Opinion

• Opinion

  Senate Dems to Jews: How About a Little Help?

  Things got a little testier than usual on Capitol Hill July 13 when the Senate Democrats held their annual midsummer get-together with Jewish organizational leaders to discuss next year’s legislative priorities. The Jewish leaders were expecting their traditional hug. What they got was more of a spanking. Most years, the hour-long powwow features senators nodding…

  By J.J. Goldberg

  4 min read
• Opinion

  A World Where Jews Have No Safe Houses

  Not so long ago, Jews everywhere understood the bottom-line benefit of being Jewish. They may have put it differently, but in the end it was this: To be Jewish means you have safe houses all over the world. Heaven forbid you have to run and hide, you can turn to another Jew — even one…

  By Leonard Fein Jul 20, 2011 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  A Note to Parents Worried Their Child Will Be Next

  Here’s a little exercise I’d like to suggest for all the parents now traumatized by the brutal murder of Leiby Kletzky and wondering when — if ever — they will let their children walk outside, given the “crazy world we live in” and the notion that “times have changed,” and the belief that “you never…

  By Lenore Skenazy Jul 20, 2011 | 3 min read

Columnists View All

• Jodi Rudoren This is my last column as editor of the Forward

  

• Jay Michaelson American Jews were played — now what?

  

• Rob Eshman Americans keep getting killed in the West Bank. Here’s how the US could fight that awful trend

  

• Nora Berman First Camp Auschwitz, now Alligator Alcatraz — why the right is obsessed with commodifying brutality

  

• Dan Perry What exactly is going on between Israel and Syria — and is the prospect of peace dead?

  

• Emily Tamkin Zohran Mamdani’s victory proves it: The ‘gotcha’ mode of fighting antisemitism has to go

  

The Latest

• Opinion

  Is Murdoch’s Mess Bad for the Jews?

  It was only a matter of time before someone would ask whether the international scandal engulfing Rupert Murdoch’s empire was good for the Jews. And if you feel compelled to ask, the answer is almost always “no.” JTA’s Ron Kampeas essentially posed the question in a story contending that some supporters of Israel are worried…

  By Jane Eisner Jul 19, 2011 | 2 min read
• Opinion

  Why Is Israel’s Boycott Law Different From America’s?

  Given the widespread protests over Israel’s newly enacted anti-boycott laws, a great many friends of Israel are wondering aloud why the fuss — specifically, why is this law treyf while the anti-boycott measures passed by the United States Congress and signed into law by President Jimmy Carter in 1977 have not aroused all these protests?…

  By J.J. Goldberg Jul 19, 2011 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  Noam Sheizaf: Worrying About Israeli Democracy

  A few minutes after midnight on July 11, the night the Knesset passed its anti-boycott law, a hundred or so young Israelis gathered at Rabin Square in Tel Aviv. Since the square is being renovated, they clustered along one of its edges. Some of them improvised protest signs, facing them towards busy Ibn Gvirol Avenue….

  By Noam Sheizaf Jul 19, 2011 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  Will Jews Defect to the GOP? This Clear Voice Says: No Way

  Here’s a question that will surely be asked incessantly until the next presidential election: Will American Jews desert the Democratic Party and throw some of their electoral weight and considerable financial clout to Republicans in 2012? Already, there have been claims and counter-claims, polls that seem to be no more than political advertisements and occasional…

  By Jane Eisner Jul 18, 2011 | < 1 min read
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  Opinion

  The Real Peoplehood Problem

  In a July 15 Forward op-ed, the Jewish Agency’s Misha Galperin sounded an urgent call for funding what he calls “the peoplehood agenda.” This agenda is meant to counter a perceived problem with the younger generation of American Jews. “Having been raised in a world of pluralism and tolerance,” Galperin wrote, “Jews younger than 45…

  By Daniel Septimus Jul 15, 2011 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  What We Talk About When We Talk About Peoplehood

  I’ve received some interesting responses to an op-ed we ran recently in the paper. The piece was written by Misha Galperin, a top official at the Jewish Agency, who has overseen that quasi-governmental body’s shift from focusing on immigration to Israel, which was its mission for many decades, to something called “peoplehood” promotion. Galperin will…

  By Gal Beckerman Jul 15, 2011 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  ‘We Don’t Hunt’

  Here is a story I used to tell frequently, but haven’t for many years now. It is a true story I made up in 1980 or so. (A true story I made up? Yes. The compelling reason we love stories is that they do not have to have happened in order to be true.) It…

  By Leonard Fein Jul 14, 2011 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  Two Revolutions and the Crises They Created

  If it feels as though we’re living through strange, frightening times, that’s because we are. The planet is experiencing a wrenching atmospheric change, what with biblical-scale storms and droughts, disappearing polar ice caps, rising oceans and endangered crop cycles. The nations, particularly in the 1.5 billion-strong Muslim world, are undergoing a collective nervous breakdown that…

  By J.J. Goldberg Jul 13, 2011 | 4 min read