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
Orthodox Ought To Lead The Search for a Solution
Jews often describe themselves as having a responsibility to work toward tikkun olam, the repairing of the social problems and ethical shortcomings of our time. To many Jews this is a familiar concept on both a private and communal level, but it takes on an entirely new meaning with the modern State of Israel. The…
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Opinion I’d Give It a 7… It Had a Good Beat, and You Can Daven to It
What we frequently refer to as the High Holy Days are more accurately described by their Hebrew appellation: Yamim Noraim, the “Days of Awe.” Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are supposed to be significant because of the weighty confrontation with ultimate issues that they embody, especially issues of morality and mortality. For many rabbis, however,…
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Opinion What If They Can’t Be Cowed Into Submission?
This past April, the American Jewish Historical Society honored George Shultz, the former secretary of state, for his very powerful contributions to the freedom of Soviet Jewry. As those involved in that struggle know well, this was an honor richly deserved. Shultz went well beyond the usual patter of thanks that is standard at such…
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Opinion Darkness in Summertime
These are the last days of summer, when the weather starts to change, the kids return to school and life settles back into its workaday routine. During these days, Jewish tradition commands us to stop, breathe deep and take a long look at where we have been and where we are headed. Where have we…
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Opinion Create a Temporary Israeli Haven for Darfur Refugees
The Israeli government has announced that it will not admit any more refugees from the Darfur genocide, and has begun deporting to Egypt many of those who recently arrived. Do memories of the abandonment of Jews during the Holocaust obligate the Jewish state to shelter today’s refugees? Or is Israel, saddled with its own problems…
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Letters August 31, 2007
College Played Vital Role I enjoyed reading Jeri Zeder’s August 10 article on the National Yiddish Book Center and its founder Aaron Lansky (“Book Center Turns New Page”). However, I was astonished that no mention was made of its location on the campus of Hampshire College, or of the role that Hampshire and many members…
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Opinion Conservative Judaism at a Crossroads
Next week Arnold Eisen will be officially installed as the seventh chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, Conservative Judaism’s flagship educational institution. While Eisen’s appointment as Conservative Judaism’s new de facto head has sparked a great deal of excitement, he will be inheriting a movement widely perceived as being adrift. Conservative Judaism, once America’s largest…
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Opinion The Swiss Bank Claims Process Is Both Just and Thorough
I am the federal judge presiding over the Swiss Banks Holocaust Settlement. I set aside $800 million of the $1.25 billion settlement to pay claims to dormant bank accounts opened before the war and never claimed, and to accounts closed when the Swiss banks illegally honored coerced written requests from account owners to transfer funds…
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Opinion We Do Not Know How To Leave Iraq
One measure of how utterly sluggish the debate is over Iraq: the breathlessness with which the media reported Senator John Warner’s proposal for the withdrawal, in September, of 5,000 American troops. That, the good senator said, would send a clear signal to the Iraqi government that the United States has not written it a blank…
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Opinion Of Genocide and Morality
History usually passes from one era to another in a slow, glacial process, too gradual to be discernible until the change is complete. There are times, though, when the change happens in an instant, like a flash of lightning splitting a summer night. Such was the birth of the atomic age at Hiroshima and Nagasaki,…
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Opinion Jatropha to the Rescue
In mankind’s struggle to head off the use of fossil fuels, the U.S., as well as other countries, have turned to the use of energy derived from plants. In the U.S., we have turned to ethanol, a corn derivative. Needless to say, the supply lags far behind the demand. But now there is a new…
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News Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s selection as JTS commencement speaker roils graduating class
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Yiddish שפּילן מיט פֿײַל־און־בויגן און אַנדערע ל״ג־בעומר־מנהגיםPlaying with bows and arrows and other Lag BaOmer shtetl customs
געוויסע עקספּערטן האַלטן, אַז מע דאַרף באַטראַכטן ל״ג־בעומר ווי אַ פֿרילינגדיקן מײַ־פֿעסטיוואַל
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News ‘Don’t give up on us now’: Israel peace summit convenes thousands to aim for elusive progress
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Fast Forward A GOP lawmaker tried to put a Holocaust denier on New Hampshire’s Holocaust education board