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.
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.
Germany’s quest to become soccer world champion ended Tuesday with a last-minute loss to Italy, but the host country of the World Cup has won nonetheless. During the past month, the Germans presented a new image to the world: easy-going, tolerant, open-minded and funny. Germans seemed at ease with themselves and with the rest of…
WZO Is Reorganizing I recently returned from serving as a delegate to the World Zionist Congress, and wonder whether Hebrew University professor Gabriel Sheffer was actually at the event when he commented that “young people aren’t involved” in the World Zionist Organization (“Rabbi Boycotts President at Zionist Parley,” June 23). Their significant presence was felt…
Not all the famous Roosevelts who graced the American political scene were Democrats. One of them, Theodore Roosevelt, was a Republican. He was a great enough president to merit immortalization, alongside George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln, on the monumental sculpture masterpiece at Mount Rushmore. We mention T.R. now because his views on the…
At the end of a week of meetings here in Jerusalem with, among others, five senior Cabinet ministers, sundry Knesset members and several Palestinians, it is not the sprawling nature of the issues nor even the matter of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s unilateralist intentions that most concerns me. Quite to my surprise, it is an…
As is common in the Middle East, the armed thugs who attacked a pair of Israeli army posts near Kibbutz Kerem Shalom last Sunday morning, killing two soldiers and kidnapping a third, were actually aiming at a different target altogether. Back in Gaza, the squabbling leaders of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, the…
Despite the tensions on the Gaza border, Israel has won some notable diplomatic victories in recent days, few of them more dramatic or gratifying than the twin victories scored last week. On June 21, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies voted overwhelmingly to admit Israel to membership, after decades of exclusion….
Don’t fall off your chair, but I’ve recently had to admit I was wrong about something. My list of the individuals whose thoughts form the top three most lamentable cultural influences in modern times needs to be amended. This realization, in turn, raises a question about the influence exerted by a larger group of people:…
There was a telling moment at the recent centennial celebration of the American Jewish Committee. During a seminar about the Jewish future, scholar Steven Bayme noted that according to the most recent National Jewish Population Survey, the Orthodox are marrying earlier and raising larger families than the more liberal segments of the community. As the…
Coalition With Latinos Is in Communal Interest Opinion writer Stephen Steinlight erroneously portrays the comprehensive immigration reform adopted by the Senate as a threat to Jews and contrary to Jewish values (“Open Borders Threaten Jewish Clout,” June 16). American Jews, despite being a small minority, have always exercised their democratic rights through the political process…
At a talent show earlier this spring, a group of sixth graders from Manhattan’s Abraham Joshua Heschel Middle School played “Hey, Jude.” Soon enough, everyone in the room — kids, parents and teachers — was crooning the Beatles hit song together. This never would have happened in my school days during the 1960s. Back then,…
The quarrel that erupted this week between Moshe Katsav, president of Israel, and Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, could easily be dismissed as a case of wounded pride, an inconsequential squabble over symbols without substance. But that would seriously understate the gravity of the dispute. In refusing to address the…
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