Recent Blogs

• Embarrassment on the World Stage

  Over the course of my career, I’ve seen many presidential speeches. Some have been soaring and inspiring in their rhetoric, while others have been mediocre and disappointing. But none were like President Trump’s last Tuesday.

• L’Shana Tova

  As we approach the High Holidays this year, we find a world in turmoil. At home, the Trump administration continues to push policies and rhetoric rooted in hatred and discrimination, undermining our democracy and sowing fear and divisions. In its approach to the world, our government has largely adopted a bombastic and threatening tone, hardly reassuring us that it can cope with crises and threats across the world.

• We Must Address Illiberalism in Israel — in all of its Forms

  As a community that values these ideals from our tradition, we must strive to apply them not only when we, as liberal Jews are affected, but in all the areas of Israeli society where discrimination and injustice prevail. We must have the confidence and the courage to join with our friends and allies from all walks of life to work toward a more secure, democratic and equitable future for our Jewish homeland.

• Next Week at the UNGA

  World leaders are about to descend on New York for the United Nations General Assembly next week -- and what some of them have to say could have major ramifications for J Street’s work.

For the sake of national security, Trump must honor the Iran deal, The Hill

David Wade writes, “I spent close to 15 years working in the United States Senate for John Kerry, who was deeply engaged in foreign policy, and then another two and a half years at the State Department working on those issues from a different vantage point. I saw from both of those perspectives the important role Congress can and should play on national security, but also how dangerously fractious foreign policy has become at home. I don’t envy my former colleagues on Capitol Hill who are too often the targets of President Trump’s “weapons of mass distraction,” and I don’t diminish for a second just how hard that makes the conduct of responsible, bipartisan foreign policy. But if on Oct. 15, President Trump zigs when facts command him to zag, then Congress must follow the real facts, not the “fake news,” and put the United States back on course.”

The Danger of Alienating Diaspora Jews, Haaretz

Yehudah Bauer argues, “The threat posed by the axis of Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas is no right-wing invention but rather reality. Israel’s capacity to face up to this threat, whatever Israeli government is in power, is dependent upon international forces. They will be influenced, as they have been in the past, by the attitude of the Jews of the world, particularly American Jews, towards Israel. Without their support, the State of Israel would not have been established, and it cannot exist without such support today either. The Israeli government’s policy toward non-Orthodox streams of Jewry, which represent 90 percent of American Jews, threatens the connection that American Jews have to Israel, and is liable to weaken that link to such an extent that it results in apathy and a refusal to act on Israel’s behalf even during a crisis. Simply put, the policy of the current Israeli government is endangering Israel’s existence.”