Talya Zax is the Forward’s opinion editor. Contact her at [email protected] or on Twitter, @TalyaZax.
Talya ZaxOpinion Editor
By Talya Zax
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Culture Like the Jewish women laureates before her, Louise Glück sees humanity in God
On October 8, the American poet Louise Glück became the 16th woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the fourth Jewish woman, following Nelly Sachs (1966), Nadime Gordimer (1991) and Elfriede Jelinek (2004). There’s much that separates Glück, whose work has long been known for its deceptive clarity, from her Jewish predecessors. She…
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News At vice presidential debate, Pence invokes ‘Jewish grandchildren’ in defense of Trump
During Wednesday night’s Vice Presidential debate between Senator Kamala Harris and Vice President Mike Pence, one moment in particular caught the attention of Jewish viewers. Asked about President Trump’s history of obfuscation when asked to decry white nationalists and white supremacists, Pence invoked the president’s Jewish grandchildren in his defense. “Your concern that he doesn’t…
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Culture In 2020, voter access is a defining issue — just like it was on the old Lower East Side
This is the second installment of a special series exploring The Forward’s election coverage throughout its 123-year history. Click here to sign up to receive it through our email newsletter, and find our first installment here. With President Trump repeatedly challenging the integrity of the 2020 balloting during his first debate with Vice President Joe…
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Culture For America, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a new kind of Jew
In 1852, the Kentucky politician Henry Clay became the first person to lie in state in the United States Capitol Rotunda. A skilled liaison between political opposites, Clay favored abolition and inspired Abraham Lincoln. But through his life, he was also an enslaver who enforced his supposed right to own people as property, even as…
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Culture 123 years of election coverage: What the vote means to American Jews
This is the first installment of a special series exploring The Forward’s election coverage since 1897. To get next week’s edition delivered to your inbox, click here to subscribe to The Forward’s free newsletter. For American Jews, the vote has always been a potent symbol. Many of our families came as immigrants from countries where…
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Culture What would Ginsburg do? Move forward with hope.
Several weeks ago, my mother announced that she had a present for me: She’d ordered me a Ruth Bader Ginsburg face mask. It’s a funny little thing: Good, thick, cream-colored fabric patterned over with drawings of miniature RBGs. When it arrived, we agreed that I would save it to wear when I returned to my…
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Fast Forward Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a Jewish and liberal icon, dead at 87
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a beloved Jewish figure who helped pioneer the feminist legal field and served on the Supreme Court for more than a quarter century, died from complications of cancer on Friday at the age of 87. Ginsburg had defiantly remained on the court as she battled five bouts of cancer and numerous recent…
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Culture America’s forced sterilization program inspired Hitler — and the new complaint against ICE
Dawn Wooten, a nurse who rocketed into national attention after filing a whistleblower report alleging that immigrant women detained by ICE at a private facility were being subjected to forced hysterectomies, looked straight at the camera. “I had several detained women on numerous occasions that would come to me and say, ‘Ms. Wooten, I had…
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Film & TV The new ‘Superman’ is being called anti-Israel, but does that make it pro-Palestine?
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Fast Forward The largest Reconstructionist synagogue is set to cut ties with the movement over Israel tensions
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Culture The Melania Trump Opera House won’t change hearts and minds — not even the president’s
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Fast Forward Columbia suspends, expels and revokes diplomas of students involved in Butler Library takeover
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Fast Forward Youth wing of the Democratic Party passes amendment opposing Israel’s ‘ongoing genocide in Gaza’
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