In the Forward’s opinion section, you’ll find analysis and essays from diverse corners of the Jewish world.
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Opinion
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Opinion
New Rules: Human Rights for Corporations, Fetuses on the Witness Stand
It’s been a bad week for old-fashioned notions like the rule of law and respect for the law. Maybe it’s something in the air. This was the week that the Supreme Court ruled that multibillion-dollar corporations are just people and enjoy human rights and liberties just like other people—and deserve the protection of the state…
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Opinion Taking Hebrew Seriously
In his delightful essay in today’s special education section, Michael Wex describes how he — a renowned Yiddishist — is often questioned as to why he sends his daughter to a Hebrew-speaking day school in New York. His answer: “My daughter and her fellow students are learning something that might look and sound just like…
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Opinion Making Sense of Benedict’s Jewish Policy
By this stage, outsiders trying to make sense of Pope Benedict XVI’s approach to Jewish-Catholic relations might be forgiven for wondering if the pontiff suffers from an undiagnosed case of schizophrenia. After all, this is the pope who made a point of visiting a Cologne synagogue in 2005 on his first foreign trip, and Auschwitz…
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Opinion Putting Our People’s Past on the Negotiating Table
Who owns the keys to the Jewish past? Last year, the Palestinian Authority made headlines by publicly claiming ownership of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the fragments of hundreds of ancient manuscripts discovered in the caves of Qumran in the West Bank between 1947 and 1956 and which have been in Israel’s possession since 1967. Now,…
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Opinion A Specter Is Haunting Israel, Its Name Is Goldstone
Goldstone yes, Goldstone no, Goldstone yes and no, Goldstone here, Goldstone there, Goldstone everywhere. An exchange in Jerusalem the other week with a close observer of the Goldstone report: “I am so tired of talking about Goldstone.” “Me, too.” And then, for the better part of an hour, we talk about Goldstone. The day before,…
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Opinion Putting Israeli Diplomacy on the Couch
The Middle East is no stranger to mystery and intrigue, but now and then an enigma emerges that confounds even the wisest among us. Right now, for example, observers worldwide are scratching their heads and wondering what could have possessed Israel’s number-two diplomat to seat the Turkish ambassador on a whoopee cushion. Well, it wasn’t…
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Letters January 29, 2010
Filibusters Haven’t Benefited Minorities I must disagree with your editorial on Senate filibusters (“Minority Rule,” January 22). The filibuster is not a thing of “civic beauty” that empowers minorities and simply needs to be reformed, as your editorial argues. Filibusters are instead an assault on the legislative process. The Senate filibuster was used for decades…
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Opinion After the Earth Moved
For American Jews who give generously to charity, there is often an inner struggle: How much should they support other Jews, and how much should they give to causes in the wider world? The response to the tragedy befalling Haiti demonstrates the wisdom of turning that binary dilemma from an “either/or” question to a “both/and”…
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Opinion Dos Pintele Yid Dept.: Chomsky Attacked as a Closet Zionist
The tenor of Middle East debate in this country is evolving faster than most of us realize, and in unpredictable directions. The latest is the attack on Noam Chomsky for being too sympathetic to Zionism. Chomsky was interviewed December 2 on Voices of the Middle East and North Africa, a weekly talk show on radio…
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Opinion Meet Jewish Senators 14, 15 — and 16? Plus: the House GOP’s Jewish Mormon
A few weeks ago I wrote a column about the 13 Jews in the Senate, specifically the 11 Democrats and the two Independents, Bernie Sanders and Joe Lieberman, who guard the left and right flanken of the Democratic caucus. I wrote that these two white-haired gents from New England not only define the boundaries of…
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Opinion Is Israel Athens or Sparta?
Saul Bellow, in his “To Jerusalem and Back,” wrote approvingly of how Israel was so special a place because it sought simultaneously to be both Sparta and Athens — and largely succeeded at both. That was in 1976, 34 years ago. The other day, in Yediot Aharonot, Israel’s leading daily, Eitan Haber, who was Yitzhak…
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Culture ‘My mayor Muslim, my bagel Jewish’ — the Knicks chant capturing New York’s soul
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Film & TV In ‘Disclosure Day,’ Steven Spielberg finds himself at odds with Jewish thought about aliens
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Culture Ever the restless spirit, Tel Aviv-born architect and designer Ron Arad is still reinventing himself and his art
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News New Jewish-Arab political party debuts in Israel, aiming to topple Netanyahu