Opinion

• Opinion

  Will ‘Jewish Quarter’ Win Over Egyptians — or Backfire?

  Today is the first day of Ramadan. In the Arab world, that means fasting and praying and post-sunset binging. It also means lots and lots of TV. Among the many soap operas aired around this time each year to entertain Muslims as they break fast, there have been plenty featuring anti-Semitic tropes. Plot lines referencing…

  By Sigal Samuel

  3 min read
• 
  Opinion

  The Jewish Leadership We Need

  I’ve been part of a dozen Jewish leadership initiatives. Some have been excellent, others were gigantic wastes of time and money. But I wonder if we should move beyond “leadership” in the Jewish community, to value those idiosyncratic and introverted traits that don’t make for good leaders, traits that leaders themselves may not possess.** Recently…

  By Jay Michaelson Jun 18, 2015 | 3 min read
• 
  Opinion

  3 Jewish Lessons on Rachel Dolezal and Caitlyn Jenner

  I’ll start with an old joke. Mr. Rosenbaum enjoys cooking a steak on his outdoor barbecue grill every Friday afternoon, for his family’s Sabbath meal. But because he is the only Jew in a very Catholic neighborhood, the smell of the cooking meat drives his neighbors — who are forgoing meat on Fridays during Lent…

  By Jane Eisner Jun 18, 2015 | 4 min read

Columnists View All

• Jay Michaelson What can really be done to prevent antisemitic attacks like Bondi Beach?

  

• Rob Eshman Australia shooting terrifies Jews worldwide — and strengthens the case for Israel

  

• Nora Berman Did crypto-Jews invent the modern tarot deck?

  

• Dan Perry The 3 responses to the Bondi Beach Hanukkah attack that could make Jews safer

  

• Emily Tamkin The fundamental miscalculation behind the GOP’s antisemitism crisis

  

The Latest

• 
  Opinion

  Why Michael Oren’s Blame Game on Israel Is So Wrongheaded

  Every so often an idea or phrase enters the public square in a way that changes the discourse, often for the worse, sometimes dangerously so. Example: Michael Oren’s wrongheaded June 15 op-ed essay in The Wall Street Journal, “How Obama Abandoned Israel.” It’s not easy to say this. Oren is a distinguished historian who writes…

  By J.J. Goldberg Jun 17, 2015 | 4 min read
• 
  Opinion

  How Rachel Dolezal Crossed Line From Solidarity to Slumming

  A few years after graduating from college, when I was living in the racially mixed Chicago suburb of Oak Park, I played pick-up basketball at the local YMCA. Among the regulars was another young white man, who habitually augmented his gym gear with knee-high tube socks striped with red, green and black, the colors of…

  By Samuel G. Freedman Jun 17, 2015 | 4 min read
• 
  Opinion

  What Can Women of the Upper East Side Teach Us About Gender Roles?

  Marketed like a cross between “Gossip Girl” and “The Feminine Mystique,” Wednesday Martin’s new “Primates of Park Avenue” is a quasi-anthropological tell-all about navigating the world of housewifery on Manhattan’s Upper East Side and its discontents. Martin, a self-described “cultural critic at large in high heels,” gives us a window into the highly competitive, and…

  By Elissa Strauss Jun 16, 2015 | 3 min read
• 
  Opinion

  What My Black Jewish Son Teaches Me About Rachel Dolezal

  (Kveller via JTA) — It’s the No. 1 trending topic on Twitter and currently burning up other social media as well: Rachel Dolezal, who resigned on Monday as president of the Spokane chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and who teaches African-American studies at Eastern Washington University, has allegedly been…

  By Alina Adams Jun 16, 2015 | 4 min read
• 
  Opinion

  Israeli Theater Is Having Its ‘Klinghoffer’ Moment

  Last year, a new production of caused so much controversy that its broadcast was cancelled. The famous opera is based on the hijacking of a plane by the Palestinian Liberation Front and the murder of Leon Klinghoffer, a Jewish-American passenger in 1985. Now, an Israeli-Arab play, “A Parallel Time,” is causing a similar controversy. Israeli…

  By Lior Zaltzman Jun 15, 2015 | 2 min read
• 
  Opinion

  What Flag Should Yiddish Fly?

  In mid-2012, I received a friend request from “Yiddish Flag,” a fictional image that purported to be the flag of Yiddish language and culture. Not in the habit of accepting requests from anonymous non-humans, I clicked “reject” without a second thought. Yet the flag, a black-and-white banner featuring a menorah on a stylized tallis (prayer…

  By Sebastian Schulman Jun 15, 2015 | 4 min read
• 
  Opinion

  Why Rachel Dolezal Story Hits Raw Nerve for Jews

  If we needed proof that there is no such thing as local news anymore, the case of Rachel Dolezal provided it. The story of a president of an NAACP chapter and African studies professor essentially building a career around a fabricated ethnic identity – telling the world she was of African-American heritage when she is,…

  By Allison Kaplan Sommer (Haaretz) Jun 15, 2015 | 4 min read
• 
  Opinion

  How Birthright Is Failing the Pro-Israel Cause

  “So you’re going to support racist nationalism to get a free trip?” That’s the question a college housemate asked me when I returned from Birthright. She had seen the freshly uploaded photos that decorated my Facebook profile that week: my friends and I slathered in clay at the Dead Sea, riding camels in the Negev,…

  By Madison Margolin Jun 15, 2015 | 3 min read