Opinion

• Opinion

  Deficits ’R’ Us

  The joint recommendations of a bipartisan commission led by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson and charged with balancing the federal budget included such incendiary ideas as raising the retirement age for Social Security and making its benefits more progressive. That these ideas are politically difficult doesn’t mean they should be dismissed. On the contrary. The…

  2 min read
• Opinion

  Still Necessary: Journalists and Rabbis in the 21st Century

  This is an excerpt of the keynote speech given November 11 at the annual meeting of the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation in Newport Beach, Calif. I understand that your movement is struggling with major challenges, some of them institutional, some existential. So is journalism today. I have no magical prescription to offer, but I do think…

  Nov 17, 2010 | 4 min read
• Letters

  November 26, 2010

  Abandoning the Ezra Vision I was pleased to read your article about Project Ezra and Misha Avramoff, my friend and colleague at Project Ezra for almost 30 years (Old-School Jewish Activist Faces the Future as Project Ezra Prepares for Merger, November 12 issue). The article, however, missed the central part of the story. It did…

  Nov 17, 2010 | 4 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 I have the answer to Jon Stewart’s toughest question about Israel

  

• Nora Berman ‘Eddington’ is full of conspiracy theories but it’s not about Jews. Or is it?

  

• Dan Perry Recognizing a Palestinian state is a great way to doom Palestinians

  

• Emily Tamkin Is starvation in Gaza really Israel’s fault? The facts are clear

  

The Latest

• Opinion

  How To Rehabilitate Israel’s Lost Love for Labor

  Thoughtful readers are having trouble explaining the strangely quiescent mood in Israel these days. Given the precarious state of the peace process, mounting poverty, religious tension and terrorist missiles lining the borders, you might expect livelier debates. Where’s the noise? Here’s a clue: The Labor Party, once led by David Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak Rabin, is…

  By J.J. Goldberg Nov 17, 2010 | 4 min read
• 
  Opinion

  Thinking Big

  The English word large has been absorbed into Hebrew, but in Hebrew, large is not a physical measure. It’s a measure of character, and describes an aspect of the Israeli character. “Tihiyeh large,” Israelis exhort each other: “Be generous, expansive, grand.” At its best, being large is the capacity to expand beyond one’s limitations. When,…

  By Yossi Klein Halevi Nov 17, 2010 | < 1 min read
• 
  Opinion

  Guest Editor: Judith Shulevitz

  *This fall, guest editors have helped to shape Forward Forum by commissioning opinion pieces. The eighth and final of the group is Judith Shulevitz, a cultural critic and magazine editor who helped to start both Slate and Lingua Franca, which won a National Magazine Award for General Excellence under her co-editorship. She has been a…

  Nov 17, 2010 | 2 min read
• 
  Opinion

  In the Situation Room

  Hamatzav means “the situation,” and can refer to any situation — the economic situation, the weather situation, your medical situation. However, within certain groups, at certain times, the expression came to refer to the Israeli political situation, and specifically to the Israeli-Arab situation.* I first heard the expression when I became active in the early…

  By Janet Aviad Nov 17, 2010 | 2 min read
• Opinion

  Fuhgeddaboudit

  Israelis are an impatient people. They speak dugri (“directly,” an import from Arabic). They get to the point. Haval (guttural, as in Hanukkah) means “too bad.” Al hazman means “about the time.” Haval al hazman: It’s a waste of time. Don’t even look at her, haval al hazman, she has a tall, dark paratrooper boyfriend….

  By Stuart Schoffman Nov 17, 2010 | 2 min read
• Opinion

  Talmud of Traffic

  ‘Sa l’shalom,” said the policeman who had been about to give me a ticket for a traffic violation. (In the end he didn’t, because he discovered that he and my eldest daughter had been in the same class in elementary school, but that’s another story.) Translated freely, this meant, “You can go.” It’s at such…

  By Philologos Nov 17, 2010 | 2 min read
• Opinion

  One Born Every Minute

  Nobody likes to be a sucker, but call an Israeli man a freier and you insult him to the core. Not only should he have gotten a better deal, you imply, but he has betrayed the cardinal rules of Israeli masculinity: don’t play by the rules and never let someone outsmart you. Being a freier…

  By Toby Perl Freilich Nov 17, 2010 | 2 min read
• Opinion

  State of Being

  When used with the definite article ha, medina, meaning state, may express anger (“The state threw us to the dogs,” say the newly unemployed); disappointment (“this is not the state we dreamed of!”); wonder (“what a state! An extraordinary state!” sings the popular entertainer Eli Luzon); even love. This range of strong emotions is a…

  By Ruvik Rosenthal Nov 17, 2010 | < 1 min read