Opinion

• Letters

  March 19, 2010

  Maybe Agency Should Call it Quits Sometimes organizations should declare victory and close (“Embattled Jewish Agency To Promote Identity Over Aliyah,” March 12). If the Jewish Agency has achieved the best it can on immigration, if it is not being supported by Jews around the world, that might be the honorable choice. Why manufacture some…

  3 min read
• 
  Opinion

  Editorial: Unfriendly Fire

  This is no way to treat a guest

  By Forward Staff Mar 10, 2010 | 2 min read
• Opinion

  Whose History?

  The diagnosis is correct. The prescription is troubling. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is wise to be concerned about the weakening Jewish identity of many Israelis, an issue for Jews everywhere but especially poignant in what is supposed to be the national homeland. The powerful collective identity forged during the early years of Israel’s modern existence…

  Mar 10, 2010 | 2 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 There’s a shocking new report on civilian deaths in Gaza. If only it were accurate.

  

• Nora Berman Is Netflix’s new show the most Jewish cartoon ever?

  

• Dan Perry Israel’s new gift to the far right could help end the Gaza war

  

• Emily Tamkin Entering motherhood — and an obsession with the works of an Italian Jewish literary hero

  

The Latest

• Opinion

  Pre-Oscar Reading: Meaning Between the Lines of ‘A Serious Man’

  Like a lot of people I know, I was blown away by the Coen Brothers’ Oscar nominee, “A Serious Man.” Behind the absurdist comedy, it captured a penetrating insight about the Job theme in Jewish tradition and the vapidity so pervasive in contemporary American Jewish life. But I’ve been struggling in the months since I…

  By J.J. Goldberg Mar 7, 2010 | 3 min read
• 
  Opinion

  Why Anglo-Israeli Ties Will Survive Dubai

  It has become conventional wisdom that Israel cannot get a fair hearing in Britain. There is strong hostility toward Israel in British academia and trade unions. There have been mounting efforts by pro-Palestinian activists to push boycotts, divestment and sanctions efforts against the Jewish state. And British public opinion as a whole reacted strongly against…

  By Miriam Shaviv Mar 3, 2010 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  Supply-Side Judaism

  The Jewish community is expert at anticipating failure, even disaster. Declining affiliation rates, rampant intermarriage, collapsing schools and synagogues — these are the problems that top the communal agenda. Judaism, it is said, is a product that no one wants to buy anymore. The question is then posed: How can we convince people that Judaism…

  By Elie Kaunfer Mar 3, 2010 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  The Jewish Mission: We Are Witnesses

  With some hesitation, I confess: I am growing tired of tikkun olam. Oh no, I do not mean I am growing tired of efforts to mend the world’s many fractures. It is the words themselves, and not the associated actions, that have become altogether too common, too easy and, to be blunt about it, too…

  By Leonard Fein Mar 3, 2010 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  Purim’s Lessons About Diaspora Power

  Visiting a synagogue as a guest lecturer on Purim can be a highly disorienting experience, as I recently learned. Your job is to help congregants explore the deeper meanings in a festival dedicated to intoxicated silliness. At first glance, the gig sounds a lot like getting paid to be a party-pooper. The assignment is even…

  By J.J. Goldberg Mar 3, 2010 | 4 min read
• Letters

  March 12, 2010

  Albania: Righteous Among the Nations In her article on the arson attack on a synagogue on the Greek island of Crete, K.E. Fleming wrote that the fact that the three immediate responders to the fire were two Albanian immigrants and a Moroccan “complicates assumptions” (“Arson Attack on a Synagogue of Peace,” February 26). Assumptions aside,…

  Mar 3, 2010 | 2 min read
• Opinion

  The Agency’s New Agenda

  The Jewish Agency for Israel is embarking on a bold and necessary attempt to create a new mission for itself, downplaying its historic role in promoting immigration to Israel and emphasizing instead an intriguing but still amorphous notion of Jewish “peoplehood.” Applause is warranted anytime a sprawling, calcified bureaucracy seeks new direction and energy, and…

  Mar 3, 2010 | 2 min read
• Opinion

  Welcoming the ‘Rabba’

  Was it the name? When Rabbi Avi Weiss ordained a woman last year and gave her the made-up honorific of “Maharat,” the mainstream Orthodox world wasn’t pleased, but neither was it furious. Just as much criticism came from those who thought the compromise title was disingenuous, even demeaning. If Sara Hurwitz was to act as…

  Mar 3, 2010 | 2 min read