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WASHINGTON (JTA) — Peace in a year? Try getting past Sept. 26. Or is it 30? Direct talks between Palestinians and Israelis have barely begun and already the sides are facing their first major hurdle — the end of Israel’s partial moratorium on settlement building. Several issues might beset the sides as they aim to [...]
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NORTHFIELD, Minn. (JTA) — In the past several months I have had some version of the following exchange several times. I tell a friend that I’ve just finished a book on repentance, and they respond that they find the subject of forgiveness very interesting. It’s psychologically so much healthier to forgive than to hold on [...]
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NEW YORK (JTA) — On Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, many of us are haunted by the ubiquitous liturgical refrain asking “Who shall live and who shall die?” As I sit in synagogue and hear these words chanted over and over again, I can’t help but question whether the righteous are really being rewarded in [...]
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WASHINGTON (JTA) — It’s a peace conference where nothing is off the table — or on it, for that matter. The Obama administration’s invitation to Palestinian and Israeli leaders to launch direct talks on Sept. 2 attempts to reconcile Israeli demands for no preconditions with Palestinian demands that the talks address all the core issues: [...]
Read More »If the United States doesn’t attack Iran’s nuclear facilities within the next eight months or so, Israel probably will. So says journalist Jeffrey Goldberg in the September issue of The Atlantic magazine in an article that is fueling debate and speculation among many Middle East experts. Goldberg bases his conclusion mainly on three premises: In [...]
Read More »As the controversy over the conversion issue reached a fever pitch recently, a group of Israeli soldiers shuffled past flowerbeds into classrooms at the Jewish Agency’s Kiryat Moriah educational center in Jerusalem. Four hundred soldiers, many of them immigrants, come together from every army unit for 14 hours a day of learning. Today’s lesson has [...]
Read More »In one of the more curious twists in Israeli politics, prominent figures on Israel’s right wing have begun pushing for a one-state solution with Israelis and Palestinians as equal citizens with full voting rights. The one-state solution previously had been the preserve of the post-Zionist left, Palestinian hard-liners and left-leaning European intellectuals who envisioned turning [...]
Read More »WASHINGTON (JTA) — Iran targeted Argentina’s Jews in a horrific car bomb attack 16 years ago. Now, as Tehran infiltrates Latin America, its aim is broader — the Western Hemisphere. Iran, tahe world’s largest and most successful state sponsor of terror, has gotten away with one of its most brazen and deadly acts for too [...]
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NEW YORK (Forward) — With the American Jewish Congress apparently closing its doors, there won’t be many mourners saying Kaddish. Instead, the prevailing communal sentiment will probably be: “We have too many agencies; one less will not matter.” The serious financial problems that had plagued the AJCongress over recent decades became a mortal threat in [...]
Read More »NEW YORK (JTA) — In the history of the State of Israel, never have there been preconditions for face-to-face peace talks. While it was not obligated to do so, the Israeli government last November ordered a 10-month freeze in new building projects in the West Bank. This sign of good faith, the outward stretch of [...]
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