Opinion

• 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…

  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

Columnists View All

• Alyssa Katz Class assignment: Get to know your murdered Jewish neighbors

  

• Rob Eshman Liberal Zionists are under attack. A new book proves their work has never been more important

  

• Dan Perry How Israel became a country where teenagers murder each other in cold blood

  

• Emily Tamkin American Jews have a Hasan Piker problem. Solving it is going to hurt

  

• Jay Michaelson Epstein and Iran are an antisemitism mega-crisis. Here’s what Jewish organizations should do about it. 

  

The Latest

• 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
• 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
• 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
• Opinion

  Israel’s Window

  There was an air of tedious familiarity in the latest United Nations debate on Israel. Like so many times before, Palestinian provocation led to Israeli military action, prompting the Palestinians to convene the Security Council, which obligingly took up a condemnation of Israel, which was vetoed by the United States. After the charade was done,…

  Oct 8, 2004 | 2 min read
• Opinion

  When Victory Is No Victory at All

  It is typical of the prolonged, ambiguous war between Israel and the Palestinians that no one can really say who prevails at a certain point in time. To some strategists, the important issue is who appears to be winning. “Let us project victory,” was the sound advice given once by Brigadier General Eival Gilady, former…

  By Ofer Shelah Oct 8, 2004 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  Helping Afghans Fight for Themselves

  Afghanistan, already a major front in the war on terrorism, now has also become an important front in the American presidential campaign. Senator John Kerry has charged that the Bush administration made a huge mistake in the war against terrorism by diverting military forces from Afghanistan to Iraq. “Iraq is not even the center of…

  By James Phillips Oct 8, 2004 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  Among the Villagers of Le Chambon

  As the Holocaust loomed, a few Jews made their way to the area of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon in the mountains of south-central France, 350 miles south of Paris. And the peasants and villagers took in the Jews who came. And the Jews kept coming. And the people kept taking them in. In this one speck of…

  By Pierre Sauvage Oct 8, 2004 | 4 min read