Opinion

• Opinion

  Reforming the U.N.

  Kofi Annan delivered a surprise Hanukkah gift to friends of Israel and democracy this week, in the form of a United Nations reform plan that includes, at long last, a clear and usable definition of terrorism. Ruling out “mitigating” circumstances like occupation, the report is said to declare that terrorism against civilians “is never an…

  2 min read
• Opinion

  The Blindness to Household Labor Rights

  The first two women nominated to be attorney general of the United States, Zoe Baird and Kimbe Wood, withdrew their names in quick succession, both having been exposed as domestic scofflaws — they employed (apparently) undocumented foreign workers to care for their children, and they (apparently) did not pay Social Security taxes on their wages….

  By Kathleen Peratis Dec 3, 2004 | 4 min read
• Letters

  December 3, 2004

  Magazine Cruises Offer Opportunity To Unite A November 26 article describes how The Weekly Standard and The Nation magazines have taken to the high seas as part of their respective fundraising efforts (“From Port to Starboard, Magazines Take to High Seas Towing the Party Line”). With much irony, the Forward inveighs against the bourgeois underpinnings…

  Dec 3, 2004 | 2 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

  The Silence On Domestic Violence

  As part of a follow-up survey I recently completed on the Jewish communal response to domestic violence, I talked to nearly half the rabbis in Massachusetts. Half of them claimed to have been approached by congregants to discuss their experiences with abuse, yet more than three-quarters still have not given a sermon on the subject…

  By Carol Goodman Kaufman Dec 3, 2004 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  Engaging Iran

  President Bush was right to demand this week that Iran allow clear-cut, third-party verification of its claims that it has suspended its enrichment of weapons-grade uranium before the rest of the world begins to breathe easy. There’s been a lot of slippery talk and outright falsehood about nuclear weaponry in the Middle East of late,…

  Nov 26, 2004 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  Old Europe, New Jihad

  We Americans have tended to be of two minds as we have watched events unfold in the Netherlands in the three weeks since the murder of filmmaker and anti-immigrant provocateur Theo Van Gogh. Half of us look at the mounting tensions surrounding Europe’s growing Muslim minority, the incidents of jihadist and anti-Jewish violence, and the…

  Nov 26, 2004 | 2 min read
• Opinion

  The Land of the Free, for Better and for Worse

  Ten years ago, as a recent Australian immigrant, I was initiated into the American rite of Thanksgiving. How outraged I was! Here we were, comfortable Modern Orthodox-ish Jews, sitting down to a turkey repast in a kind of latter-day American Christmas. My hosts were defensive, and confused at my reaction. This wasn’t a Christian holiday,…

  By Viva Hammer Nov 26, 2004 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  Learning To Become Fluent in ‘Faith-Speak’

  For American Jews, most of whom fall in the Democratic column; the re-election of President Bush — aided as it was by the religious right — has heightened the concern that we are fast becoming guests in an increasingly Christian nation. That might indeed be the case, but I nevertheless remain optimistic about our communal…

  By Shoshana Cardin Nov 26, 2004 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  Fight for Cure In ‘Laboratories Of Democracy’

  The need to clear the path for scientists to conduct lifesaving biomedical discoveries through stem-cell research has re-emerged as a national issue, especially since the passing of actor Christopher Reeve. Such discoveries could lead to treatments and cures for diseases that plague more than 100 million Americans, such as diabetes, Parkinson’s, cancer, Alzheimer’s and a…

  By June Walker Nov 26, 2004 | 3 min read
• Letters

  November 26, 2004

  Building Ties to Israel: A Priority for Movement A November 12 article suggests an unawareness of the Reconstructionist movement’s connections to Israel through the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College (“Reconstructionists Boost Focus on Israel”). The Reconstructionist movement’s only rabbinical college requires that its students spend a year studying in Israel. Recently we more than doubled our Israel…

  By Amy Klein Nov 26, 2004 | 5 min read
• Opinion

  Having Faith In Democrats

  Electoral fact mirrors science fiction. The first time that computers were used to do “exit polls” was in 1952, in the Eisenhower-Stevenson election. The pundits were predicting a Stevenson victory, but early exit-poll results were fed into Univac, a vacuum-tube computer (transistors had not yet been invented,) and correctly spotted the Eisenhower victory. Isaac Asimov,…

  By Leonard Fein Nov 26, 2004 | 4 min read