Opinion

Many Americans who regularly engage with the Israel “issue” feel it. I feel it. There is a sense in my Christian and Jewish social circles that Israel as a bipartisan issue among Americans is becoming a Republican-dominated issue that will eventually (if it hasn’t already) drive out Democrats. At… Read more »

CHARLESTON, S.C. (JTA) — My father died a few weeks ago. The hardest part of the shiva was when it ended. Friends and family were, by and large, no longer visiting. I was alone in pain and agony. I thought of this reality during my visit to the Emanuel… Read more »

(JTA) — Michael Oren is my friend. During his nearly five years as Israel’s ambassador to the United States, we’d speak on an almost daily basis. Often those phone calls would come at 3 or 4 a.m., Washington time, and Michael, enduring another sleepless night, would share his fears… Read more »

BOSTON (JTA) — Four years ago, I stood under a chuppah with the woman I was about to marry overlooking a valley in Massachusetts. I have an emotional memory of sweetness and joy from my wedding day, but I can’t recall many specific moments. What I do remember vividly… Read more »

Robert N. Rosen

CHARLESTON, S.C. (JTA) — The unspeakable murder of nine accomplished, beloved and respected African-American Charlestonians of faith in their own church on Wednesday has hit our city like an earthquake. These murders occurred in my neighborhood, across the street from Buist Academy, the public magnet school my daughter and… Read more »

CHARLESTON, S.C. (JTA) — A prominent Jewish Charlestonian’s inspiring response to the massacre last week at the Emanuel AME Church has circulated widely in recent days. Robert N. Rosen’s essay points to the best traditions of life in the city: tolerance, an attentiveness to history, and a powerful sense… Read more »

Last week, a team of the Santa Monica-based RAND Corporation came to Israel and to the Palestinian Authority to present a new study, calculating the costs of different Israeli-Palestinian scenarios. According to the study, in the case of a two-state solution, the Israeli economy would gain more than $120… Read more »

It’s the No. 1 trending topic on Twitter and currently burning up other social media as well: Rachel Dolezal, who resigned on Monday as president of the Spokane chapter of the  National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and who teaches African-American studies at Eastern Washington University, has… Read more »

Steven B.Nasati

CHICAGO (JTA) — There are many important endeavors already underway to combat the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, or BDS, as the Anti-Defamation League’s Abraham Foxman argues in his recent JTA Op-Ed. From educating and mobilizing our own community to engaging non-Jewish leaders and institutions, much work is being done. But… Read more »

Deborah Rosenbloom

WASHINGTON (JTA) — When I read the article in The New York Times detailing the accusations against Rabbi Jonathan Rosenblatt of the Riverdale Jewish Center, I was deeply saddened. This is the synagogue and community where I grew up. My parents moved to Riverdale in the 1950s and are among the RJC’s… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — In the last 48 hours, rockets from Gaza were again fired at innocent civilians. This cannot be tolerated. The Israel Defense Forces must respond swiftly and without hesitation. We, as the opposition, will support strong government action. Yet such action cannot stand alone. We need… Read more »

Abraham Foxman

NEW YORK (JTA) — Let’s be clear from the outset: the BDS movement, the effort to support boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel, is sinister and malicious and is having a negative effect on Jewish students on some campuses and on the wider Jewish community. The origins of the… Read more »

This piece was written by Iris and Ori Ifrach, Rachelli and Avi Fraenkel, and Bat-Galim and Ofer Shaer, the parents of Eyal Ifrach, Gil-ad Shaer and Naftali Fraenkel. (JTA) — One year ago, our families were thrust into a nightmare beyond anything we could have ever imagined. Our sons,… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — The transformation of Catholic-Jewish relations over the past 50 years has been so successful that few today — neither Catholics nor Jews — know much about Nostra Aetate (“In Our Time”), the landmark document that inaugurated historic changes in the Catholic Church’s relations with other… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) – On a sunny morning last month, I was swept into the women’s section of the Western Wall in Jerusalem in a flurry of aggression directed at the Women of the Wall, the Israeli group fighting for women’s prayer at Jerusalem’s holiest site. One of the group’s… Read more »

(New Jersey Jewish News via JTA) — This past week was exhausting, but not in the way I’ve become accustomed to as the father of three children in a demanding profession. It began with the uplifting gala of the Masorti Foundation and a conference celebrating 30 years of women’s… Read more »

GREAT NECK, N.Y. (JTA) — From 2011 through 2014, the City of Baltimore paid nearly $6 million in over 100 judgments and settlements relating to false arrests, unlawful imprisonment and police brutality. Once the justice system takes its course, the family of Freddie Gray may well be added to… Read more »

Bodies of Armenian victims of a campaign of mass killing by Ottoman Turks. (Wikimedia Commons)

In April 1915, while World War I was raging, the government of the Ottoman Empire attacked its Armenian citizens. Over the next several years, it is estimated that one to 1.5 million Armenians died. Able-bodied men were murdered or enslaved as forced labor in the army, and hundreds of… Read more »

(JTA) — The Newark riots of 1967 have shaped the imagination of the New York-New Jersey area for over 40 years — probably more than they shaped the actual political and social landscape of Newark and its suburbs. The riots often are held up as a pivotal moment in… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — It’s happening again — Palestinian refugees are caught between warring factions in the Middle East and the world is reacting too slowly to their plight. In earlier times, Palestinian refugees found themselves in the crosshairs at the Sabra and Shatila camps, when Lebanese Phalangists massacred… Read more »