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
People of the Weekly Newspaper
A former colleague of mine from the Forward once mentioned that his mother, raised in New Jersey, is a lifelong reader of the New Jersey Jewish News, where I am now the editor-in-chief. Not only a reader, but a close one, who even noticed when I changed the little picture that accompanies the column I…
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Opinion In Cairo, a Home Run — and an Error
When it comes down to it, I am glad, even relieved, not to be president of the United States. That’s not to say there aren’t not some pretty nifty perks that come with the job — no security lines at the airport, no running out of laundry detergent or pita chips, no traffic jams, first-run…
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Opinion CEOs Should Lead
In his new book on Jewish leadership, Rabbi David Teutsch reminds us that one of the most important aspects of leadership is serving as a role model. “You can say a great deal, but what you do is much more powerful than anything you can say,” he writes. “The synagogue whose president never attends services…
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Opinion Montgomery to Ramallah
President Obama’s June 4 address in Cairo to the Muslim world has by now been thoroughly parsed, analyzed and critiqued with Talmudic intensity. Stunning and significant, the address also left some listeners wanting more — more about their pain and others’ responsibilities. Some complained about things that were in the speech, and some complained about…
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Letters June 19, 2009
Settlement Growth Is Legitimate, Natural Your June 12 editorial “Unnatural Growth” contends that there’s “nothing natural, or acceptable, about ‘natural growth’” of Jewish communities in the West Bank, and that, in focusing on this issue, President Obama isn’t being unreasonable, whereas Prime Minister Netanyahu is. Not so. There are communities of between 10,000 and 35,000…
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Opinion Ignore the Theatrics, Bibi Just Wants To Build
The show goes on. As I write, a radio newscaster is repeating an item about the evacuation of an illegal settlement outpost in the West Bank: At Nahalat Yosef, near Nablus, the army demolished two makeshift mobile homes and removed a third, thereby erasing the outpost. Settler leaders promised to rebuild it. Judging from past…
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Opinion Fighting Tuberculosis, From Terezin to Today
Tuberculosis should not be a death sentence in 2009. It wasn’t for me nearly 70 years ago after I contracted the disease in the Terezin concentration camp in what was then Czechoslovakia. But today, nearly 2 million people die from TB each year, an unconscionable number of lives lost to a preventable, curable disease. I…
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Opinion How Not To Protect the Jewish State
During his recent visit to the United States, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeated his demand that Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state should be a precondition for talks aimed at achieving a peace settlement. While such a request might seem reasonable — after all, Israel is a Jewish state — it is actually…
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Opinion On Settlements, Push Comes to Shove
Is the sky really falling? The answer depends on whether you think the current disagreement between Washington and Jerusalem is just another bump in the road — perhaps a bit more jolting than most, but hardly unprecedented — or an instance of push finally coming to shove, a prospective game-changer. The best evidence that America’s…
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Opinion Unnatural Growth
The settlement of Beit El is nestled in the center of the West Bank, near enough to Jerusalem for a tolerable commute — an hour by bus — yet in a world of its own. It is beyond the “Green Line” marking the 1967 border, beyond the security barrier and so close to Ramallah that…
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Opinion Elusive Common Ground
All people of faith should mourn the passing of George Tiller, the Kansas physician brutally murdered for simply doing his job as one of the few doctors left in the country who performed medically necessary, late-term — legal — abortions. As much as President Obama talks about the need for common ground in the vexing…
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