Opinion

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  What the Vatican’s Invitation to Bernie Sanders Says About Jews

  The Vatican may have made a big boo-boo when it invited Bernie Sanders to come to Rome and give a speech on April 15. But, as we’ll see, it may offer some unexpected insight into the current place Jews hold in the world’s imagination. You can understand why they invited him. The event is an…

  By J.J. Goldberg

  4 min read
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  Opinion

  Is Split Over Israel a Luxury Restricted to Countries With No Anti-Semitism?

  The most surprising thing about Dov Waxman’s new book, is that nobody has published a book like it before. True, my 2014 book, “Uncivil War: The Israel Conflict in the Jewish Community,” covered the same basic issue, but it focused more on the United Kingdom’s Jewish community than it did on the situation in the…

  By Keith Kahn-Harris Apr 12, 2016 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  American Jewish Unity In Favor of Egalitarian Kotel Is a Fiction

  It might be hard to imagine the hardline Israeli Haredi parties and the hardline feminist “Original Women of the Wall” group as occupying the same library, much less the same page. But that’s where they find themselves. It’s not just that both are hardline, and that both reject the compromise idea of an egalitarian Western…

  Apr 11, 2016 | 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 Americans keep getting killed in the West Bank. Here’s how the US could fight that awful trend

  

• Nora Berman First Camp Auschwitz, now Alligator Alcatraz — why the right is obsessed with commodifying brutality

  

• Dan Perry What exactly is going on between Israel and Syria — and is the prospect of peace dead?

  

• Emily Tamkin Zohran Mamdani’s victory proves it: The ‘gotcha’ mode of fighting antisemitism has to go

  

The Latest

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  Opinion

  How Will I Get Through the Passover Seder Without My Mother?

  What gets transmitted at the annual Passover seder meal? Many spoken words, no doubt, but more importantly, many unsaid messages. Many formative memories that can never be recorded except in the haggadah of the mind and heart. For me as a new mourner, those spoken and unspoken memories have been flooding my consciousness for the…

  By Lester Bronstein Apr 11, 2016 | 2 min read
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  Opinion

  Why Israel’s Two-Kotel Solution Reminds Me of Two-State Solution

  When the Israeli cabinet approved a proposal intended to resolve a festering conflict between Orthodox and non-Orthodox Jews at the Western Wall, no one seemed to notice the parallels between this “two-wall solution” and the “two-state solution” that many leaders have proposed to resolve the long-simmering conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Both of these “solutions”…

  By Stuart Charmé Apr 11, 2016 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  Remembering Phil Ochs, the Other Great Jewish Folksinger of the ’60s

  It was 40 years ago this weekend, on April 9, 1976, that Phil Ochs was found dead at his sister’s home in Far Rockaway, Queens. He was one of the best-loved of the generation of young singer-songwriters of the 1960s, but he was much more than that. He was the most eloquent, wittiest, most piercing…

  By J.J. Goldberg Apr 10, 2016 | 5 min read
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  Opinion

  Conversion Ruling Chips Away at Israeli Chief Rabbinate’s Monopoly on Religion

  (JTA) — The Israeli Supreme Court’s recent landmark ruling on conversion is a truly historic decision – for Israeli and American Jewry. While the case only concerns a few individuals, the general rules and unequivocal language have wide significance for both Israeli and American Jewry. The ruling represents another blow to the Israeli Chief Rabbinate’s monopoly…

  By Uri Regev Apr 10, 2016 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  Long Before Calvin Trillin, Chinese ‘Safe Treyf’ Came With a Side of Jewish Racism

  The internet switched this past week from aflutter to full-on rage — the only two gears it has — after Calvin Trillin published a doggerel verse poem on Chinese restaurants, in the April 4 issue of the New Yorker. The poem caused a ruckus, eliciting accusations of clueless white privilege and racism galore. Readers of…

  By Andrew Dubrov Apr 10, 2016 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  What’s Really Behind the Angst Over Transgender Bathrooms?

  We need to talk. About bathrooms. Honestly, I don’t remember a time when so many angry words, backroom political maneuvers, votes and vetoes, protests, counter-protests and economic boycotts were prompted by the question of who gets to use which toilet. And yet here we are: Whether transgender people should be required to use the bathroom…

  By Jane Eisner Apr 10, 2016 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  That Time I Baked Matzo With Ted Cruz

  Ted Cruz is a passionate evangelical Christian, and seems to sincerely share the evangelical love of Israel and its people. So maybe it wasn’t so surprising that Cruz made a last-minute visit to a Brooklyn matzo factory yesterday, just weeks before Passover begins later this month. The entire experience was awkward and fast-paced, so politics…

  By Bethany Mandel Apr 8, 2016 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  Hebron Shooting Makes Israel’s Top Brass Look Like Our Republican Party

  There’s a uniquely Israeli character to the furor that’s erupted over the so-called shooting soldier — the army medic arrested March 24 after being caught on video shooting a wounded, immobilized Palestinian terrorist in Hebron. The lines seem clear-cut. The military, traditionally Israel’s most admired institution, insists on enforcing its much-touted ethical code. The public…

  By J.J. Goldberg Apr 7, 2016 | 4 min read