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.
It’s doubtless a mistake, as French government authorities insisted endlessly this week, to see the rioting by immigrant youth that has wracked France for the past two weeks as an expression of Muslim extremism, religious or otherwise. All the evidence indicates that the violence stems from feelings of alienation and frustration among immigrants and their…
The followers of the late Meir Kahane may be called deluded and a lot of other things, and they would constitute a genuine threat to society if they weren’t, as a group, so ineffectual. But none of those is a capital offense. It’s more than a little disturbing that federal prison authorities allowed Earl Krugel,…
Three months ago this column was devoted to a comparison between the Israeli military and the American armed forces, focusing on the differing public attitudes associated with a conscription-based army as opposed to a volunteer force. In particular, the relative absence in the United States of organized mass protest concerning the war in Iraq, seemingly…
The resignation last week of Rabbi David Kaye from the educational program Panim, after revelations that he had solicited a 13-year-old boy online for sex, elicited the usual expressions of shock from the Jewish community. Of course, we all should be outraged when such immoral conduct is brought to light, but those who follow the…
The Cost of Free Tickets Opinion writer Diana Furchtgott-Roth says that churches have open-door policies on Christmas and Easter (“High Holy Days Ticket Prices Are Costing Community,” November 4). That is true. But she leaves out the part that churches have many more members to support their activities than synagogues. A good-sized synagogue will have…
Shortly after the immediate and strong international reaction to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s comment that Israel should be “wiped off the map,” his foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, indicated that this position was nothing new: The Islamic regime had always viewed Israel that way, ever since the Khomeini revolution in 1979. Mottaki is correct. From the…
In the olden days, Jewish offspring were begat by their fathers, seemingly without intervention by women. The Bible is full of begotten children. For the most part, the Bible has only two reproductive narratives: long lines of uninterrupted male begetting and women suffering from infertility. Women seemed to have all sorts of trouble having babies,…
Magazine a Source of Connection for Youth Rapper 50 Shekel is an embarrassment to the Jewish community (“Racy Pics Make Rapper Blush,” October 28). Heeb magazine, on the other hand, is a blessing to the Jewish community. As a college student, I have seen many of my fellow students who claim to have a Jewish…
There’s been considerable coverage these last days of Rosa Parks, whose death a full half-century after the brief episode that rendered her an “icon” calls to mind a long-ago time. But there’s been little evocation of that time, the events and the circumstances that earned Parks iconic status. The year is 1955, the date is…
There is a compelling logic, it must be said, to the decision by United Jewish Communities, reported by Ori Nir on Page 3, not to mount a frontal challenge to the slashing budget cuts planned by the Republicans on Capitol Hill. As the national association of Jewish federated charities, UJC has a multibillion-dollar network of…
After nine months of relative quiet, Israeli-Palestinian relations have turned bloody again in the past week, with bombings, rocket attacks and assassinations threatening to end the fragile dialogue. There’s hope that cool heads may yet stave off chaos, but it will take strong nerves on both sides. The quiet took hold last February, when Hamas,…
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