Opinion

• Opinion

  Who Owns the Past?

  About a million people each year visit the National Archives in Washington, to see the carefully maintained, original Declaration of Independence, United States Constitution and Bill of Rights. So popular are these founding documents that the Archives recently banned visitors from taking photographs and video, lest the fragile 18th century papers be harmed by excessive…

  2 min read
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  Opinion

  How To Study Anti-Semitism

  When the news of Yale University’s decision to close its Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism was first made public in early June, the sector of the blogosphere that addresses Jewish issues began to buzz. Discussion, charges and accusations flew. Yale’s critics praised YIISA as a beacon of academic scholarship that had made a…

  By Deborah E. Lipstadt Jun 15, 2011 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  I’ve Got a Problem With Barack Obama

  Shhhh. Don’t tell anyone, but the United States has some problems. Fear not, however; for two reasons, I am not going to present here a catalog of our problems. The first reason is that there is not sufficient space to do that; the second is that by now, we are, most of us, quite familiar…

  By Leonard Fein Jun 15, 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

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  Opinion

  When the GOP’s 7 Dwarfs Debate the Economy, Dopey Writes the Script

  A few weeks before CNN’s big Republican presidential pillow-fight, an odd sort of foreshadowing materialized in Jerusalem when a local right-wing think tank, the Jerusalem Center for Market Studies, staged a daylong economics conference. The title was “Free Markets and Social Progress in Israel,” but the unspoken theme was more like “Republicans and Their Jewish…

  By J.J. Goldberg Jun 15, 2011 | 4 min read
• Letters

  A Bogus Issue

  With regard to your June 3 editorial, “Don’t Make Us Choose,” and the numerous other references to the Obama/Netanyahu squabble, I’m shocked and dismayed by the fact that nowhere is there a discussion of the joint statement issued by Secretary Clinton and Prime Minister Netanyahu on November 11, 2010, in which Secretary Clinton is quoted…

  Jun 15, 2011 | < 1 min read
• Letters

  Waiting for Justice

  After reading Efraim Zuroff’s May 27 op-ed, “Hunting Demjanjuk,” I find it painful and frustrating that both Israel and the United States could screw up a simple trial of a Ukrainian collaborator like John Demjanjuk. It took Germany finally to convict him. And there are dozens of Demjanjuks still alive in the U.S., Canada, U.K….

  Jun 15, 2011 | < 1 min read
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  Opinion

  A Weiner By Any Other Name…

  Shall we add to Anthony Weiner’s list of sins the mispronunciation of his own name? “It’s pronounced ‘wy-ner’ or ‘way-ner,’” my Austrian grandmother insisted, when I asked her what she thought about the scandal engulfing the New York representative. “Wiener” — pronounced wee-ner — “like my cousin, Herbert, that means Viennese; Weiner, like the congressman,…

  By Gabrielle Birkner Jun 14, 2011 | 2 min read
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  Opinion

  Hebrew Language Charter Schools Are a Bad Bargain

  All I hear about these days is the “Jewish future.” Yeshiva University has its very well-capitalized Center for the Jewish Future; federations around the country have established commissions on the Jewish Future. Long gone are “continuity” and “renaissance,” buzzwords that came out of the traumatic findings of the 1990 National Jewish Population Survey, which suggested…

  By Jerome A. Chanes Jun 14, 2011 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  More on Haaretz and Nevzlin

  The Israeli financial newspaper, Globes, reported some more details on Leonid Nevzlin’s recent purchase of 20% of Haaretz. I wrote about the initial news on Sunday and wondered whether this said something about the political diversity of the Russian Jewish community in Israel. The idea that Nevzlin — even if only a constituency of one…

  By Gal Beckerman Jun 14, 2011 | < 1 min read
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  Opinion

  Israel’s Real Arab Problem

  “Of the 300 million Arabs in the Middle East and North Africa, only Israel’s Arab citizens enjoy real democratic rights,” Prime Minister Netanyahu boasted in his recent speech to the United States Congress. Lest the point be lost on his audience, Netanyahu emphatically reiterated it: “Of those 300 million Arabs, less than one-half of 1%…

  By Ilan Peleg and Dov Waxman Jun 14, 2011 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  Weiner’s Pinto Connection

  As if embattled U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner didn’t have enough problems, he’s now been linked to a charismatic rabbi whose associates have issues of their own. The New York Daily News is reporting that Weiner “regularly” stopped by the classes and holiday gatherings of Rabbi Yoshiyahu Yosef Pinto for spiritual advice and counseling. In return,…

  By Jane Eisner Jun 13, 2011 | 2 min read