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.
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.
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…
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…
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…
It’s very clear what the direct Jewish stake is in the Supreme Court’s ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, aside from the not incidental fact that Jewish Americans overwhelmingly support abortion rights. Making abortion illegal may, as the lawsuit filed by a South Florida claims, infringe upon Jews’ religious freedom. It’s also clear what the direct…
When my 84-year-old mother found out that the U.S. Supreme Court had overturned Roe v. Wade on Friday, she sighed heavily. “It won’t stop anyone,” she said. “People are going to die.” She would know. Years before I was born, my then-college student mother turned down a marriage proposal. Her mother and stepfather told her…
In the hours after the Supreme Court issued its decision on Friday overturning Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 case that enshrined a constitutional right to abortion, the explosion of opinions across the mediaverse was overwhelming. As we absorbed the news and scanned the ruling, a trio of female Forward journalists spent some time talking…
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. There is a special skill, or perhaps an innate gift, that many rabbis have, to…
There is just one clinic in the state of Alabama providing gender-affirmative medicine for trans youth, and it is jointly run by two pediatric endocrinologists — one doctor who is Muslim, and one who is Jewish. It has not been easy providing care for trans youth in a deeply conservative (and Christian) state like Alabama. Despite…
Years ago, when I first told my mom I was converting to Judaism, she worried that I would become less Chinese. More recently, when I told her I was legally changing my name, she wondered if “Christopher” was not Jewish enough, not realizing that I meant I was adopting her surname, Wong, as my middle…
One of the most competitive congressional races in New York this year will pit two longtime incumbents, Jerry Nadler and Carolyn Maloney, against each other. Maloney, who currently represents the East Side and parts of Queens, and Nadler, whose district includes the West Side and parts of Brooklyn, are both septuagenarians and powerful committee chairs….
If you are looking for the epitome of a welcoming synagogue, walk through the doors — or the online portal — of any congregation led by Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker. I’m not just referring to the welcome heard ’round the world last January, when Rabbi Charlie opened the door of Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas,…