Opinion

• Opinion

  Who By the Sword?

  Rachelle Fraenkel, the mother of Naftali Fraenkel , one of three boys kidnapped and murdered by terrorists in Israel this past summer, said in a recent interview that “because I pray a lot, that does not mean that God owes me anything.” That is one way to cope theologically with a brutal event. The other…

  By Gerald L. Zelizer

  4 min read
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  Opinion

  Israel’s Culture of Debate Needs Serious Fixing

  Getty Images In her recent New York Times op-ed, Mairav Zonszein describes incidents in which left-leaning Israelis were intimidated and even attacked by right-wing thugs. She concludes that, to quote the title of her piece, “Israel Silences Dissent.” By using this phrase, she suggests that Israel displays a state-based system of intimidation against those who…

  By Elan Ezrachi and Naamah Kelman Oct 2, 2014 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  Newest Anti-Israel Hashtag? #JSIL

  (Haaretz) — It was fairly predictable. The Israeli government, after all, has been doing its best lately to send the message out that we’re all on the same side when it comes to opposing the monstrosity that is the Islamic State. But that message upsets those who don’t want the world to forget that there’s…

  By Allison Kaplan Sommer Oct 2, 2014 | 2 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 The moral degradation of Israel’s far-right is even worse than you think

  

• 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

  Death and More Death: Preparation for Yom Kippur

  Yom Kippur is all about death? I thought it was about atonement. Yet all you have to do is start talking to rabbis — or reading their books about preparing for the High Holidays — and death takes center stage. I don’t mean DEATH! IN! CAPS! — in the sense of a morbid fixation, or…

  By Abigail Pogrebin Oct 2, 2014 | 5 min read
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  Opinion

  Why Do We Feel Dread On Yom Kippur?

  I Godology is a monthly conversation between writer Elissa Strauss and Rabbi Scott Perlo in which they explore what it means to be “God-ish” — to kind of, sort of, believe in God. SCOTT: It always strikes me as a strange paradox that the theology of the holidays is expressed through the image of God…

  By Elissa Strauss and Scott Perlo Oct 2, 2014 | 5 min read
• Opinion

  A beautiful Kol Nidre from composer Jon Simon

  By Abigail Pogrebin Oct 2, 2014 | < 1 min read
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  Opinion

  Why Yom Kippur Tells Us To Fight Ebola

  A newly arrived patient suspected of suffering from the Ebola virus sits on the ground at Island Hospital in Monrovia, Liberia./Getty Images As Jews around the world prepare for Yom Kippur — a day when we pray to be “sealed in the Book of Life” for the year to come — the people of West…

  By Ruth W. Messinger Oct 1, 2014 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  Netanyahu’s Convenient Lies About ISIS and Hamas

  Benjamin Netanyahu, left; anti-ISIS fighter, right / Getty Images Speaking at the General Assembly this week, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu repeated a refrain he has sounded for three decades (since his days as Israeli ambassador to the U.N.) — that all forms of terrorism are different sides of the same coin and have civilization as…

  By Nathan Brown Sep 30, 2014 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  UN Week: Obama’s Pivot, Abbas’s Bile, Bibi’s Flub

  This should have been Bibi Netanyahu’s big year at the United Nations. World revulsion toward ISIS was at a peak, putting Islamist terrorism at center stage. President Obama, long derided by Netanyahu and his allies as a naïve peacenik, had suddenly become a wartime president. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict was, at last, the least of the…

  By J.J. Goldberg Sep 30, 2014 | 5 min read
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  Opinion

  9 Sephardi Dishes That Won’t Make Buzzfeed Gag

  If your signature dish can be mistaken for cat food, you’ve got a problem. Or that’s what Buzzfeed’s most recent experiment would have you believe. They got “random people” (aka non-Jews) to try classic Jewish foods for the first time and recorded their reactions. The response to gefilte fish? Gag. To kugel? Gag. To matzo…

  By Anne Cohen and Sigal Samuel Sep 30, 2014 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  Two Bad Speeches — and Scant Hope for Peace

  Well, that was helpful. If you were the leader of your people and you really wanted to extend a hand to your enemy, you wouldn’t call him a racist. And genocidal. You probably wouldn’t want to say that this enemy assassinated thousands of children, devastated homes and schools and destroyed the dreams of a generation….

  Sep 29, 2014 | 4 min read