Opinion

NEW YORK (JTA) — All in favor of a strong Jewish future say “aye.” On that core question, there is resounding unanimity, but there have been some unnecessarily polarizing articles in the Jewish press suggesting that we have to select either endogamy or outreach. Nonsense! Such binary thinking reduces… Read more »

The good news is in: Rabbi Avi Weiss’ conversions will be accepted in Israel. I am glad to see that the religious integrity and leadership of Rabbi Weiss has been acknowledged. Undoubtedly, this course correction on the part of the Israeli Chief Rabbinate is due in part to the… Read more »

The Modern Language Association, which held its annual conference here Jan. 9-12, has approximately 28,000 humanities scholars in its membership, about 4,000 of whom attend the annual conference. The conference features hundreds of workshops and panel discussions — about 800 in total this year — on topics ranging from… Read more »

Ariel Sharon’s development as a leader was very similar to that of Menachem Begin. In the final years of their political careers, both men came to realize the limits of relying on force alone. These realizations led to historic decisions: While Begin gave up the Sinai Peninsula — an… Read more »

Adi Meyerson

It was 11 o’clock on a chilly September night and I was coming home from a gig — my first in New York City. I had just moved to Manhattan from Jerusalem a couple of months before to become a professional jazz bass player and would take any job… Read more »

Israeli soldiers try to evacuate Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005. (Yossi Zamir/Flash90)

NEW YORK (JTA) — When I first heard about Ariel Sharon’s stroke — the first one, a minor brain attack about four weeks before he suffered the massive hemorrhage that would leave him comatose for the final eight years of his life — I was having dinner at a… Read more »

In January 1985, as a colonel in the Israeli Air Force, I was running a course for high-ranking officers of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), focused on lessons from Israel’s wars. One of the case studies to be discussed was the battle of Um-Katef/Abu-Ageila, in the Six-Day War, when… Read more »

Edgar Bronfman, philthropist and Jewish communal leader, dies at 84.

In the coming days, many eulogies will attempt to capture the magnitude of the loss suffered this week by the Jewish community. Really, though, all you need are eight words: Edgar Bronfman was a prince of his people. There are other machers who devote much of their time and… Read more »

LOS ANGELES (JTA) — This past May, I made a YouTube video with the Israeli NGO Rabbis for Human Rights that drew a parallel between my role as Tevye in “Fiddler on the Roof,” in which the Jews in Sholem Aleichem’s tale faced expulsion from the Russian shtetl of… Read more »

Last weekend, like other fellow Jerusalemites, I was confined to my home, besieged by the horrendous snowstorm that plagued our city. When power was cut off in our Beit HaKerem neighborhood for two agonizing days, I proudly lit my wood-burning stove. For years, I have been a victim of… Read more »

(JTA) — It started as barely a blip on the radar. At its annual conference last April, the Association for Asian American Studies, or AAAS, unanimously approved a resolution calling for an academic boycott of Israeli universities to protest the country’s treatment of Palestinians. While the BDS (boycott, divestment… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Every decade or so, yet another demographic survey reveals the obvious: The American-Jewish community is in flux, with affiliation falling. Each time, the community circles back to what we know works: high-quality Jewish education, along with Jewish camps and Israel programs. Taken together, these are effective… Read more »

Steven B. Nasatir

CHICAGO (JTA) — In response to the recent pledge by Jewish Federations of North America Chairman Michael Siegal to raise $1 billion to support tuition-free Jewish preschool, some have dismissed the idea as just another pie-in-the-sky fix to the continuity problem. I disagree. First, attending preschools (as well as… Read more »

Nelson Mandela salutes the crowd at the Green and Sea Point Hebrew Congregation in Cape Town on a visit shortly after being elected South Africa’s president in 1994. (Photo: SA Rochlin Archives, SAJBD) Joining Mandela, from left, are Rabbi Jack Steinhorn; Israel’s ambassador to South Africa, Alon Liel; Chief Rabbi Cyril Harris; and Mervyn Smith, chairman of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies.

NEW YORK (JTA) — Nelson Mandela will always be remembered as a symbol of courageous resistance to the racist policies of apartheid South Africa. He was a true hero of conscience. But he also will always have a special place in the memory of the Jewish community. I first… Read more »

The last month has been dismaying for anyone concerned about the U.S.-Israel relationship. While the United States and five other powers worked to reach a diplomatic agreement with Iran to halt its nuclear program in exchange for allowing Tehran access to a few billion dollars in frozen Iranian assets,… Read more »

Edwin Black

WASHINGTON (JTA) — As the current round of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks flounder and seek to regain momentum, many are wondering what America can do with its prodigious economic resources to encourage peace and reconciliation between the parties. For this reason, it may astound many that American taxpayers already are… Read more »

Let us remember … that in the end we go to poetry for one reason, so that we might more fully inhabit our lives and the world in which we live them, and that if we more fully inhabit these things, we might be less apt to destroy both.… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — Whenever the issue of the Middle East conflict is raised, people invariably refer to the Palestinian refugees. They almost never refer to Jewish refugees from Arab countries. The world has long recognized the Palestinian refugee problem without recognizing the other side of the story —… Read more »

Alex Frieder, seated, surrounded by Jewish refugees that he and his brothers helped escape from Nazi Germany and Austria to the Philippines. (3 Roads Communications)

NEW YORK (JTA) — As the extent of the catastrophic damage and tragic death toll continues to grow in the Philippines, a particularly heroic piece of history should be recalled by the global Jewish community, which owes a debt to the island nation. Seven decades ago, a Philippine president,… Read more »

(JTA) — Diaspora Jews often find themselves exasperated with the Israeli rabbinate. But on one significant issue, an Israeli rabbinic authority is looking far more enlightened and merciful than his peers in the United States. Recently elected Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi David Lau surprised more than a few people last… Read more »