’t actually deliver toys to…

  By Adam Grace Dec 24, 2004 | 3 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

  A Tale Of Two Americas

  I recently went searching for my grandmother’s long-forgotten gravesite. I left my home in Los Angeles for the heartland of Ohio, where I had grown up and where she was buried. After bureaucratic runarounds, I was finally directed to an overgrown cemetery. I found my grandmother’s gravesite but, like all the surrounding sites, it had…

  By Cookie Lommel Dec 24, 2004 | 3 min read
• Letters

  December 24, 2004

  ‘You Gotta Go to Iran’ David Twersky’s selective quote in his December 17 opinion article on the exchange between Bill O’Reilly and his radio caller is misleading (“A Lesson in American Civics”). According to Twersky’s rendering, O’Reilly said that the United States is “a predominantly Christian nation.” “If you are really offended,” O’Reilly added according…

  Dec 24, 2004 | 6 min read
• Letters

  December 17, 2004

  Rabbi Backs Iowa Plant A December 10 letter to the editor mentions my name in declaring the slaughtering of animals at the AgriProcessors plant in Iowa as non-kosher (“Iowa Slaughterhouse Violates Rabbinic Law”). As I already have written to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, I forbid further use of my name as questioning…

  Dec 17, 2004 | 2 min read
• Opinion

  Is Assimilation All That Bad?

  In 1928, Louis Wirth published “The Ghetto,” a book whose title pointed to the importance of tangible corporate boundaries in the lives of Jews in Chicago. By the century’s end, the markers of identity had shifted from the physical and geographic expressions of social distance between Jews and “America” to a more inward, individual calculus…

  By Bethamie Horowitz Dec 17, 2004 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  A Lesson in American Civics

  If Bill O’Reilly doesn’t like America’s tradition separating church and state, he should move to Ireland. Rutting for ratings, the host of Fox News’s “O’Reilly Factor” and talk radio’s “Radio Factor” has been “defending” Christmas against threats, real and imagined. Arguing over the claims of religion in the public domain represents a decent American tradition….

  By David Twersky Dec 17, 2004 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  Peace, Sharon and, Yes, Shas

  Ariel Sharon’s self-imposed coalition crisis has already forced Middle East-watchers around the world, both Jewish and non-Jewish, to re-evaluate their long-held views of Israel’s aging enfant terrible. After a 55-year career of brutal military adventurism and relentless territorial expansionism, Sharon appears to have transformed himself magically in the space of 12 months into the world’s…

  Dec 17, 2004 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  When Legislation Matches Our Best Impulses

  This Monday marks the 30th anniversary of the passage of the Jackson-Vanik Amendment. This landmark legislation, which remains a stirring case study in the importance of human rights and moral idealism as an instrument of foreign policy, provided the impetus for the mass emigration of Jews from the former Soviet Union and helped propel the…

  By Simeon Kolko Dec 17, 2004 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  The Way We War

  Soon after World War II, when I was in my teens, I saw the film version of Erich Maria Remarque’s novel, “All Quiet on the Western Front.” The film, produced in 1930, is set during World War I. It was the first “anti-war” film of the sound era, and much as the war it depicted…

  By Leonard Fein Dec 10, 2004 | 4 min read