Editorial


Deficits ’R’ Us

The joint recommendations of a bipartisan commission led by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson and charged with balancing the federal budget included such incendiary ideas as raising the retirement age for Social Security and making its benefits more progressive.Read More

Still Necessary: Journalists and Rabbis in the 21st Century

This is an excerpt of the keynote speech given November 11 at the annual meeting of the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation in Newport Beach, Calif.Read More

Whose Jerusalem?

Jerusalem is not a settlement, the Prime Minister of Israel stated unequivocally, and what Jew could disagree? But which Jerusalem does he refer to? Whose Jerusalem?Read More

Be Nice

Ironically, an election season characterized by ugly name-calling, physical confrontation — and so many negative ads that by the end of the campaign they became an indistinguishable, disgusting blur — has also seen notable attempts to promote civility.Read More

The Longer View

The day after the Republican electoral sweep, President Obama acknowledged that he took a “shellacking.” He agreed to consider modest changes to his health care reform and to reconsider maintaining tax cuts for some wealthy Americans. He pledged, again, to find bipartisan solutions to the crushing problems facing the nation, especially the economy, where he said repeatedly, “I’ve got to do a better job.”Read More

The Growing Gender Gap

One year ago, the Forward surveyed the 75 largest Jewish communal organizations and discovered that only 11 of them — 14.3% — were led by women. And three of the 11 women in the very top spots were in interim positions. The dismal ratio surprised even veteran observers of American Jewish life, especially since three-quarters of those who work in these organizations are women, and the leadership numbers lagged far behind the gender gap in society at large. To paraphrase one expert, the larger philanthropic world has a disconnect. The Jewish world has an even greater disconnect.Read More

The Tea Party Test

What are Jews to make of the Tea Party in this maddening election cycle? The raw anger directed at Democratic incumbency is understandable but highly disconcerting, since that anger promises to be far more destructive than constructive. The longing for a return to a constitutional nirvana is also understandable, but too often displays an appalling ignorance of what actually happened in American history.Read More

And on the Seventh Day . . .

In 2007, a study by the JCC Association revealed that two-thirds of the Jewish Community Centers in America were open at some time on the Sabbath. Since then, faced with pressure from members who would rather sweat on the elliptical trainers than sway with Shabbat prayers, the number of JCCs with Saturday hours has increased. One of Baltimore’s two branches decided to open in the afternoon. The JCC in Atlanta boasts on its website that it is “open 7 days a week.”Read More

An Unworthy Oath

The Declaration of Independence approved on May 14, 1948 heralds the new nation of Israel as a “Jewish state” but never defines what that actually means. There’s no mention of religion, indeed no mention of God. (“Rock of Israel” is the compromissory phrase.) But there is an explicit description of the new state’s civic values: “it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture.” The government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is deliberately, dangerously perverting those words.Read More

A Damaging ‘Cure’

The recent spasm of violence and inflammatory rhetoric against gays and lesbians should concern all Americans. From the suicide of a hounded Rutgers University student, to the unforgivably brutal attacks on gay men in the Bronx, the headlines have been chilling. When a major party candidate for governor of the nation’s third-largest state can say the sort of things that the GOP’s Carl Paladino said in New York and think he can get away with it — well, that’s just one indication of how disturbed our public discourse has become.Read More

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