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
Bibi Gets a Rude Lesson in France’s ‘Jewish Problem’
The endemic antisemitism of the French has been a staple of modern Jewish public discourse and sober analysis for nearly as long as there has been modern Jewish public discourse. It’s commonly viewed as a continuum stretching back at least to the Dreyfus Affair, more than a century ago, and continuing right on up to…
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Opinion Science Meets Settler Theology, or How Frankenstein Embraced Godzilla
Last week, in a blog post about Jewish terrorism and the implicit support of religious nationalist rabbis, I mentioned that Rabbi Shlomo Aviner of Ateret Cohanim yeshiva has a gutsy liberal side and that I would explain it in a later post. Well, here we go. We’re going to get philosophical here. Aviner is a…
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Opinion Abortion and Morality
During the recent floor debate in Congress on health care legislation, Rep. Mike Pence, chair of the House Republican Conference, employed the language of morality to frame his support of the Pitts-Stupak amendment to prevent federal subsidies from going to any insurance plans that cover abortion. Using federal dollars to fund abortions “violates the deeply…
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Letters November 20, 2009
What Happens When Jews Stop Serving? Deborah Dash Moore’s informative and poignant opinion piece, “The World That Jewish Veterans Built,” raises troubling questions about the contemporary relationship of the American Jewish community to military service (November 13). Ever since the late-18th century, European Jews fought to prove their battle-worthiness in order to gain political rights….
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Opinion Age of Transparency
When the Forward published a comprehensive story last week on leadership and compensation in the nation’s 75 largest Jewish communal organizations, it relied on data routinely made public by the federal government for all nonprofits. It takes time to find the information, double check the numbers, and draw out the story, but the fact is…
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Opinion Missing the Abu Mazen Opportunity
In June 2004 I visited Mahmoud Abbas in Amman. We met at the PLO’s official residence, where Abu Mazen (as Abbas is popularly known among both Palestinians and Israelis) likes to stay whenever he is in Jordan. We spent almost the entire day in conversation together. During our meeting, we discussed efforts to revive the…
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Opinion Jewsh Terrorism: ‘You Can’t Blame an Entire (Religious) Community’ — ‘Yes We Can’
There’s an interesting debate unfolding in the opinion section of Ynet, Yediot Ahronot’s Web site, over the role of religion and settler ideology in the alleged crimes of accused West Bank Jewish terrorist Jack Teitel. Some of it appears in translation on their English site, and some of it doesn’t, either by coincidence or because…
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Opinion The Goldstone Standard
Litmus tests are dangerous conveniences. We all have them, we all use them, perhaps thinking of them as our own personal “red lines”: Cross them, and you’re in the enemy camp. Be cruel to a child, oppose progressive taxation, make excuses for torture or for terrorism, deny the Holocaust or view Israel with contempt and…
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Opinion The World That Jewish Veterans Built
Each year, as Veterans’ Day comes around, there are fewer and fewer Jewish veterans to observe it. Unfortunately, this does not reflect a peaceful age without wars. Rather, it stems from a dramatic decline in Jewish military service in the United States in the past half-century. Not that long ago, however, Jewish veterans were a…
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Opinion What a Dollar Gets You on Capitol Hill, and What It Doesn’t
Jewish money. It’s the stuff of political myth, but it’s also the backbone of the pro-Israel lobby. One Jewish congressman recently said that voting against a resolution condemning the hateful diatribe of a follower of Louis Farrakhan on free speech grounds cost him $250,000 in political contributions from Jewish supporters that year. The incident has…
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Opinion Is Birthright Israel an Intermarriage Panacea?
Move over Jewish day schools. There’s a new intermarriage panacea in town, and its name is Birthright Israel. A just-released study from a research team at Brandeis University led by Leonard Saxe found that 72% of married, non-Orthodox Birthright Israel participants have wedded fellow Jews, compared to just 46% of their peers who did not…
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Culture ‘My mayor Muslim, my bagel Jewish’ — the Knicks chant capturing New York’s soul
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Opinion The Iran war ended terribly for the US, and even worse for Israel
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Opinion Cultural boycotts of Israel just reached peak absurdity
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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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