In the Forward’s opinion section, you’ll find analysis and essays from diverse corners of the Jewish world.
To pitch an opinion piece, email our Opinion Editor, Talya Zax.
In the Forward’s opinion section, you’ll find analysis and essays from diverse corners of the Jewish world.
To pitch an opinion piece, email our Opinion Editor, Talya Zax.
Hillary Clinton recently asserted that if she were president and Iran launched a nuclear attack on Israel, the United States would retaliate with strikes that could “totally obliterate” Iran. Here in America her pledge has ignited a flurry of commentary, most of which is likely to be forgotten after the presidential campaign is over. In…
In this week of remembrance and celebration, some people are having a hard time. The remembering begins with Yom HaZikaron, Israel’s memorial day for those who have fallen in its wars. It is a day of both public and private solemnity. The cemeteries that dot the country are thronged; once, at a small dinner party…
Rabbi Stands By Words A May 9 editorial compares me to Reverend Jeremiah Wright by accusing me of “inflammatory rhetoric” and of publicly hurling “strong epithets” in 1995 at then-prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, including calling his government “the Rabin Judenrat” (“Wright and Wrong”). The latter accusation is false. Here is some of my “inflammatory rhetoric,”…
Israel’s Supreme Rabbinical Court acted cruelly and capriciously when it voted to nullify a woman’s conversion to Judaism this month, 15 years after she took the supposedly irrevocable step of casting her lot with the Jewish people. The court’s decision robbed the woman and her Israeli-born children of a lifetime of loyalties and identities. It…
The devastation visited on Burma on May 6 by the cyclone known as Nargis is too vast for the human mind to comprehend. The official toll at press time was 22,000 dead and 42,000 missing, but the number of deaths is expected to reach above 100,000 when the count is completed. Hundreds of thousands of…
The day has finally arrived, the day that Jews have awaited with such longing in their hearts — a day for which they have waited 2,000 years. The dream of many generations has become a reality: In the Land of Israel, a Jewish state has been founded. It will be called “The State of Israel.”…
Back in the fall of 1995, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, Abraham Foxman, announced that he was quitting his New Jersey synagogue because of the rabbi’s inflammatory rhetoric on Middle East issues. Foxman and his family had been members of the Orthodox congregation for more than 20 years and had deep roots there,…
Hold China Accountable Opinion writers Antoine Halff and Shalom Solomon Ward question why China should bear the brunt of the Jewish community’s ire when India, Russia and Japan also import their share of oil from Sudan (“Enough Misguided Maligning of China,” May 2). But facts are facts. China is Sudan’s largest customer. According to records…
On June 1, some 100,000 people are expected to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Israeli independence at the annual Israel Day Parade in New York. And over the course of this year, as many as 30,000 young American Jews will visit Israel through Birthright, a program created to strengthen Israeli-Diaspora relations, and thousands more will…
A kind of miracle will take place May 19: The representatives of more than 100 countries will gather in Dublin to finish their negotiation of a treaty banning — banning! — the use, production, transfer and stockpiling of cluster bombs. This treaty process, called the Oslo Process, began last year when Norway invited countries serious…
Suddenly it’s Syria. Somewhere between a rumor and a demarche, there’s talk of peace. Turkey’s the broker; so far, Bashar Assad seems willing and Ehud Olmert seems eager. Never mind that we’ve seen this movie before, and that the same pesky details that doomed earlier efforts are likely to doom this one as well. (And…
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