A Forward survey finding that only 14.3% percent of the top jobs in the nation’s 75 largest Jewish communal organizations are held by women ought to serve as a wake-up call. So should the finding that women leaders are paid only 61 cents for every dollar earned by male leaders. These employment and salary gaps need to be addressed not just because of individual unfairness, but also because of the communal imperative to ensure that the very best people are leading these important organizations.Read More
J Street’s coming out party was an exuberant, over-subscribed success. Now come the challenges. And they come from all directions. The scope and depth of attendees at J Street’s first-ever conference — from participants who lined the walls of packed rooms to well-placed speakers from the American and Israeli governments — proved that the new, scrappy liberal lobby is a force to be reckoned with.Read More
The East German government said at the time that it was an “anti-fascist protective rampart,” but everyone knew that was Soviet-speak for what it really was: a wall. The Berlin Wall. Made of fencing, barbed wire, concrete, and later surrounded by minefields, the fortified border between East and West Berlin did not only divide a city. It divided the world.Read More
In many Jewish communities, it’s easier to name an American serving in the Israel Defense Forces than in our own military. The conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan don’t ignite the same intense reaction among Jews as did the fighting in World War II, when the Nazis’ obsession with extermination prompted a widespread desire to defend and a personal connection to the threat, whether one’s family was directly subject to the Holocaust, or not. And of course, then and for decades later, there was a military draft. Avoiding service was generally not an option. Now the volunteer armed forces are filled mostly with Protestants from middle America.Read More
President Obama’s predilection for finding diplomatic compromises for knotty world conflicts won him the Nobel Peace Prize, but it doesn’t always play well at home, where engagement can be ridiculed as naïve or wishy-washy. Sometimes, though, it’s the only way to thread the needle. And the president seems to have done just that with his long-awaited new policy on Sudan.Read More