Opinion

• Opinion

  The Latest Lower East Side

  University Settlement, the first settlement house in this country, will soon be celebrating its 125th anniversary. Founded in 1886 to serve primarily Jewish immigrants to New York City from Eastern Europe, the Settlement has remained true to its original mission while adapting to the changing Lower East Side. The connection of past and present has…

  By Michael Zisser

  3 min read
• Opinion

  Watch the ’60 Minutes’ Segment on Silwan and the City of David

  CBS News ‘60 Minutes’ correspondent Leslie Stahl reported Sunday night October 17 on the City of David archaeological dig under Silwan in East Jerusalem and the effort by the settler movement, the El-Ad organization and Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat to populate the congested Arab neighborhood with Jews. Watch it here.

  By J.J. Goldberg Oct 18, 2010 | < 1 min read
• Opinion

  Angolan Lauds Banker Stan Fischer. Fischer Moves to Israel. Angolan’s Text Vanishes (or does it? my bad)

  Note: I’ve corrected this post in light of the comments below that produced the text I was unable to find. In my blog post the other day about the Netanyahu government’s moves toward regulating the Israeli finance industry, I meant to elaborate about the role of Stanley Fischer, the governor of the Bank of Israel,…

  By J.J. Goldberg Oct 17, 2010 | 3 min read

Columnists View All

• Alyssa Katz My summer plans prove it: The Jewish Catskills are alive and kicking

  

• Rob Eshman ‘Remember the Liberty’ has become code for ‘Israel Is Evil’ 

  

• Dan Perry A new proposal to radically destabilize Israel

  

• Emily Tamkin Outrage over Nicholas Kristof’s op-ed on sexual assault of Palestinians is missing the point

  

• Jay Michaelson When it comes to Israel/Palestine, everyone is sure that everyone else is a bigot

  

The Latest

• Opinion

  What Bibi Could Teach Obama About Regulating Banks and Saving Democracy

  There was a little business story in today’s Haaretz that you probably overlooked. It’s a real eye-opener. It’s about steps being taken by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to reform the regulation of the finance industry. But what it’s really about is how a determined political system can stop bankers from taking over, wrecking the economy…

  By J.J. Goldberg Oct 14, 2010 | 3 min read
• Letters

  October 22, 2010

  The Belarus Jews’ Story Continues Judith Matloff’s article, “The Last Shtetl Jews of Belarus” in the October 15 issue, is a moving account of a genuine human tragedy. However, her conclusion that “[w]hen these last people pass on, so will 350 years of vibrant Jewish tradition in Belarus,” is unwarranted. In fact, alongside these individual…

  Oct 13, 2010 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  Shedding Light on the Legacy of Ground Zero

  I am not presently a New Yorker — though as one who was raised in New York it pains me to say so — but I am a student of history, so I must address two issues that have come up in the debate over the proposed Park51 Islamic cultural center near Ground Zero. One,…

  By Michael Berenbaum Oct 13, 2010 | 4 min read
• 
  Opinion

  Toward Day Schools for All Children

  My son Ezra asks all kinds of questions. Recently, he posed one that I found difficult to answer. “Why,” he wanted to know, “can’t I go to the same schools as my brothers?” Ezra’s siblings, who are 16 and 12, both attend Jewish day schools — and have done so since their preschool days. Ezra,…

  By Tom Fields-Meyer Oct 13, 2010 | 3 min read
• 
  Opinion

  Catholics, Jews and Petri Dishes

  This month, Robert Edwards, a professor emeritus at the University of Cambridge, won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for developing (along with Dr. Patrick Steptoe, who died in 1988), in vitro fertilization. The technique whereby eggs are removed from a woman, fertilized in a petri dish (hence the name “in vitro,” or “in a glass”),…

  By Elliot N. Dorff Oct 13, 2010 | 3 min read
• 
  Opinion

  Sometimes ‘Un-American’ Is Actually Ultra-American

  America’s proud tradition of tolerance has lately been put to the test. Islam is the current target, succeeding Catholicism and Judaism as the religion bearing the brunt of a less proud tradition of “Americanism.” Religious intolerance is not, of course, a peculiarly American phenomenon. What makes the American experience of intolerance distinctive is that it…

  By David N. Myers and Nomi M. Stolzenberg Oct 13, 2010 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  J Street’s Gifts To American Jewish Life

  J Street is caught between two opposite but equally potent reactions to revelations that it hid the involvement of arch-liberal philanthropist — and Israel critic — George Soros until “outed” by the conservative media. On the right, those who questioned the legitimacy of the liberal lobby’s policies and denied the pro-Israel bona fides of its…

  By Shai Franklin Oct 13, 2010 | 3 min read
• 
  Opinion

  Seeking the Power Of a Community Organizer

  Back during Barack Obama’s campaign for the presidency, I frequently found myself arguing with friends who were supporting Hillary Clinton’s bid. “How,” they would ask, “do you expect this young and relatively inexperienced man to stand up to the walruses of the Congress? They will ride roughshod over him!” My answer, which seemed to me…

  By Leonard Fein Oct 13, 2010 | 3 min read