Forward.com

Interdependent Minyanim

As our Josh Nathan-Kazis reports this week, many independent minyanim have no interest in affiliating with any denomination. “We don’t need the movement,” one minyan leader boasted. Perhaps not the “movement” as it is now structured, but engaged Jews — from establishment and upstart congregations — need to find a way to work together to shape a common future, especially if committed, egalitarian, non-Orthodox Judaism is going to survive. To do that, they must stop talking past one another and recognize some central truths.Read More

On Family, Walk the Talk

Before Jerry Silverman became president and CEO of Jewish Federations of North America, before he worked for another national Jewish nonprofit, he was a leader in the business world. At Levi Strauss & Co. and the Stride Rite Corp., he saw the private-sector experiment with ways to recruit and retain employees concerned about balancing work and family. By instituting policies promoting family leave and flexible work arrangements, he said that employees “were extraordinarily more productive and committeed.”Read More

Our Fallen

America is entering its 10th year of war, but outside certain neighborhoods and communities, it is hard to tell. Afghanistan and Iraq are worlds away, the missions there cloudy and complicated, and the absence of military conscription means the sacrifice is inequitably distributed. We all are paying the mammoth costs of these conflicts: A September 2010 report by the Congressional Research Service put the total federal price tag since 9/11 at $1.12 trillion. But the human toll escapes most attention.Read More

‘From Hell to Paradise’

By Jane Eisner

It was 25 years ago, and I still remember the deep, sharp cold as we stood on the Glienicke Bridge that winter morning. The day before, journalists from around Europe were brought to the bridge that separated the outskirts of West Berlin from the East German town of Potsdam. Something important was to happen the next day, we were told. I quickly realized that the footwear I brought from London, where I was based as a correspondent for The Philadelphia Inquirer, was inadequate and after the press briefing ended, I bought a pair of warm, gray boots in Berlin.Read More

Egyptian Choices

The revolution sweeping the Arab world is both exhilarating and frightening, and it is understandable that fear is overtaking excitement in the hearts of many American Jews. We are anxious about threats to Israel’s safety and the waning Western influence in a region that suddenly has exploded with populist rage. Our geopolitical expectations are violently scrambled, leaving the sort of cognitive dissonance that invades the mind when what you thought you knew for sure no longer seems true.Read More

Mapping a Way Forward

There is always reason for despair when it comes to the prospect of a negotiated settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and there’s no sense in enumerating why. The evidence is obvious. Those of us buoyed by each new attempt to jumpstart talks too often feel like Jets fans at the beginning of football season, bound for disappointment.Read More

Who Isn’t a Jew?

Like the Clinton-Mezvinsky wedding, reaction to the Tucson shooting marks another milestone, and Gabrielle Giffords is rapidly becoming another New Normal in the elastic definition of who is a Jew. Many are not waiting for a rabbinic edict or Knesset legislation to settle the question. An answer is appearing in real time. There is reason for both cheer and dismay at this development.Read More

Make Worms, Not War?

Two points struck us as we read the fascinating story in the January 16 edition of The New York Times detailing the reputedly intricate arrangement between America and Israel to test and unleash a computer worm that appears to have seriously undermined Iran’s efforts at making a nuclear bomb.Read More

The Arab Street’s Dream

The speech that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton delivered January 13 at a forum in Doha, Qatar, has been rightly lauded for its bold and direct push for governmental reform in the Middle East. Her argument was not based on a civics lesson, nor on the need to embrace democracy for democracy’s sake, but instead on the urgency of confronting the dire economic situation in the region, where one in five young people is unemployed, jobs are scarce, official corruption is rife and vital resources are rapidly depleting.Read More

From Tel Aviv to Amman

By Jane Eisner

It took a mere 45 minutes to fly from Tel Aviv to Amman on a recent family vacation. For those of us old enough to remember when Israel and Jordan were mortal enemies, the sheer normalcy of boarding an airplane in one country and landing in another in the same amount of time that it can take to go by subway from Manhattan to Brooklyn is nothing short of remarkable.Read More