Opinion

• Opinion

  The Last Best Hope For Religious Continuity: Gays

  In an age when religious activists frequently lament that their faith is under constant attack by secularism, gays could prove to be religion’s last best hope. It’s a lesson I’ve learned keenly from personal experience. As a child, I read the Bible literally and decided I wanted to become a prophet when I grew up….

  By Aaron Hamburger

  3 min read
• Opinion

  God Save This Honorable Court

  When the Supreme Court term opens October 3 with the familiar “God Save the United States and this Honorable Court,” the newest justice might in silence add, “from politicians, interest groups and media, all doing their best to ruin it.” The newest lawyer-turned-justice will be the survivor of a three-month political campaign costing interest groups…

  By Steven H. Goldberg Jul 15, 2005 | 5 min read
• Opinion

  Washington Must Plan Today For Democratic Iran of Tomorrow

  Two weeks ago, obscure hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad swept to victory in Iran’s run-off presidential election. In his first news conference as president-elect, he vowed to continue Iran’s nuclear program. “Today,” Ahmadinejad proclaimed, “we can say that nuclear technology is our right.” A nuclear Islamic Republic would undermine any prospect for Iranian reform, Middle East peace…

  By Michael Rubin Jul 8, 2005 | 6 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

  Welcoming the New Jews

  The question is so obvious, you have to wonder why nobody thought of asking it before: If only one-quarter to one-third of children in interfaith families are raised “in the Jewish faith,” as repeated surveys have shown, what becomes of the others? Do they become Christians? Do they melt into the broader population, with never…

  Jul 8, 2005 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  The Line of Decency

  There’s something tedious about the continual back-and-forth between Republicans and Democrats accusing one another of abusing the memory of the Holocaust. First there was Senator Robert Byrd, the West Virginia Democrat, comparing Republican threats to cancel the filibuster in March with Nazi manipulation of German law during the 1930s. That prompted an angry retort from…

  Jul 8, 2005 | 2 min read
• Opinion

  Whoso Sheddeth Man’s Blood, by Man Shall His Blood Be Shed

  One of the most gruesome scenes of the ongoing intifada happened right at its beginning. On October 12, 2000, Israeli military reservists Vadim Norzhich and Yosef Avrahami were beaten to death in a Ramallah police station. Their bodies were then thrown out of the window into the hands of a mob of Palestinians, who mutilated…

  By Uri Dromi Jul 8, 2005 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  A Word From the Pews

  The news that the chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, Ismar Schorsch, has announced his plans to retire has naturally created a lot of attention in the seminary community. There is far less commotion within the lay community — and that is as it should be. Jews don’t have a pope whose presence or absence…

  By Norman Levin Jul 8, 2005 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  The Making of a Leader

  The Catholics got it right. They choose a pope in secret. They mourn the last pope, collect the cardinals in seclusion, and poof — black smoke, black smoke, white smoke. Then everyone goes back to work. But choosing a pope for a billion Catholics is one thing; choosing a chancellor for a million and a…

  By Jacob Neusner Jul 8, 2005 | 3 min read
• Letters

  July 8, 2005

  Give Proper Credit on Civil Rights Movement A reply to the June 24 editorial on the conviction of Edgar Ray Killen is in order (“What They Did”). I write as a 50-year veteran of the civil rights struggle, having first joined the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and helped found its first…

  Jul 8, 2005 | 6 min read
• Opinion

  Breyer’s Wisdom

  Just about everybody seems to have found something to hate in this week’s twinned Supreme Court decisions on public displays of the Ten Commandments. Liberals disliked the 5-4 ruling by which the justices allowed a Commandments monument to remain on the grounds of the Texas state Capitol. Conservatives hated the other 5-4 ruling, barring the…

  Jul 1, 2005 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  Looking ‘White,’ Thinking ‘Other’

  ‘Be a Jew in private and a human being in public.” This was the mantra with which a generation of American Jews was raised, and the idea was to keep the Jewish particulars to yourself and blend in to the American dream. But the quality of the American Jewish experience has changed in the past…

  By Bethamie Horowitz Jul 1, 2005 | 3 min read