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
A Story About a Tamil Called Tissa Tissainayagam
A dissident columnist is hauled away on a meaningless “detention order.” His frantic wife says he has been beaten — and is, in all likelihood, being beaten at this moment. She begs a family friend with international ties to get word out; the friend fires off an email to an influential American acquaintance, begging him…
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Opinion A Defense of Marriage Divorced From Reality
Same-sex couples that establish a legal relationship in a state that allows it and then move to a state that does not might be stuck in the relationship with no access to divorce. At least 10 states and the District of Columbia allow some form of “relationship recognition,” including marriage (Massachusetts), civil union (four states),…
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Opinion The Return of the Aristotelian Repressed
Everything old is new again. For years I have argued that embracing evolutionary theory as Darwin formulated it makes nonsense of any coherent belief in God. As an analogy, I’ve cited a medieval philosophical debate pitting Aristotelians against religious traditionalists, notably Maimonides. I never dreamed that the debate itself would be revived — and within…
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Opinion American Labor Can Help Right Anti-Israel Left
For more than two years, Israelis living in Sderot and other towns near Gaza have been the target of choice for Hamas terrorists. Launching its arsenal of Qassam rockets from residential neighborhoods and even schoolyards, they have as much as dared Israel to fight back. Now it has. Predictably, much of the world is expressing…
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Opinion If We Judge a Man by His Words
Things are not always what they seem, but sometimes they are. Public rhetoric is sometimes over the top. The same person can speak hateful words and words of beauty. Context isn’t everything, but it is a lot. Herewith, some quotes of more than passing interest. You may want to see, as you’re reading, whether you…
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Letters April 4, 2008
Spitzer Story Was No More Than Tribalism Boy am I relieved; it turns out that Eliot Spitzer wasn’t really Jewish after all (“Fallen Eliot Spitzer Was a Favorite Son of a Tribe He Never Quite Embraced,” March 21). Thank you to the Forward for publicly kicking him out of the community, so that now we…
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Opinion Our Debt to Tibet
China’s violent repression of Tibetan freedom protesters over the past few weeks is turning into a test of the world community’s ability to act with even a modicum of conscience in the face of outrageous injustice. So far, the results are dismal. The crisis began with a protest march by Buddhist monks March 10, the…
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Opinion A House of Cards
With the collapse of Bear Stearns, the cocky, hard-charging Wall Street investment bank, America and the world have turned a new page in their understanding of the financial and economic troubles unfolding around us. Ever since the so-called sub-prime mortgage crisis erupted last year, discussion has been centered mostly on questions of how long it…
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Opinion When Rabbis Give Less Than Sage Advice on Arabs
Jerusalem has seen plenty of terrorist attacks, this month’s massacre at the Mercaz Harav yeshiva being only the latest. Every attack has stirred the emotions of the city’s Jewish residents, and sometimes Arabs have been indiscriminately beaten. I remember a story about two Arab employees of the Jerusalem Municipality who in the wake of an…
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Opinion Why Are American Jews So Anti-Gun?
With the Supreme Court opening this week the first extensive examination of the constitutional right to bear arms in nearly 70 years, now seems a pretty good time to ask a question that’s been perplexing me for nearly as long: Why is that American Jews are so overwhelmingly anti-gun? I’ve been stumped by this communal…
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Opinion Redouble Efforts To Send Students Abroad
Last month Princeton University announced plans for a year-abroad program to enable students to work overseas before ever setting foot on the college campus. The idea, according to the university’s president, is to give students an international perspective while adding maturity, giving them a break from academic pressures and “cleansing the palate of high school.”…
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Fast Forward House to consider bipartisan resolution condemning Hasan Piker, Candace Owens for antisemitism