Jonathan S. Tobin
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor in chief of JNS. Follow him on Twitter at: @jonathans_tobin.
The balance between personal liberty and the obligation to save lives
What do Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and New York State Gov. Andrew Cuomo have in common these days? The answer is that critics of these two very different political leaders are accusing them...
A pandemic Passover without family? Not necessarily
Every year on Passover, Jews ask the same question that is at the heart of the recitation of the Haggadah during the seder: Why is this night different from all other nights? But this...
Why is Mnuchin pushing for a return to appeasement of Iran?
The tyrants of Tehran are in trouble. The coronavirus pandemic has hit Iran particularly hard. That’s due, in no small measure to the fact that, like their counterparts in China, the theocrats running the...
Israel’s democracy was never in danger
Israel’s yearlong coalition standoff appears to have finally ended, and not a day too soon. Without a permanent government in place—as opposed to the caretaker government that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has led for...
A crisis for Jewish philanthropy may force unpalatable choices
The coronavirus pandemic is not the first deadly contagion to ravage the globe, but it is clearly the first that modern nations have sought to combat by essentially shutting down public life and much...
The Zionist Congress election and the truth about American Jewry
It’s been derided as irrelevant and a relic of the distant past that ought to have been junked decades ago. But the World Zionist Congress election that has just concluded generated more interest and participation than...
How not to ensure that Democrats remain pro-Israel
When compared to the collapse of Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign, the results of a congressional primary election in Illinois remain insignificant. But as much as the defeat of Rep. Dan Lipinski by Marie Newman, a left-wing challenger, pales...
The pandemic is a time for prayer as well as action
There have been a lot of low points in the discussion about the coronavirus pandemic in the last few weeks. The Trump administration has supplied some of them as the president spoke about the...
A right to vote but not to dismantle the state
It seems like a devastating argument. If Israeli Jews are willing to accept life-saving treatment from Arab doctors, why won’t they give their representatives in the Knesset a seat in the country’s government?
That’s the...
Is the virus hurting Jewish communities or showing their strength?
For many Jewish communities in the United States, this was the week when synagogues were abandoned. In an effort to contain the spread of the coronavirus, many houses of worship were empty and may...