Opinion

• Opinion

  4 Ways SOTU Was Good for the Jews

  Getty Images Yesterday’s State of the Union address was a success for Obama. From ending the war in Afghanistan and helping to revive the economy, the president touted his accomplishments. The same accomplishments his fellow party members were reluctant to use to their advantage in the last elections. So many stood up and applauded as…

  By Lior Zaltzman

  2 min read
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  Opinion

  Orthodox Jews Aren’t Trying To Kidnap Your Kids

  Getty Images Reading the article was wrenching. It was a first-person offering, on the website Kveller, by the non-Orthodox mother of a young woman who had adopted Jewish observance and in the process (at least in her mother’s telling) had jettisoned all respect for — apparently, all feeling for — her parents. The mother described…

  Jan 21, 2015 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  We Need a Mikveh Revolution

  Recent events have forced us as a community to take a hard look at the practice of having female converts immerse themselves in a mikveh before a rabbinical court of three men. In the wake of news that a Washington rabbi, Barry Freundel, allegedly spied on women as they were engaging in this ritual, others…

  By Dov Linzer Jan 21, 2015 | 4 min read

Columnists View All

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

  

• Rob Eshman Gavin Newsom isn’t waffling on Israel — he’s voicing sensible ideas in an era of outrage

  

• 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

  Bibi’s Challengers Spoof Cartoonish Election Ad

  (JTA) — Remember that Hillary Clinton ad from 2008, the one where it’s 3 a.m. and the White House phone is ringing? The spot, an attempt to highlight Clinton’s superior experience compared to then Sen. Obama’s ostensible naivete, didn’t do much to save the Clinton campaign, which lost the Democratic primary that year. But that hasn’t…

  By Ben Sales Jan 21, 2015 | < 1 min read
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  Opinion

  ‘Pope’s Rabbi’ Wants New Argentina Terror Probe

  Rabbi Abraham Skorka chats with Pope Francis during their visit to Holy Land last year. /Getty Images (JTA) — Rabbi Abraham Skorka traveled from Buenos Aires to Washington to wax lyrical about his passion – interfaith dialogue – and intimate about his well-known pal, Pope Francis. Also to plug his movement, the Masorti movement, and its…

  By Ron Kampeas Jan 21, 2015 | 3 min read
• Letters

  Endowing Day Schools

  In his op-ed, Rabbi Ari Segal portrays the quandary that most Jewish day schools, and especially Jewish high schools, find themselves in today in regard to their middle-income families (“The 1% Solution,” January 2). Tuition increases have well exceeded rises in wages, cost of living has increased greatly and middle-income families with multiple children in…

  Jan 20, 2015 | 2 min read
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  Opinion

  Men Pushing Baby Strollers? Only Goys Do That!

  Now that Hasidic men are barred from pushing strollers, will they turn to other modes of baby transportation? / Illustration by Anya Ulinich Baseball. Men’s briefs. Dogs. Hipster eyeglasses. Motorcycles. Neckties. English. Math. Men’s shoes any color besides black. Button-down shirts that flap left-over-right. Fixing your own car. Modern Hebrew. That’s a partial list of…

  By Shulem Deen Jan 20, 2015 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  What’s Behind Mystery ‘Suicide’ of Argentina Prosecutor in Terror Probe?

  It’s undoubtedly just coincidence. Then again, once you enter the shadowy world of international skullduggery, few things are coincidence and nothing is what it seems. So let’s just look at the known facts in these two simultaneously unfolding stories and see if we can’t spot any points of intersection. It’s probably all just coincidence. Consider…

  By J.J. Goldberg Jan 20, 2015 | 5 min read
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  Opinion

  The Southern Jews Who Helped King

  The national release of the film “Selma” during the week leading up to Martin Luther King Day, has led to a national moment of heshbon hanefesh (soul searching) over the dramatic series of events during the first three months of 1965 in which indelible images of brutal police violence against peaceful marchers convened by Dr….

  By Marc Schneier Jan 19, 2015 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  Don’t Compare Ferguson and ‘Palestine’

  (JTA) — The latest strategy being used by those who make a career of assaulting the good name of the State of Israel is to link the issue of full equality for African-Americans, as symbolized by the word “Ferguson,” with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There is a long history of using legitimate American social justice issues…

  By Ken Jacobson Jan 19, 2015 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  On MLK Day, Recalling My Brush With KKK

  David Sookne, front left, and Bruce Hartford, third from right, register voters in 1965 / Courtesy (JTA) — Since the nationwide release of “Selma” a week before the national holiday commemorating the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., I have wondered about the extent of Jewish participation in the civil rights movement. Was it just the Selma…

  By Edmon J. Rodman Jan 19, 2015 | 4 min read