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
Did the Decider Lose Iran?
We Bushies are in legacy mode. With the final months of the presidency upon us, we are thinking about what we did, what we didn’t do and what we could have done. We pay little heed to the insta-history being produced by academic left-wingers and other provocateurs, who never agreed with us to begin with….
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Letters August 29, 2008
Train Teachers To Talk About Torah Authorship How to improve supplementary schools (“Study Provides Snapshot of Struggling Supplementary Schools,” August 22)? I recommend encouraging and training educators and rabbis to discuss authorship of the Torah, including archaeological findings, in order to listen to the theological beliefs and doubts of their congregants. And they shouldn’t forget…
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Opinion The Shifting Ground
A major shift is under way in the politics and power balance of the Islamic world, and it calls for a fundamental change in American and Western strategic thinking. Handled well, the shift holds out the possibility of a lasting thaw in the tensions that now dominate relations between the West and Islam. But if…
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Opinion Let the Olympics Ring in a New Era for Modern China
A rising economic and military power that stages the Olympic Games in its capital to demonstrate its superiority while jailing dissenters and repressing ethnic minorities. The description could just as well apply to Beijing this year as it did to Berlin in 1936. And indeed, many have drawn parallels between Communist China and Nazi Germany,…
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Opinion To Engender Real Change, More Women Must Vote
One hundred and sixty years ago, an intrepid group of feminists gathered in Seneca Falls, N.Y., to issue a manifesto modeled on the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration of Sentiments detailed the oppression and denial of rights suffered by women at the time. The Seneca Falls Convention, as it came to be known, also declared…
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Opinion What We Saw in Postville
In an August 15 editorial the Forward attempts to apply to the Rubashkin family the talmudic principle of mu’ad — the proclivity of an animal to follow previous behavior — claiming that Agriprocessors has a checkered past and therefore cannot be trusted in the future (“Judging Character — And Kashrut”). The editorialist uses the argument…
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Opinion We Are All Implicated in the World’s Repair
There’s considerable talk these days about Jewish peoplehood. Is the sense of it sustainable? For that matter, is it still alive? And on what foundation does it rest? What is it that connects one Jew to another? And what connects the two largest communities of Jews, here in America and there in Israel, to one…
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Letters August 22, 2008
What Did Kosher Plant Do for Migrants’ Kin? It’s difficult not to be cynical about Agriprocessors’ effort to improve its image in the Jewish community by hosting a contingent of Orthodox rabbis, supposedly for them to see first hand how the plant treats its animals and its employees (“Orthodox Leaders Tour Agriprocessors, Give Plant Clean…
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Opinion The Pipeline War
Scenes of Russian tanks rumbling through Georgia, the former Soviet republic on the shore of the Black Sea, have touched hearts and consciences around the world, and rightly so. The bloody Russian incursion brings to mind other Russian tanks rolling into Prague in 1968 and Budapest in 1956, crushing hopeful sparks of democracy while the…
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Opinion Terrorism and the Lone Gunman
Hossam Dwayyat, 31, a Palestinian construction worker from East Jerusalem, went on a rampage July 2 and drove his bulldozer into a bus and several cars, killing three Israeli women and wounding dozens more before he was shot dead. Police quickly determined that he had acted alone and had no links to terrorist organizations. Rather,…
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Opinion Judging Character — And Kashrut
The Babylonian Talmud features a lengthy, oft-quoted discussion of the liability incurred by an individual whose ox gores another person’s livestock. If the ox has never gored before, the owner may claim it was an unforeseen accident and pay only half the injured party’s losses. Likewise for the second and third offense. With a fourth…
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