In the Forward’s opinion section, you’ll find analysis and essays from diverse corners of the Jewish world.
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Opinion
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Opinion
Social Research: Out From Under the Organizational Umbrella
Jewish social research, to judge by a series of recent developments, is shifting its base from the organizational world to the academy. Earlier this month, Michael Steinhardt, chairman of Jewish Life Network/Steinhardt Foundation, donated $12 million to establish the Steinhardt Social Research Institute at Brandeis University. The gift forms the endowment for the institute, whose…
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Opinion The Season of Freedom
This weekend, at dinner tables around the world, Jews and their loved ones will sit together and reenact one of history’s earliest recorded struggles for human rights, the Exodus from Egypt. No Jewish ritual is more ancient, more widely honored or more relevant today. In telling the story of their ancestors’ flight to freedom, celebrants…
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Opinion Thou Shalt Not Revile the Judges
Several politicians have spent the past month insulting my religious beliefs and the religious beliefs of millions of Americans. What’s far worse, they are trying to impose their own religion on us by imposing it on lifetime federal judges. No, they didn’t call for the outlawing of Judaism or Unitarianism or Methodism. But they are…
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Opinion Albert Einstein’s Forgotten Legacy
This year there are countless conferences, exhibitions and publications dedicated to the 100th anniversary of Albert Einstein’s annus mirabilis, the miracle year in which he revolutionized our concepts of time, space, energy and matter. But since his death 50 years ago this week, scant attention has been paid to his political and social opinions, writings…
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Opinion The Four Questions of the Peace Process
Disengagement is going to happen this summer. That is now the working assumption of most observers and practitioners. Even the settlers, the “victims” of disengagement, are increasingly recognizing the inevitable and are correspondingly adjusting their opposition tactics toward merely making the experience as unpleasant as possible. In so doing, they hope to persuade the Israeli…
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Letters April 22, 2005
A Tale of Two GOPs Opinion writer Jeff Ballabon and I are both Jews, so how is it that we can both read the same news and come to diametrically opposed conclusions (“In the Name of Values, Not Politics,” April 8)? He writes that “The Republican Party is defending our Constitution and the rights of…
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Opinion Crossing to The Promised Land
Passover is on my mind. Some language — and some ideas — for the Seder: Each cup we raise tonight is an act of memory and of reverence. The story we tell, this year as every year, is not yet done. It begins with them, then; it continues with us, now. We remember not out…
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Opinion The Next Pope
In selecting Joseph Ratzinger as their 265th pope, the cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church were not seeking to break new ground, but opting for continuity. They were voting to carry on the work of the last pope, the charismatic and long-serving John Paul II. Despite all the pre-election rumors of an African, Latin American…
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Letters April 15, 2005
An Extraordinary Man, As Priest and as Pope Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, former chief rabbi of Israel, once told me about a conversation he had with Pope John Paul II (“Pope Oversaw Big Changes in Catholic-Jewish Relation,” April 8). Lau told the pope of a story he had heard about a Polish woman bringing a…
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Opinion Buds of Hope, Unblossomed
Passover nears, and perhaps this time the winter has really passed. There are some early buds of a late-blooming hope. That hasn’t been so for a while now, so — without letting ourselves be carried away — let us allow ourselves to hope. First, there is the promised withdrawal from Gaza. It has yet to…
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Opinion In Body Politic, but Not in Spirit
Reverend Jim Wallis, editor of the idiosyncratically Christian journal Sojourners, has spent the past 30-plus years advocating what he calls “a progressive and prophetic vision of faith and politics.” His latest book, “God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong,” has struck a chord, spending 11 weeks so far on The New York Times’s bestseller…
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