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.
Opinion
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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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Opinion Jew-Hatred Is on The Rise in the Land of Pogroms
Even in a part of the world that gave us the word “pogrom,” the frequency of antisemitic violence in Ukraine in recent weeks has been striking. In just four days at the end of September, three separate attacks on Jews were reported in Sevastopol, Cherkassy and Zhitomir, capping a summer that featured at least three…
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Opinion Al Gore’s Gift of Life for Generations To Come
Our quiz for the week: Who was Bertha von Suttner? Or Tobias Asser? Don’t know? Let’s try a couple of easier names: Wangari Maathai? Shirin Ebadi? Still stumped? Alright let’s make it easy: What do the four people I’ve mentioned so far have in common with Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and Jane Addams? Alright, then:…
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Opinion The Silence in Cairo Can Be Heard in New York
Last month two Egyptians who normally wouldn’t cross paths — one a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood’s young guard, the other an outspoken liberal expatriate journalist — found a surprising bit of common ground on the Forward’s opinion page. I was proud to have been involved in the affair. After all, it’s not everyday that…
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Letters October 12, 2007
Unhealthy Criticism Opinion writer Noam Neusner rightly exhorts policymakers to use facts, not anecdotes, to evaluate competing proposals for reauthorizing the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (“Anecdotes Won’t Keep America’s Kids Healthy,” October 5). In that spirit, here are some key facts. Since S-CHIP’s bipartisan enactment in 1997, the percentage of children without health coverage…
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Opinion Without Trust, There Will Be No Peace in Darfur
The recent killing of 10 African Union peacekeepers has made clear, if it wasn’t already, the difficulty in putting an end to the almost incomprehensible suffering and misery in Darfur. Perhaps 2 million people have been driven from their homes over the past three years; some 200,000, or possibly 300,000, have been killed. Some American…
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Culture My father was my hero and, when he was dying, I wrote this song for him