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
October 26, 2007
I Say Pizze, You Say Pizzi As a long-time fan and admirer of Philologos, I am thrilled to have caught him on a minor inaccuracy (“One Bagel, Two Bagel?”, September 28). The plurals of Italian pizza and pasta are not pizzi and pasti, but pizze and paste. Being myself a very small-scale linguist of the…
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Opinion Trial and Error
A mistrial is not the same as an acquittal. Five men escaped conviction in Texas this week on federal charges of financing terrorism through a Muslim charity, but they were not found innocent. The jury failed to agree on a verdict, and the judge declared a mistrial. The government charged that the men’s charity, the…
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Opinion Newly Discovered Tunnel May Once Have Carried Dead Sea Scrolls
Accounts released last month of a newly discovered Jerusalem tunnel state that the passage was the very one used by those fleeing Jerusalem during the siege of 70 C.E., as described by Josephus. However, Josephus identifies not one tunnel but an elaborate network of them. That said, this most recent discovery, and others like it,…
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Opinion Western Europe’s Reluctant Lurch Toward Bush on Iran
When France’s foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, suggested last month that war may be the only way to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, he sounded more like a Washington hawk than your typical French politician. Kouchner is not the only top European official who is changing his tune on Iran. The obstinacy of Iranian President…
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Opinion ‘Israel Lobby’ Writers Miss the Real Jewish Conflict
Among the (many) things that John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt get wrong in their controversial book, “The Israel Lobby,” is their characterization of the American Jewish community. According to their understanding, there’s a substantial contrast between the policies “the lobby” espouses and the more dovish views of the community at large. For the most part,…
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Opinion Holier Than Thou
Leaders of Israeli society are always welcome visitors on these shores. As representatives of the Jewish state, they speak for an elemental, transformative reality in the emotional and spiritual life of modern Jewry. That said, last week’s visit by the Sephardic chief rabbi of Israel, Rabbi Shlomo Amar, must be seen as the latest and…
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Letters October 19, 2007
Archbishop Tutu’s Words Speak for Themselves An October 12 editorial argues that an examination of South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s actual remarks shows that he said nothing about Israel being racist, that he did not compare Israel to Hitler and that he is not even remotely antisemitic (“The Tutu Heave-Ho”). But in fact, the full…
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Opinion How Israel Thinks
Israel’s foreign intelligence service, the Mossad, recently concluded that Syria is sincere in its offers to make peace with Israel in exchange for Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights. The assessment was reported last week in the mass-circulation Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot, based on sources within the Mossad. The Yediot report hasn’t received much attention,…
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Opinion Coulter’s Indecency
Ann Coulter, the clown princess of right-wing chatter, has always been a reassuring figure to liberals. The rubbish she spews forth — 9/11 widows “enjoy their husbands’ deaths,” liberals are “traitors,” John Edwards is a “faggot” — seems like a comforting reminder of America’s native tolerance and good sense. Like Archie Bunker, she airs our…
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Opinion Create a ‘Bar Mitzvah’ for Black Boys
Although I now spend most of the year in a Baltimore suburb, I return every year for a few months to New Haven, Conn., where I lived for 35 years. When I pick up the local paper, the New Haven Register, I am startled by how many local news stories are just like those in…
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Opinion When Democrats Become Instruments of God
In a strange irony, it has come to be the case that only Democrats now speak up for giving a role to faith in governance. Stranger still, they get away with it — which prompts the question: Why? In the accepted vocabulary of liberalism, the word “theocracy” functions as a synonym for “Silence them!” The…
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