Opinion

• Opinion

  Judea Pearl: Anti-Zionism is Racism

  Those who came to hear Judea Pearl speak last night at an event sponsored by the Simon Wiesenthal Center‘s Museum of Tolerance might have expected to be offered an array of numbers, shown detailed charts or even be given a sense of whether anti-Semitism was getting better or worse. Instead, he handed them something else…

  By Lillian Swanson

  3 min read
• 
  Opinion

  Our Stance on Homosexuality

  The chief rabbi of Amsterdam, Aryeh Ralbag, was suspended in January for signing a document stating that one can be “healed” from homosexuality. Though he was eventually reinstated after apologizing to the community for having signed using his official title, the episode does provide an opportunity to consider exactly what the traditional Orthodox view on…

  Feb 14, 2012 | 4 min read
• 
  Opinion

  Cultural Divide on Display at CPAC

  Never before have I felt more keenly the cultural divide, a divide that goes well beyond its most obvious current expression in the realm of politics (although that realm is, here, my principal focus). During the speeches at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference, the signal annual meeting of American conservatives, I was especially interested…

  By Leonard Fein Feb 14, 2012 | 3 min read

Columnists View All

• Alyssa Katz Class assignment: Get to know your murdered Jewish neighbors

  

• Rob Eshman ‘Remember the Liberty’ has become code for ‘Israel Is Evil’ 

  

• Dan Perry A new proposal to radically destabilize Israel

  

• Emily Tamkin Outrage over Nicholas Kristof’s op-ed on sexual assault of Palestinians is missing the point

  

• Jay Michaelson When it comes to Israel/Palestine, everyone is sure that everyone else is a bigot

  

The Latest

• Opinion

  Newsweek Gets Inside Obama’s Iran Calculations

  The current issue of Newsweek has a must-read inside look at what drives President Obama’s Iran policy, including the ups and downs of his relations with Israel on the matter. The article, by Newsweek writers Daniel Klaidman, Dan Ephron and Eli Lake (Lake is a former Forward correspondent), reports that Iran was the main topic…

  By J.J. Goldberg Feb 14, 2012 | 3 min read
• 
  Opinion

  Seeing Alan Gross in a New Light

  I’ve been following the Alan Gross saga for the past two years now and have often felt alone. The story of the seemingly hapless technology expert who found himself jailed in Cuba for trying to help the miniscule Jewish community connect to the internet has never gotten much pickup among American Jews and has elicited…

  By Gal Beckerman Feb 14, 2012 | 3 min read
• 
  Opinion

  The Loss of Our Very Own ‘Agony Uncle’

  Jeffrey Zaslow wasn’t a therapist, and he didn’t have a wealth of life experience, when he was plucked from among 12,000 applicants to succeed Ann Landers as an advice columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times in 1987. But the 28-year-old features reporter was as empathetic as he was astute, and he had the ability to communicate…

  By Gabrielle Birkner Feb 13, 2012 | 2 min read
• 
  Opinion

  Listening to Women

  Too many of the images of women in Israel these days are disturbing — a girl spat on because of her dress, an esteemed scientist denied the stage, a commuter forced to the back of the bus. But that’s an incomplete narrative in a nation where women hold leading roles in politics, business, the judiciary,…

  Feb 13, 2012 | 3 min read
• 
  Opinion

  Building Barriers to Two-State Solution

  Here’s a “sign of the times” factoid: In recent commentary on Israel’s settlement policy, the number of Jewish settlers beyond the Green Line has ballooned to 600,000 from 350,000 or so. It is as if there had suddenly been a mass immigration to the West Bank. But there has been no such immigration. What there…

  By Leonard Fein Feb 12, 2012 | 3 min read
• 
  Opinion

  Obama Wrong on Birth Control Coverage

  Say what you will about the principle of tikkun olam, but you can’t confuse it for something else. This central tenet of liberal Judaism means only one thing: Fix the world as it is, and you will be serving God. Feed the hungry. Heal the sick. Mend a broken heart. End war. Stop injustice. These…

  By Noam Neusner Feb 10, 2012 | 4 min read
• 
  Opinion

  When Democracy and Halacha Collide

  In late January, the Israel Democracy Institute’s Guttman Center for Surveys, along with the Avi Chai Foundation, released the results of a comprehensive survey on the religious beliefs of Israeli Jews. Among other interesting findings, it showed that some 80% of the Jewish population in Israel believes in God — which, perhaps, is good news….

  By Harvey Hames Feb 10, 2012 | 3 min read
• 
  Opinion

  Shrugging at BDS

  Before she became the subject of an Oscar-nominated feature film, Margaret Thatcher was prime minister of Great Britain during a particularly violent period of European airplane hijackings and Northern Irish terrorism attacks. She was especially critical of what she deemed the media circus covering these events. “Democratic nations must try to find ways to starve…

  Feb 10, 2012 | 2 min read