Opinion

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 »

  Congratulations to the Arizona Jewish Post for its excellent coverage of the panel that discussed the recent Pew Research Center’s study titled “A Portrait of Jewish Americans.” The study, as you might expect, found an increasing number of Jews who claim they are “atheists,” “agnostics” or of “no… Read more »

EFRAT, West Bank (JTA) — The reputable car dealer’s advertisement in the local paper screams “Brand New Mercedes — Only $500!” You get excited but think it sounds too good to be true. Upon closer inspection, it is: The car dealer is offering only the hubcaps of the Mercedes… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — Right now, there is just one way for someone who is not Jewish to become Jewish in a publicly recognized and officially authorized fashion: undergo religious conversion under the auspices of a rabbi. Whether the path to Jewish identification follows Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist or… 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 »

In reference to Rabbi Stephanie Aaron’s article on the Gettysburg Address (“My line, and Mitch’s, in the Gettysburg Address,” AJP 10/25/13), I feel a statistical correction is warranted. The 50,000 figure of men lost in the battle should more accurately refer to the total casualties estimates, which include all… 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 »

Armenians are marched to a nearby prison in Mezireh by armed Turkish soldiers in Kharpert, Armenia, in April 1915. (Photo: Project SAVE via Wikimedia Commons)

Ninety-nine years after the Turkish genocide of the Armenians, one of the most poignant symbols of Armenian suffering is being held hostage — by the White House. The prisoner is an 18-foot long rug. It was woven by four hundred Armenian orphan girls living in exile in Lebanon, as… Read more »

As the 112th Congress drew to a close last winter, nearly two-thirds of the U.S. Senate voted to ratify an international treaty that would help ensure millions of people with disabilities around the world have basic rights, open markets to American business abroad, and reassert the United States as… Read more »

This month in Geneva, at the first negotiations over its nuclear program since the election of President Hassan Rouhani, Iran took an unprecedented step: It negotiated. For the first time, Tehran presented an actual vision of the endgame for the talks with six world powers, and how to get… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — Belief in God is at the core of my very being. But that belief is sometimes challenged by the scores of innocents killed over the millennia in God’s name, from biblical times to the present day. Last month, dozens were killed at a shopping mall… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — As the 50th anniversary of President Kennedy’s assassination approaches, we Jews have our own special reasons to mourn. The conventional community memory of Kennedy would be enough by itself. JFK overcame the legacy of his father, President Franklin Roosevelt’s notoriously appeasement-minded ambassador to Britain on… Read more »

If you’re pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into Jewish identity building, what do you do when a survey comes along showing that the number of U.S. Jews engaging with Jewish life and religion is plummeting? That’s the question facing major funders of American Jewish life following the release… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — Last week, the Pew Research Center released the first national demographic study of Jewish Americans in more than a decade. Like all such studies, there are disagreements at the edges about the accuracy of some of the results, but the study’s most significant findings have… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — Since the release of the Pew report on American Jews, the question I’ve been asked most often is what surprises me about it. What surprises me most is that anybody is surprised. The Pew report points to a series of phenomena that are well known… Read more »

Imagine this scenario: President Obama delivers an address to the nation, in which he says he would use force if Syria doesn’t strip itself from its chemical arsenal. Later, on the same day, National Security Advisor Susan Rice appears in a public event and dismisses the president’s words, quoting… Read more »