Opinion

Gay Party Organizers Use ISIS Imagery in Ads

Drek’s ISIS-inspired party poster / Facebook Advertising is a tough business. People are busy. Getting them to come out to your event can be hard. But does that justify using ISIS imagery to gain publicity for your party? Tel Aviv’s popular gay party organizers, Drek, apparently think so. In recent advertising, they used imagery from…

Like the Nazis, ISIS Must Be Confronted

If there’s one thing we should have learned from the 20th century, it’s that wars are wicked, murderous affairs that defile the spirit of humankind. That despite this universal truth, there are some wars that must be fought, as wicked as they might be, because the alternative is even more unspeakable. And that some other…

Self-Flagellation in Summer: Rosh Hashanah Prep

The instruction manual from the Israeli company that shipped my ram’s horn (via Amazon in August) says the blowing-technique can be learned by “filling your mouth with water. Then make a small hole at the right side of your mouth, and blow out the water with a strong pressure. Practice this again and again until…

IKAR’s Hazzan Takes It to the Streets

Tidal Wave of Refugees as ISIS Grabs Chunk of Syria

Something absolutely astonishing is going on right now in northern Syria along the Turkish border: refugees streaming on foot across the barbed-wire frontier by the tens of thousands, fleeing the advance of the terrorist army known as the Islamic State. As many as 100,000 refugees, mostly Kurds, have crossed the border in the past week…

Should the Holocaust Get Preferential Treatment?

Courtesy of the website for the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (JTA) — On the fourth floor of the new Canadian Museum for Human Rights, visitors will find a gallery called “Examining the Holocaust,” which is devoted entirely to the story and lessons of the Shoah. On the same floor, in a smaller, adjacent space,…

News Quiz: Seth Rogen is Quitting Acting to do What?

Getty Images Kate Hudson, Leonard Cohen, Seth Rogen and Mayim Bialik? It’s either this week’s Jewish News Quiz or a list of who’s sponsoring the Rosh Hashanah kiddush.

Let’s Make Climate Change the New ‘Third Rail’ of American Politics

Will 2014 be the year in which climate change becomes a “third rail”? Never before has there been an issue of such moral clarity. We have known for 25 years that the earth is warming more rapidly now than at any other time in history. We have begun to see the effects, in the form…