Opinion

• Letters

  October 22, 2004

  Outreach to Emigrés I read with great interest the first installment of the Forward’s series on Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union (“After 25 Years, Soviet Emigrés Still Strangers,” October 15). I look forward to reading the final two articles in this series. I hope that they strike a more balanced picture of the…

  6 min read
• Opinion

  When Evil Speaks the Truth

  Remember Tareq Aziz, the senior official in Saddam Hussein’s regime who frequently spoke on its behalf to Western audiences? He will soon stand trial in Baghdad, alongside Saddam and other former henchmen. As a mouthpiece for the most brutal regime anywhere in recent history, he deserves no pity. But consider this: He frequently spoke the…

  By Yossi Alpher Oct 15, 2004 | 3 min read
• Letters

  October 15, 2004

  Our Invisible Poor Of course the leaders of Jewish organizations are amazed that there is such a thing as poor Jews in the United States — they only deal with other rich Jews (“Nearly a Million Living in Poor Jewish Households,” October 8). Poor Jews, like the poor of the United States in general, are…

  Oct 15, 2004 | 6 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

  Withdrawal From Peace

  Think the contemplated Israeli withdrawal from Gaza is the first step in a revived peace process, a step that will be followed by Israel’s withdrawal from the bulk of the West Bank? Then read what Prime Minister Sharon himself has to say on the subject: “It is very possible that after the evacuation [disengagement], there…

  By Leonard Fein Oct 15, 2004 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  Tax Season

  Sometimes the biggest ideas spring full-blown from a great mind — think of Freud, say, or Keynes — and the truth, once stated, suddenly alters our understanding of reality. Other ideas, like racial equality, bubble up from below, building strength until leaders emerge who can force the issue onto the public agenda. And then there…

  Oct 15, 2004 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  Joy of Texts

  There is a moment, for those who indulge, of explosive, triumphant joy, at times approaching ecstasy, during the festival of Simchat Torah, which fell October 7. It’s the moment when the reader chants the last few lines of Deuteronomy, completing the annual cycle of public Torah reading, and then begins again with “In the beginning.”…

  Oct 15, 2004 | 2 min read
• Opinion

  Voting Against Our Own Interests

  Everyone knows that the Jewish vote skews to the left. Among national religious groups, only black Protestants are more securely in the pocket of the Democratic Party. But did you know that Jews, unlike blacks, are actually becoming more liberal over time? That startling fact is reported in a new survey from the Pew Forum…

  By David Klinghoffer Oct 15, 2004 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  Putting Politics Back Into Service

  Two years ago, my oldest daughter volunteered as a full-time teacher’s aide in a public elementary school in Philadelphia. Then a senior at a Jewish day school, she was fulfilling her graduation requirement for community service and, I’d like to think, fulfilling her civic obligation to serve. The school was just a few miles from…

  By Jane Eisner Oct 15, 2004 | 4 min read
• Letters

  October 8, 2004

  Promote Discourse On Leaders’ Israel Stance An October 1 letter to the editor mirrors almost to the word a complaint sent to me via e-mail by Ira Foreman, executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council, following the inclusion of my thoughts on the potential for mischief inherent in the Senator John Kerry campaign’s evocation…

  Oct 8, 2004 | 5 min read
• Opinion

  Bearing Freedom

  There are some who contend that the principal difference between President Bush and Senator John Kerry is that one is moved by ethics and ideology, the other by process and pragmatism. In the first of their debates, for example, the president, it is said, laid down an ethical and ideological marker: This war, our war…

  By Leonard Fein Oct 8, 2004 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  The Poor Among Us

  The numbers have finally started to come in, and it turns out that much of what we thought we knew about Jewish wealth and poverty is wrong. Several new demographic studies, reported on Page 1 by Nathaniel Popper, indicate that Jews are not the affluent subset within the American population that they are commonly thought…

  Oct 8, 2004 | 3 min read