Leonard Fein
By Leonard Fein
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Opinion Despite Numerous Anti-Hunger Organizations, Many Go Hungry
Let us speak of SNAP. “SNAP?,” you ask. “What is SNAP?” SNAP is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly know and still best recognized as the food stamp program. And now it is in danger. Here’s the story: SNAP has benefited enormously from the 2009 Recovery Act, which temporarily boosted SNAP benefits. But come November,…
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Opinion Are Secular Jews Really Self-Deluded?
Not quite suddenly — it’s been unfolding intermittently for a while, and has venerable roots in earlier generations — the debate over what is meant by “secular Judaism” has been heating up. In God-centered understandings of Judaism (or “Jewishness,” if you prefer), the commitment of large numbers of Jews to social justice derives directly from…
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Opinion Israel’s Shooting Star Yair Lapid May Quickly Crash Back to Earth
Is there a future for Yesh Atid (There Is A Future), the party that was the surprise star of the recent Israeli elections? If past is precedent, the future of the new party is not promising. The history of parties that emerge suddenly out of nowhere strongly suggests that they return, in short order, to…
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Opinion The Jewish Earth Day
Social justice again? No, social justice still, this time with a twist. Soon it will be Tu B’Shvat, familiarly known as “the Birthday of the Trees,” and often understood as a kind of Jewish Arbor Day. Let’s all go out and plant trees. Planting trees is a good thing to do, but it seems quite…
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News The Truth Hurts, Bibi
So now we have the journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, presumably based on conversation(s) with officials of the Obama administration, perhaps with the president himself, quoting Obama: “Israel doesn’t know what its own best interests are.” And then, with “each new settlement announcement Netanyahu is moving his country down a path toward near-total isolation.” Needless to say,…
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Opinion Are We Jews by Choice or Blood?
Back when he was Israel’s Minister of Justice, the irrepressible and ever-creative Yossi Beilin put forward a proposal for secular conversion to Judaism. As he explained, “It is simply unimaginable that in the 21st century, a time in which most of world Jewry is not religious, we should continue to grant certain religious establishments the…
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Opinion Let’s Act on Guns To Avoid Next Newtown
It has been 13 years since the murders at Columbine High School, when two teenagers killed 13 people and wounded 21 others. Since that time, ABC reports, there have been 31 school shootings. “Senseless” seems to be the most frequently used word to describe the awful events at Newtown’s Sandy Hook Elementary School, and senseless…
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Opinion What the E1 Move Says About Bibi
A 3000-acre hilly expanse of parkland that is, improbably, part of East Jerusalem has long tantalized Israeli expansionists. Construction and development in the area, known as E1, would isolate Bethlehem and Ramallah, sealing them off from the remaining Palestinian neighborhoods of East Jerusalem. This would at least threaten, if not destroy, any prospect of a…
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