Opinion

• Opinion

  For Source of Debt Crisis, Look to the Tithes

  These are mournful days. It’s the month of Tammuz, when the ancient walls of Jerusalem were first breached and the commonwealth began to crumble. Or, to phrase it slightly differently: July, when the credit of the republic began to run out. The sages of the Talmud teach us that Jerusalem and its temple fell because…

  By J.J. Goldberg

  4 min read
• 
  Opinion

  Liberate the Letter!

  When Ron Chernow was travelling the country last year to talk about his new biography of George Washington, he was often asked about Washington’s 1790 letter to the Jews of Newport, R.I. — the one that famously promised that the United States government would give “to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.” “There were…

  Jul 6, 2011 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  Hitchens Has a Few Questions for the Flotilla

  Christopher Hitchens, writing in Slate, has a few questions about the Free Gaza flotilla that he wishes the journalists on the scene would find time to ask. Most of the speculation so far has been to do with methods and intentions, allowing for many avowals about peaceful tactics and so forth, but this is soft-centered…

  By J.J. Goldberg Jul 5, 2011 | 2 min read

Columnists View All

• Jay Michaelson What can really be done to prevent antisemitic attacks like Bondi Beach?

  

• Rob Eshman Australia shooting terrifies Jews worldwide — and strengthens the case for Israel

  

• Nora Berman Did crypto-Jews invent the modern tarot deck?

  

• Dan Perry The 3 responses to the Bondi Beach Hanukkah attack that could make Jews safer

  

• Emily Tamkin The fundamental miscalculation behind the GOP’s antisemitism crisis

  

The Latest

• 
  Opinion

  Funding Peoplehood

  What happens when an idea is really important and needs our full financial support, but just isn’t sexy? Many philanthropies face this funding question every day. It’s a lot easier to get someone to pay for an ambulance than to pay for salary raises for medics. It’s a lot easier to get people to pay…

  By Misha Galperin Jul 5, 2011 | 3 min read
• 
  Opinion

  Who Said Jews Are Leaving Obama?

  A new Gallup Poll out today confirms that President Obama’s strong Jewish support has not evaporated following his May 19 speech on the Middle East. In fact, it hasn’t moved a bit. Sixty percent of Jews approved of Obama’s job in June, while 32 percent disapproved. In a poll of the general public, Obama gets…

  By Gal Beckerman Jul 5, 2011 | 3 min read
• 
  Opinion

  Will the One-State Solution Become the Only Solution?

  Tony Judt’s deliberately provocative 2003 New York Review of Books essay, “Israel: the Alternative,” is a lesson in the limits of American Jewry’s allowable discourse when it comes to Israel. Writing explicitly in the tradition of thought experiment, rather than policy proposal, about what he called an “alternative future,” Judt suggests that Jews and Arabs…

  By Eric Alterman Jul 5, 2011 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  The Sniper Who Killed Me: Syrian Photog Films Own Murder

  A Syrian civilian in the city of Homs ran onto his roof with a video camera to film the shooting outside his house. Eventually he focuses on a uniformed gunman in a nearby building who takes aim at him and shoots. A few moments of silence, and then voices of grief approaching. Haaretz has the…

  By J.J. Goldberg Jul 4, 2011 | < 1 min read
• Opinion

  ‘Zombie Liberalism’: Standing Up for Minorities, Losing Sight of the Majority?

  The Washington Post has a useful news analysis that looks at the New York State gay marriage decision and what it says about the state of liberalism. The headline says it all: “The rise of zombie liberalism: Half-dead, half-alive. “ The basic premise isn’t terribly new, but it’s too often forgotten: the liberalism of “Expanding…

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

  A Country In Need of Social Justice

  Why does it matter that the Jewish people persists, beyond the sometime comforts of ethnic identity? What grand purpose is served by the continuing existence of the Jews? Obviously, there are a variety of plausible responses to those questions. Having a compelling way to fill in the blank in the sentence that begins, “It is…

  By Leonard Fein Jul 1, 2011 | 3 min read
• 
  Opinion

  Dinner With Livni

  The Tzipi Livni who spoke before a small, private dinner on Wednesday evening in New York seemed more excitable, passionate and downright worried than she has been in these sort of settings. Barely had the guests invited by the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace taken their seats when the leader of Israel’s…

  By Jane Eisner Jun 30, 2011 | 2 min read
• Opinion

  WJC’s Leader Veers to the Right and Beyond

  Consider this thought. It just might represent your future: “In political warfare, words are lethal weapons.” So lethal, in fact, that when you look at today’s dangers, “It would behoove Israeli and Jewish leaders to avoid being the inadvertent ‘weapons suppliers’ of the country’s adversaries.” Translation: Watch what you say. You might be aiding the…

  By J.J. Goldberg Jun 29, 2011 | 4 min read