Dear Editor, As an Observant Jew who has known and been a coworker and peer of Tom Markle, Ms. Markle’s father, since 1982, I can tell you neither Tom nor her mother are Jewish. She was raised Catholic and I am not sure she even practices any religion at this time. Being married to a…
Dear Editor, In your interesting article on P is for Palestine, you described the First and Second Intifadas as violent uprisings. They were also nonviolent. Indeed, Palestinians have long engaged in the nonviolent protest of Zionism, from petitioning the King Crane Commission to engaging in BDS. In the First Intifada, experts in nonviolent, non-cooperation such…
Dear Editor, In his op-ed on legislation that counters the BDS movement, JStreet’s Jeremy Ben-Ami gets it right when he describes the odious BDS movement, but wrong when he describes legislation that responds to it. Ben-Ami is correct to note the “one-sided and unbalanced politics” that inform the BDS movement and its failure to acknowledge…
We are appalled and outraged by the events at the Kotel this week, when Reform rabbis and lay leaders were physically attacked by Kotel security guards. The Reform leaders were engaged in an act of civil disobedience to push for implementation of the Kotel agreement, which the Netanyahu government disavowed after months of negotiation. One…
Dear Editor, Regarding your “Sexiest Jewish Intellectual” list: it is beyond an appalling and tone deaf use of column inches to have this list. We are in the throes of a near constant stream of conversations about sexual harassment and assault and calling intellectualism sexy is not cute and is a mystifying objectification of women…
Dear Editor, At the Zionist Organization of America’s (ZOA) annual gala held in Manhattan last Sunday evening, I had a conversation with the Forward’s opinion editor, Batya Ungar-Sargon. Ungar-Sargon proceeded to reference some of our conversation in an article she wrote covering the event. However, her piece is missing context. First, she wrote that I…
The Harvey Weinstein scandal is just the latest case of the misuse and exploitation of power through sexual harassment and abuse by people in influential positions. It has caught everyone’s attention and has empowered victims to come forward, speak out, and be believed. Hopefully it is finally the catalyst for significant cultural change. But sexual…
Dear Rabbi Farber, Thank you for your note regarding our decision to take down the Elie Wiesel story. Your concerns are valid and commendable, and I’ll do my best to respond. The story in question was not reported by the Forward. It was aggregated from a story that appeared on another site. We made a…
Dear Editor, I saw the retraction of the Elie Wiesel story. It is very difficult to read such a terse and vague statement and not worry that perhaps it isn’t about journalistic standards as opposed to threats by powerful people. I have no opinions on the subject personally, I don’t know the author and did…
Dear Editor, I’m admittedly less versed than Avi Shafran in Jewish theology and how it dictates religious administration, but I do take issue with his argument that women should be excluded from religious leadership on the grounds that this desire is borne from “external” influence. Are the considerable number of Jewish women who feel a…
A recent article in the Forward claimed that by accepting an invitation to a meeting with Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the leader of Poland’s ruling conservative party, Chabad is “feuding” with Jewish organizations. This is not true. Chabad violated no understanding, explicit or implicit, nor any relationship with the other Jewish representatives by taking this meeting. In…
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