Opinion

• Opinion

  Chutzpah

  You might think that after promising to cut taxes for all Americans and then discovering that 50 million households — those that most needed it — would get nothing, the Republican leadership would be embarrassed and try to fix things. But that would understate the chutzpah of the Republican leadership, which knows, it seems, no…

  2 min read
• Opinion

  Austria’s Endangered Community

  In 1938 the Austrian Jewish community, one of the richest in Europe, numbered 200,000 souls. After the Holocaust only a handful remained. Neither the Germans nor the Austrians felt responsible for rebuilding this once flourishing community, nor for restituting communal property that had been Aryanized. For nearly four decades after World War II, the organized…

  By Ariel Muzicant Jun 6, 2003 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  Big Media Takes Over Our Airwaves

  Wondering why the media has been so uncritical of an administration that went to war on circumstantial evidence, and cut taxes for the rich but not the poor? Look no further than this week’s Federal Communications Commission decision to reward the country’s principal media players by making it easier for them to control all of…

  By Daniel Meltzer Jun 6, 2003 | 3 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 The challah that changed everything: Tracing Jewish baking back to Poland

  

• Nora Berman The Kennedy Center canceled all its ‘woke’ programming — so why is this Jewish musical OK?

  

• Dan Perry Israel’s new gift to the far right could help end the Gaza war

  

• Emily Tamkin Entering motherhood — and an obsession with the works of an Italian Jewish literary hero

  

The Latest

• Opinion

  The Middle East Matrix, Reloaded

  Last month saw the release of two highly anticipated, albeit quite different, sequels: the “Matrix Reloaded,” the Wachowski brothers’ follow-up to their first “Matrix” film, and the American-sponsored “road map,” the latest installment in an ongoing series of Israeli-Palestinian peace plans. A mere coincidence, no doubt. But there are few real-world dramas as heartbreaking and…

  By Barry Joseph Jun 6, 2003 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  Family Reunion At Home Plate

  It turns out that the first version I heard had been embellished. Back in 1999, so the story was told to me, then Toronto and now Los Angeles Dodgers slugger Shawn Green came up to bat when one Jesse Levis was catching for the Cleveland Indians. (Levis spent nine relatively undistinguished years in the majors.)…

  By Leonard Fein May 30, 2003 | 4 min read
• Letters

  May 30, 2003

  Blaming Antisemitism’s Victims Is Irresponsible Opinion writer Ralph Seliger begins his impressions of the recent conference on contemporary antisemitism at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research by complaining that despite the many distinguished speakers, “little light [was] ultimately shed, and no real heat generated” (“Reconsidering Antisemitism,” May 23). As one of the participants in that…

  May 30, 2003 | 5 min read
• Opinion

  The Harvest and the Law

  Shavuot, the Jewish festival that begins next Thursday evening, June 5, is among the least known of the Jewish holidays in this country. That’s no accident. The central theme of the holiday, the giving of the Law at Sinai, sits uneasily with an American Jewish public that likes to think of religion as a matter…

  May 30, 2003 | 2 min read
• Opinion

  Counting Character

  May was a bad month for heroes. First there was that embarrassing disclosure about William Bennett, the former education secretary and Republican moralist-in-chief, who turned out to have been hiding a massive gambling addiction. To the delight of his detractors and mortification of his admirers, Bennett turned out to be exhibit A in his own…

  May 30, 2003 | 2 min read
• Opinion

  Back to School on Campus Advocacy

  A year ago American Jewish newspapers were ablaze with headlines reporting the desperate plight of Jewish students on college campuses. The communal fire brigade was brought in to douse the perceived explosion of antisemitic and anti-Israel incitement. With the situation in the Middle East heating up again and antisemitism on the rise worldwide, American Jews…

  By Mitchell Bard May 30, 2003 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  Fighting Terrorism Like There’s No Road Map

  A few days before Faisal Husseini left last year for Kuwait, where he would suddenly pass away, we spoke about conducting negotiations under fire. Husseini, until his death the Palestine Liberation Organization’s representative in Jerusalem, asked why Israel conditioned renewal of the political negotiations on a cessation of terrorism. I answered that if there was…

  By Ze’ev Schiff May 30, 2003 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  Reconsidering Antisemitism

  All seats were sold for this month’s “Old Demons, New Debates: Anti-Semitism in the West” conference at the Center for Jewish History in New York. It was addressed by a glittering assemblage of academics, journalists and activists from the United States, England, France, Poland, Israel, Italy, Canada, Mexico and even Iran. Much brilliance was on…

  By Ralph Seliger May 23, 2003 | 3 min read