Opinion

• Opinion

  I was the NYPD’s only Jewish chaplain at ground zero. Here’s what I learned on 9/11

  The NYPD's only Jewish chaplain recalls the sights and sounds of 9/11

  By Alvin Kass

  5 min read
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  Opinion

  I was RBG’s rabbi. Her legacy demands we fight for human dignity and reproductive rights.

  Grief is a complicated animal. I have often described its presence to my congregants as a mountain — sometimes it is across from you and you can see it, sometimes you are climbing it, sometimes you have summited it and sometimes it is just right on top of you. We do not control it, we…

  By Lauren Holtzblatt Sep 3, 2021 | 5 min read
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  Opinion

  Our hate crime reporting system is broken

  In the first hours of 2020, I called the NYPD to confirm that a Jewish 15 year-old had been held up at knifepoint on a public bus. “Wow. There’s a lot of this stuff happening. What the hell,” was the officer’s response. He confirmed the incident, and told me I had missed another: in South…

  By Laura E. Adkins Sep 2, 2021 | 6 min read

Columnists View All

• Alyssa Katz What I learned at a Holocaust survivors’ Purim party

  

• Rob Eshman A gunman attacked a Michigan synagogue. Here’s what happens to the community next

  

• Dan Perry Is this Netanyahu’s Winston Churchill moment?

  

• Emily Tamkin We must rewrite the rulebook for fighting antisemitism — or conspiracists like Joe Kent will win the narrative wars

  

• Jay Michaelson Antisemitism is exploding on the right but the Jewish establishment is focused on the left

  

The Latest

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  Opinion

  Want to fill seats in shul? Take a lesson from southern evangelicals

  It will not surprise anyone that Christianity is alive and well in the South. Take a stroll on a Sunday morning in Little Rock and you’ll see groups of young, markedly hip people with tattoos and asymmetrical haircuts gathering and chatting every few blocks. Children are everywhere, and the cheer is so contagious, you’d think…

  By Masha Shpolberg Sep 2, 2021 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  Last Rosh Hashanah, we lost RBG. This year, her legacy is in jeopardy

  When people across the country woke up on Wednesday, they opened their eyes to a new era of injustice. As of midnight Central Time, legal abortion was effectively banned in the state of Texas, and it’s clear the rest of our country could be headed in that direction. Although the U.S. Supreme Court had the…

  By Sheila Katz Sep 2, 2021 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  Our rabbis, our heroes

  While many have enjoyed a restful summer, August was a blur for Jewish professionals. Most were locked inside offices, wondering how to hold the space for a liturgy that asks us “who shall live, and who shall die” while facing wildfires, hurricanes and a deadly pandemic that has decimated our communities. Just as it seemed…

  By Jen Gubitz Sep 1, 2021 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  YU’s institutional silence harms all students — and I know change is possible

  In many ways, I was an outsider at my elite boarding school: I was a Democrat, I was Jewish, and the wealth and conservatism of my peers were unlike anything I’d previously experienced. Yet there was something else that separated me from my classmates, which I kept private: I was bisexual. Our student handbook specifically…

  By Nora Berman Aug 31, 2021 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  Three ways Jewish values are helping me embrace a healthier ‘new normal’

  Like most people, I thought I would be happy to return to normal this summer. I was grateful to be gathering with family to celebrate my mother’s 90th birthday in person. I enjoyed eating in restaurants again and making travel plans instead of sanitizing my groceries. But underneath that initial elation, as I stored my…

  By Lisa Trank Aug 30, 2021 | 5 min read
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  Opinion

  I left my Hasidic community. ‘Schitt’s Creek’ helped me put things in perspective.

  (JTA) — This article originally appeared on Alma. A year ago, I was watching “Schitt’s Creek” with my wife. It was the last season, second to last episode, so things were already emotional. Then there was that scene. The one where David is sitting on the car with his best friend Stevie and looking at…

  By Elad Nehorai Aug 30, 2021 | 5 min read
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  Opinion

  Ice cream and bourbon at America’s concentration camps

  At the Belle Meade plantation in Nashville, Tenn., you can partake in a wine tasting of Gentleman’s Red or Lady’s Cuvée. You can play a round of cornhole. And at its Coop N’ Scoop ice cream shop, you have a choice of strawberry, chocolate or their newest flavor — Krazy Kookie Dough. But here’s a…

  By Adi Eshman Aug 29, 2021 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  I run the Jewish refugee agency. Our work in Afghanistan is nowhere close to done

  This has been a tough week for all of us at HIAS, but it has been so much worse for the people of Afghanistan. My mind is occupied by the family members of the Afghans and the Americans who were killed at Karzai Airport today, and for the many people of Afghanistan whose lives are…

  By Mark Hetfield Aug 27, 2021 | 3 min read