Opinion

Ari Lesser’s “Ten Plagues”

Revealing Israel’s Nuclear Secrets

In early February, the Pentagon declassified a 386-page report from 1987, exposing for the first time ever the actual depth of top-secret military cooperation between the United States and Israel — including, amazingly, information about Israel’s unacknowledged nuclear program. In view of the caustic tension that has increased lately between Washington and Jerusalem, the timing…

At Jew-Centric J Street, Arabs Ask the Best Questions

Courtesy of J Street For the Jews who attended this year’s J Street Conference, the event was an expression of community, idealism and ideology. In a way, it was about how Israel was all about us, the Jews. It was about our values and our identity, which have been so inextricably intertwined with the state…

Making Day School Work for Working Parents

Earlier this year, several Jewish day schools in the northern New Jersey and Manhattan areas announced that they would be starting the 2015–2016 year on September 8 because Labor Day falls late this year. I quickly did some math and discovered that this meant my children would be off for 17 days during the summer,…

The Anti-Semitism Surge That Isn’t

You can see how the perception took hold. Two professors from Trinity College who have been studying American Jewish college students for years included a question about anti-Semitism in their latest survey. The results were startling: 54% percent said that they had experienced or witnessed anti-Semitism on campus during the first six months of the…

Of Sabbath Fires, Safety, Hate and Love: A Reply

It seems some readers saw my Saturday night post about the deadly Brooklyn fire that killed seven children and decided it was a bigoted attack on Orthodox Judaism. In case you missed it, I wrote that this is not the first time Sabbath fires — hotplates, candlesticks — have gotten out of control and killed…

A Value Divide

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s last few days of campaigning impressed Israeli Jews and American Jews alike, but in quite different ways. According to most accounts, Netanyahu’s pledge of no Palestinian state under his watch, coupled with his call to Israeli Jews to run to the ballot boxes to counteract the drove of Arab Israeli voters…

Want To Fight the Occupation After Bibi’s Victory? Here’s How.

Activists from Center for Jewish Nonviolence replant trees on the Nassar family farm / Courtesy Nothing has more depressed American Jewish progressives than the recent revelation that Israel will be facing four more years of Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu’s renewed reign spells continued rancor between the two countries American Jewish progressives care about. It means more…