Opinion

• Letters

  July 4, 2003

  Bring Ethiopians Home About three years ago, the North American Conference on Ethiopian Jewry arranged for Elimelech, an 11-year-old boy who had arrived in New York after escaping from Ethiopia, to live with us for a while (“Rabbis Urging Action on Ethiopian Jewry,” June 27). Before he came to our home, our parents were really…

  6 min read
• Opinion

  Indecent Proposals

  So sparse have our victories been of late that we walk a bit taller in the wake of the Supreme Court’s surprising decision last week on affirmative action. There was, in truth, no reason to suppose that the court would rule as it did, nor that its ruling would be cast as generously as it…

  By Leonard Fein Jul 4, 2003 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  Missing the ‘Experience’ of a Lifetime

  One of the direct outcomes of the intifada has been the dramatic decline in the numbers of Jewish visitors to Israel. The most striking of all was the collapse of the “Israel Experience,” as the youth trips to Israel were commonly called during the 1990s. From the summer of 2000, when a record 10,000 North…

  By Elan Ezrachi Jul 4, 2003 | 4 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 I have the answer to Jon Stewart’s toughest question about Israel

  

• Nora Berman ‘Eddington’ is full of conspiracy theories but it’s not about Jews. Or is it?

  

• Dan Perry A US official just made history in the West Bank — did he imperil prospects for peace?

  

• Emily Tamkin Is starvation in Gaza really Israel’s fault? The facts are clear

  

The Latest

• Opinion

  Liberty, Justice and Marriage for All

  On June 26, the Supreme Court overturned its infamous Bowers v. Hardwick decision of 1986, which ruled that gay people’s private sexual intimacy did not warrant constitutional protection in the bedroom because there is “no connection between family, marriage or procreation on the one hand,” and gay people on the other. Sixteen days earlier, Canada…

  By Evan Wolfson Jul 4, 2003 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  Those Inalienable Rights

  Eleven score and seven years ago, an unlikely collection of lawyers, businessmen and plantation owners gathered in Philadelphia and brought forth what remains one of the most remarkable social experiments in human history: the United States of America. The new nation, as envisioned in the declaration signed that July day in 1776, was to be…

  Jul 4, 2003 | 2 min read
• Opinion

  ‘Who Is a Jew’ Redux

  In announcing this week that the Jewish state would grant equal status to Reform and Conservative conversion ceremonies for purposes of citizenship and population registry, Israel’s interior minister took one of those political steps that shouldn’t have been necessary, but was. The unilateral declaration by the minister, Avraham Poraz of the secularist Shinui party, is…

  Jul 4, 2003 | 2 min read
• Opinion

  Sanctity of Union an Article of Faith

  In a rare instance of agreement, the liberal New York Times editorial page agreed with reknowned conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia — both found last week’s Supreme Court decision legalizing sodomy to be inconsistent. The brilliant and ornery Scalia, in dissenting from Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion, noted that the court had hastened to…

  By Meir Soloveichik Jul 4, 2003 | 4 min read
• Letters

  June 27, 2003

  Recognize Reform In Lutheran Church I was disturbed to read in an otherwise cogent opinion column by David Klinghoffer some dangerous and morally dubious generalizations about Lutheranism (“Keep Taboo on Conversion to Christianity, June 13”). It behooves us, especially in the shadow of Jewish historical experience, to at least fulfill Hillel’s dictum, “what is hateful…

  Jun 27, 2003 | 5 min read
• Opinion

  Our Suburban Superficiality

  The first generations of American Jews earned a reputation as progressive politically but morally disciplined. The current generation of young Jews, though, lacks those ethical foundations. We have raised a generation of super-consumers often contemptuous of Judaism — because it offers no alternative to suburban superficiality — and addicted to modern America’s vices. A Hillel…

  By Gil Troy Jun 27, 2003 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  A Time To Act in Ethiopia

  When Israel first threw open its doors in 1984 to Jewish immigration from Ethiopia, the move was rightly hailed as a watershed moment in Zionist history. The Jewish state had become, as Israeli officials and Jewish activists justly boasted, the only country in human history to welcome masses of African immigrants as brothers, not slaves….

  Jun 27, 2003 | 2 min read
• Opinion

  California Scheming

  Beyond the grim specter of the most populous state in the union experiencing political and fiscal meltdown, what’s most frightening about the gubernatorial recall effort now underway in California is the sense that in the Golden State we may be witnessing, as we so often do, our future. California, which gave us the movies, theme…

  Jun 27, 2003 | 2 min read