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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Letters
June 12, 2009
On Judaism, Israelis Are Pro-Choice There are a couple of points worth noting with regard to your important article about the fight for religious pluralism in Israel and for fair treatment for the Masorti (or Conservative) and Reform movements (“Conservative Jews Decry Bias in IDF,” May 29). While you suggest there are only 40,000 Conservative…
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Opinion Two ‘State’ Challenges
In the weeks leading up to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s White House meetings with President Obama, the American Jewish community vigorously debated whether to support a “two-state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Groups on the left called for Obama to press the Israeli prime minister to openly state his acceptance of the “two-state solution,” while…
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Opinion Saying Kaddish Too Soon?
‘With a heavy heart we will soon say Kaddish on the Reform and Conservative movements,” Rabbi Norman Lamm, the distinguished chancellor of Yeshiva University, recently proclaimed in an interview with The Jerusalem Post. “The future of American Jewry is in the hands of Haredim and the Modern Orthodox.” Lamm’s triumphalistic prediction has, unsurprisingly, elicited strong…
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Opinion The Risky Provocations of Mr. Netanyahu
There really must be some explanation for Prime Minister Netanyahu’s blatant snubbing of President Obama in the days since their meeting in Washington. After all, we have been told for years that Netanyahu, perhaps even more than some of his colleagues, is deeply sensitive to the importance of America’s support of Israel. Yet, since the…
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Opinion Keeping Our Guard Up
The announcement of a thwarted terrorist attack against Jewish synagogues in the Riverdale section of the Bronx highlighted two important issues that have emerged clearly in the new age of terror since September 11: extraordinary law enforcement cooperation and investigative operations can disrupt potentially devastating homegrown terrorist attacks in the homeland; and the terrorist threat…
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Opinion A Real Awakening
A “real awakening.” That’s how the residents of Riverdale described the events of the last few weeks, as their quiet Bronx neighborhood turned into a hotbed of police activity and communal angst. Fortunately, the plot hatched by a bunch of would-be terrorists targeting two synagogues and United States military aircraft was doomed from the start,…
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Opinion Another Breakthrough
The Supreme Court has always been a highly symbolic court, and that symbolism was on fine display when President Obama nominated Judge Sonia Sotomayor to fill the first vacant high court seat of his new administration. Americans have been treated to so many breakthrough moments since January’s historic inauguration that it’s easy to lose sight…
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Letters June 5, 2009
Secret Ballot Remains As the rabbinic student intern for the Jewish Labor Committee this year (and an attorney for 25 years), I have carefully studied the provisions of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) and the labor legislation it would amend. It puzzles me to repeatedly hear the inaccurate contention that EFCA would eliminate the…
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Opinion The Special Relationship
Let us hope that more substance was discussed and debated behind closed doors than in front of the cameras. In front of the cameras, President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did what was expected and, indeed, necessary after their first meeting since both assumed office: The widely popular but untested president and the…
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Opinion Leave the Gleanings
Shavuot, the biblical Festival of Weeks, arrives on May 29 this year, with a special urgency. Holidays on the Jewish calendar often speak to us with particular force at pivotal moments in our communal lives – Passover, for example, with its theme of freedom, or Yom Kippur with its call for repentance. This year, we…
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Letters May 29, 2009
At Home in the South I felt obliged to respond to Allison Gaudet Yarrow’s article “Southern Fried Jewish Bride” in your May 1 edition. I am a Jewish woman living in Macon, Ga., the city where Yarrow was raised. I have lived in this city for 35 years, having moved here from the Midwest. My…
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