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.
The awful bloodshed and intense emotions of war are not conducive to careful moral reasoning. With Hezbollah rockets raining down on northern Israel, an honest reckoning of the conduct of Israeli forces in Lebanon is difficult. Facile arguments and serious misconceptions, like those listed below, are too easily accepted. But given the stakes, it is…
Investors throughout the world are worried about the possibility of the war between Israel and Hezbollah spreading across the entire Middle East. That the Israeli market has held up quite strongly in the face of this war, then, points to an impressive maturation of Israeli investors over the last five years. Let’s turn back the…
Will Mel Gibson get away with it? Now that Gibson has been revealed as having ranted against “f—ing Jews” who “are responsible for all the wars in the world,” a debate has erupted over what consequences, if any, he should suffer. In the past, some public figures who have made hostile statements about Jews or…
Fact is, Iran is sitting in a rather good position right now, and we did a whole lot to put it there. We took the Taliban off of Iran’s eastern border, then got rid of Saddam Hussein to its west. Whether we were justified in doing so is beside the point: We gave Tehran the…
It’s hard not to identify with the congressional Democrats who protested this week against the planned Capitol Hill appearance by the prime minister of Iraq, Nouri al-Maliki. The Iraqi visitor had just gotten through a White House press conference, where he condemned Israel’s anti-terrorist action in Lebanon as an “aggression.” (In Baghdad a week earlier,…
Next Thursday, August 3 – the ninth day of the lunar month of Av by the traditional calendar – marks the 2,592nd anniversary of the destruction of King Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem by the forces of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia in the year 586 before the current era. By eerie coincidence, or so tradition teaches,…
Include Federations As Philanthropic Partners When well-regarded professionals like Jeffrey Solomon and Mark Charendoff suggest the power of philanthropic partnerships, we ought to listen carefully not only to what they say, but to what they don’t (“Harness the Potential of Philanthropic Partnerships,” July 14). They provide us with suggested ersatz legal structures for philanthropic partnerships,…
Depend on it: Before long former New York mayor Ed Koch, Rep. Eric Cantor and Republican National Committee head Ken Mehlman will be telling American Jews that we owe George W. Bush a vote of gratitude for his steadfast support of Israel in its current conflict with Hezbollah. And there are doubtless large numbers of…
Something raw and elemental has been laid bare in the current Middle East crisis, exposing certain primal truths about our new world order that many of us might have preferred not to know. As awkward as it might be for liberals to acknowledge, there is no comforting balance of competing rights in this battle, no…
Hospitality Watchdog Is A Labor Union Spin-off In a July 7 opinion article, Jerome Epstein, Carl Sheingold and David Saperstein write that the Informed Meetings Exchange, or Inmex, is an “independent organization that provides objective information on working conditions within the hospitality industry” (“Check Out Working Conditions Before Checking In for Business”). Inmex is actually…
Abba Houshi was the mayor of Haifa from 1951 until his death in 1969. No Israeli mayor has governed with as much authority and none save Teddy Kollek, who was mayor of Jerusalem for 29 years, governed with greater imagination. I spent some time with Houshi while he was mayor, not long after the opening…