In the Forward’s opinion section, you’ll find analysis and essays from diverse corners of the Jewish world.
To pitch an opinion piece, email our Opinion Editor, Laura E. Adkins.
Opinion
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Opinion
Why an Orthodox Jewish organization welcomed the end of Roe v. Wade
(JTA) — Agudath Israel of America, the national Orthodox Jewish organization for which I work, welcomed the U.S. Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade. Predictably, we were immediately cast into an “enemy” or “ally” box, depending on who was doing the casting. The first group assumed that we don’t care about women; the second,…
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Opinion Now it’s happened in my hometown: A Jewish perspective on this epidemic of gun violence
My father always arose at the crack of dawn on July 4th, dragged our folding chairs to his preferred spot on the parade route, and waited for us to join him at a more reasonable hour. Every year, we would sit on that same street in downtown Highland Park’s Port Clinton Square, where seven innocent…
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Opinion I ran for my life from the Highland Park shooting. It will haunt me forever.
Rapid-fire popping noises — a loud burst, then a brief pause, then another sustained staccato, somehow even louder — echoed down Central Street. It had been three years since the last Highland Park, Illinois, Fourth of July parade — a treasured small-town ritual. On a beautiful, clear summer day, the atmosphere was relaxed and festive….
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Opinion The story behind the stories: How our journalists produced award-winning work last year
This is an adaptation of Looking Forward, a weekly email from our editor-in-chief sent on Friday afternoons. Sign up here to get the Forward’s free newsletters delivered to your inbox. Download and print our free magazine of stories to savor over Shabbat and Sunday. Our opinion editor, Laura E. Adkins, had never before attended a formal dinner in an aquarium….
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Opinion Unilever’s decision to sell Ben & Jerry’s in the West Bank is not a win for Israel
Unilever, the parent company of Ben & Jerry’s, has found the legal maneuver to overcome the thorny legal situation the ice cream company’s board put them in a year ago with an announcement that they would end the sale of their ice cream in the West Bank. Unilever will sell the Israeli rights to Avi…
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Opinion After the SCOTUS school prayer decision, what comes next for American Jews?
The Supreme Court issued yet another landmark church-state decision on Monday, finding in favor of Coach Joseph Kennedy — a public high school football coach — who had been terminated for praying at the 50-yard line after games. The case presented not only a convoluted record of when and with whom these prayers took place,…
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Opinion Coach Kennedy being allowed to pray at the 50-yard line is not good for Jews
The romanticized view of teacher-led school prayer presented in a recent Forward opinion column bears little resemblance to the real lives of hundreds of thousands of Jewish public-school students across the United States. For those children and their families, Monday’s Supreme Court decision in Kennedy v. Bremerton is a blow to their ability to navigate…
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Opinion The Supreme Court’s decision on the EPA is devastating. Jews must hold that grief as we forge ahead
There are almost no words to describe the devastation the Supreme Court has wreaked in the past week. I find hope in how members of the Jewish community have rallied in response to rulings like Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which takes away the constitutional right of bodily autonomy for all, and impedes our…
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Opinion The San Antonio migrant deaths should remind Jews: We were once smuggled in, too
When you’re absorbing the horrific news of the 51 immigrants who cooked to death in the back of a smuggling van near the U.S.-Mexico border earlier this week, think of Feri Weiss. Weiss was an immigration inspector who was sent by the U.S. Bureau of Immigration in 1925 to report on illegal Jewish immigrants. His…
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Opinion I should never have experienced rape and illegal abortion. Neither should anyone else
The dismantling of Roe v. Wade isn’t a faraway dystopian nightmare for me. It’s a deeply personal memory. I was just 17 when, on Labor Day weekend 1972, I was raped at gunpoint in a wooded area not far from my father’s home. Afterward, the rapist threatened to shoot me as I ran through the…
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Opinion I’m glad Coach Kennedy can pray at the 50-yard line
We ask too much of our public school employees. We rely on them to spend an average of $750 of their own money on school supplies each year. We thrust them onto the frontlines of a deadly pandemic. We increasingly task them with keeping young children quiet through a school shooting, or even with serving…
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In Case You Missed It
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News ‘Like a big, big oak tree’: Remembering July 4 shooting victim Stephen Straus, 88
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Opinion Why an Orthodox Jewish organization welcomed the end of Roe v. Wade
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Fast Forward What you need to know about Highland Park, the very Jewish Chicago suburb rattled by July 4 shooting
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Opinion Now it’s happened in my hometown: A Jewish perspective on this epidemic of gun violence
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