Opinion

• Opinion

  Crossing the Line

  Whatever one’s views on the proper location of the line separating church and state — and there is legitimate room for debate — it’s clear that the line was crossed this week by President Bush’s education secretary, Rod Paige, when he called in a published interview for America’s schoolchildren to learn in schools that teach…

  < 1 min read
• Opinion

  The Time of Our Freedom

  Passover, the festival of freedom that begins this coming week, is not the holiest day on the Jewish calendar, but it’s arguably the best-loved. Its powerful tale of liberation from Egyptian slavery, the oldest freedom struggle on record, is traditionally cited as the formative event in Jewish history. Over the ages it has served to…

  Apr 11, 2003 | < 1 min read
• Opinion

  A Monumental Failure at Belzec

  Several years ago the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum decided to build a Holocaust memorial for the 600,000 Jews murdered at Belzec. Last June, I warned on these pages that “Despite assurances by museum officials that ‘we are being careful in construction not to disturb any human remains,’ anyone familiar with the Belzec terrain, saturated…

  By Avi Weiss Apr 11, 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 There’s a shocking new report on civilian deaths in Gaza. If only it were accurate.

  

• Nora Berman Is Netflix’s new show the most Jewish cartoon ever?

  

• 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

  Dangers of a Drawn-out War

  Sixty-two years ago this week, on April 6, 1941, Germany went to war against Yugoslavia. Then, as now in Iraq, a small country served as a vital source of raw materials — in the case of Yugoslavia, nonferrous metals — to a much larger and more powerful one. Then, as now, that country refused to…

  By Martin van Creveld Apr 11, 2003 | 4 min read
• Letters

  April 11, 2003

  Calling War a ‘Failure’ Is Premature Speculation Yes, war is hell (“Why They Call It Hell,” March 28). What is new about that? And what military expert could possibly come to the ridiculous conclusions, a week into the war, that “our troops were not prepared for this” and “the trouble is that this war has…

  Apr 11, 2003 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  And Social Justice for All

  In case you haven’t noticed — but of course, you have — these are not the best of times. There are even those who assert they are the worst of times, but on the perfectly reasonable supposition that things can always get still worse, I won’t go that far. Actually, rather than review the mountain…

  By Leonard Fein Apr 11, 2003 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  Shame and the Congo

  The numbers are in. Our shame can now be quantified. At least 3.3 million people have been killed in the pointless, genocidal warfare in the Democratic Republic of the Congo during the last four and a half years, while most of us were looking elsewhere. Let us remember, and tell our grandchildren. How did we…

  Apr 11, 2003 | 3 min read
• Letters

  April 4, 2003

  Technion Taps Women’s Leadership Potential There are at least six and very likely several more than the five organizations with women at the helm mentioned by opinion writer Shifra Bronznick in her analysis of women’s advancement in American Jewish organizations (“Unleashing Women’s Leadership Potential,” March 21). The American Technion Society, the leading American organization raising…

  Apr 4, 2003 | 5 min read
• Opinion

  ‘Soprano’ Zionism

  My grandmother used to sigh, “Shver tsu zayn a yid” — it’s tough to be a Jew. These days, though, it’s even tougher to be a Zionist. It is an act of triple-chutzpah. Diaspora Zionists risk the opprobrium of anti-Zionists who libel Zionism as racism, of Israelis like writer A.B. Yehoshua who uses crude sexual…

  By Gil Troy Apr 4, 2003 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  Naming the Plague

  It’s possible, just possible, that there’s nothing more than coincidence behind the shocking increase in antisemitic incidents in various parts of the world during the last year. The surge may be entirely unconnected to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the escalating American war on Islamic extremism that has followed. It’s possible, but…

  Apr 4, 2003 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  The Debate Debate

  As America’s generals scramble to regroup for a battle more bloody than any envisioned and Republicans in Washington agonize over what went wrong and why, the American public is descending into a more basic and ugly debate over the very legitimacy of debating. The signs are everywhere. In New Mexico, four schoolteachers have been suspended…

  Apr 4, 2003 | 2 min read