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
Arab Minority’s Vision Is Foremost About Opportunity
This past December, Israeli Arab academics, legal experts and community leaders came together to release “The Future Vision of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel.” The document, of which I was a co-author, represented the community’s views on the legal, political and socioeconomic status that we have held as distinct minority citizens of Israel. The report…
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Opinion The Forward at 110
1897, the year the Forward was born, was a year of wrenching, epochal change in America and around the world. For Jews especially, this was the year that the 20th century truly dawned. It was a moment of millennial beginnings that were destined to transform history. It was the perfect time for a new journal…
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Letters April 6, 2007 — Forward Memories
The Loveliest Face of Them All My mother appeared on the Forverts’s rotogravure page sometime in the l930s. She graduated from college in l933, like Marjorie Morningstar. Unlike Marjorie, though, she went on to earn a master’s degree at Columbia University in psychology, and got a job in Macy’s personnel department. At some point during…
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Opinion They’ve Been Good Sports
I’ve never heard of a more chilling taunt in the world of sports: “You’re next for the gas ovens, Zeidel!” It was screamed back in 1968 by a Boston Bruin opponent at a Philadelphia Flyers’ hockey player named Larry Zeidel. And yet, as this spring training marks the 60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s belated entry…
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Opinion The Media Was Misled by Amnesty’s Legal Advocacy
Anyone following last summer’s war between Israel and Hezbollah knows that international human rights groups such as Amnesty International were fiercely critical of Israel, accusing it of violating international law by inflicting disproportionate harm on civilians. What the public might not know from these human rights groups’ reports — but what Amnesty has now conceded…
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Opinion Admit That the Boycott of Hamas Has Been a Failure
For more than a year, the European Union and its member states toed the harsh Israeli line in boycotting the Hamas-led Palestinian government. But since the unity government of Fatah and Hamas was sworn in earlier this month, the Europeans have parted ways with Jerusalem and are seeking direct contacts with the Palestinian Authority —…
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Opinion Make JTS Proud To Be Pluralistic
As a Conservative rabbi, I applaud the Jewish Theological Seminary’s decision this week to ordain openly gay and lesbian Jews. Far from weakening the movement, this will strengthen the convictions of Conservative Jews to teach and live as Jews committed to the balance between tradition and change. If history is any guide, however, the integration…
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Opinion The Niftiest Pedagogic Device There Is
The Passover Haggadah, as we all know, is fixated on the number four: Four questions, four cups of wine, four sons and so fourth. But that fixation derives from a much earlier time, when the number four was basically as high as most people could count. The system back then, we’re told, was “one, two,…
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Letters Letters, March 30, 2007
Romney Made a Mistake A March 16 letter to the editor ignores Henry Ford’s shameful legacy of antisemitism and the influence that his publications continue to have on modern-day antisemitic rhetoric and writings (“Ford Motor Co. Helped Israel in the Early Years”). The letter writer is correct in asserting that “when we forget history we…
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Opinion Risk-taking in Riyadh
As the Forward went to press this week, reports from a senior Israeli journalist currently in Riyadh — those words themselves bespeak a revolution in Arab-Israeli relations — indicate that Saudi Arabia is preparing to roll out an elaborate new peace proposal. Formulated in the course of secret talks with Israeli and American officials, the…
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Opinion A Prize for Partnership
The Israel Prize, the Jewish state’s highest civilian honor, is awarded each year on Independence Day to individuals and, occasionally, institutions that have made outstanding contributions to Israeli society. Each year’s award list a snapshot in time of Israel’s self-image, its sense at that moment in history of what it thinks it should be. This…
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