Opinion

• Opinion

  It’s Inequality, Stupid

  The report, requested several years ago and released October 25, has the imprimatur of the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office and the benefit of rigorous analysis of government data. So it must be taken seriously. The stark message: Income inequality has grown dramatically in the last three decades, spurred on by government policy that has allowed…

  2 min read
• 
  Opinion

  School Tuition Should Be Based on Income

  Recently, my local Jewish newspaper published its perennial look at how day school tuition is rising faster than inflation. This year’s article featured our only local co-educational Jewish high school, which I attended years ago and to which, due to rising costs, I was unable to send my own children. The resulting polarization of the…

  By Aurora Mendelsohn Oct 31, 2011 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  Bibi Netanyahu: Islamic Scholar?

  Like Vladimir Putin, who can just don a wetsuit and emerge from a deep sea dive holding two sixth-century artifacts, there is apparently nothing Benjamin Netanyahu can’t do. Just read the seventh paragraph of this New York Times story, about the opening of the Metropolitan Museum’s new Islamic art galleries. It mentions a visit that…

  By Gal Beckerman Oct 30, 2011 | < 1 min read

Columnists View All

• Alyssa Katz What I learned at a Holocaust survivors’ Purim party

  

• Rob Eshman Trump is backed into a corner on Iran. Get ready for him to start blaming Jews

  

• Dan Perry Israelis have no idea where the Iran war is going. But they know it’s part of Netanyahu’s campaign

  

• Emily Tamkin Hungary is poised to topple an authoritarian leader. American Jews have something to learn

  

• Jay Michaelson Epstein and Iran are an antisemitism mega-crisis. Here’s what Jewish organizations should do about it. 

  

The Latest

• 
  Opinion

  When It Comes to Shalit, Let’s Be Quiet

  It is a favorite barb against the Zionist left that from the comfort of their homes in New York or Cleveland, they presume to tell Israel what to do, how to behave. Never mind that no one (not even the president or the secretary of state, much less dovish Jews) can “tell” Israel what to…

  By Leonard Fein Oct 30, 2011 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  Israeli Brass Astir Amid Pressure for Iran Strike

  “Have the prime minister and defense minister sealed a deal between them, one on one, to attack the nuclear reactors in Iran?” So asks Nahum Barnea, commonly described as Israel’s senior and most respected political journalist, in an article leading the top of the front page of today’s Yediot Ahronot. He writes that growing rumors…

  By J.J. Goldberg Oct 28, 2011 | 3 min read
• 
  Opinion

  Pernicious Attempt To Brand Protest as Anti-Semitic

  Is the Jewish congressional representative from heavily Jewish Long Island, Steve Israel, “standing with those calling for the killing of Jews”? Does the Jewish representative from heavily Jewish Florida, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, “agree with various calls for Jews to be ‘run out of the country’ and to oppose and ‘destroy’ the State of Israel”? Sean…

  By Eric Alterman Oct 28, 2011 | 4 min read
• 
  Opinion

  A Woman’s Place

  Not on the buses in Jerusalem or Brooklyn, not on the streets on Sukkot, and now not on the billboards, a contributor complained to the Forward’s blog, The Sisterhood. “Where,” she asked, “is it okay to be a woman?’ Before trying to answer the question, we’ll explain the references. In recent weeks, we’ve learned that…

  Oct 28, 2011 | 2 min read
• 
  Opinion

  The Political Dividends of the Shalit Deal

  Looking at the results of a poll conducted by Israel’s Channel 2 and the Sarid Institute for Research Services, it’s clear that the Israeli public is smiling on Benjamin Netanyahu, now fresh from negotiating the release of Gilad Shalit. The poll shows that Likud would win 37 seats in the next Knesset, up 10 from…

  By Gal Beckerman Oct 27, 2011 | < 1 min read
• 
  Opinion

  $31.50 a Week

  The last time that Steve Gutow, president of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, tried to live on an average budget of food stamps for a week, it was 2007, and the allotment was $21. He ate a great deal of lentils, rice, onions, eggs — not such a hardship, since he’s a vegetarian —…

  Oct 27, 2011 | < 1 min read
• 
  Opinion

  Conservatives Reject Call To Leave Israel Out of Campaign

  Here’s how crazy things have gotten: An emergency call went out recently from the heart of the Jewish Establishment — from the very epicenter of macherdom, the twin citadels of Jewish defense, the Anti-Defamation League and American Jewish Committee themselves, in a rare moment of joint action — for American Jews to unite around Israel…

  By J.J. Goldberg Oct 27, 2011 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  No Bibi, No Women?

  The Jewish Federations of North America earlier this week had a somewhat awkward task: To explain to its many members that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wasn’t going to attend the 2011 conference next month in Denver after all. “As in any conference, program changes arise,” read the October 24 memo, which went on to…

  By Jane Eisner Oct 27, 2011 | < 1 min read