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
God Save This Honorable Court
When the Supreme Court term opens October 3 with the familiar “God Save the United States and this Honorable Court,” the newest justice might in silence add, “from politicians, interest groups and media, all doing their best to ruin it.” The newest lawyer-turned-justice will be the survivor of a three-month political campaign costing interest groups…
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Opinion Washington Must Plan Today For Democratic Iran of Tomorrow
Two weeks ago, obscure hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad swept to victory in Iran’s run-off presidential election. In his first news conference as president-elect, he vowed to continue Iran’s nuclear program. “Today,” Ahmadinejad proclaimed, “we can say that nuclear technology is our right.” A nuclear Islamic Republic would undermine any prospect for Iranian reform, Middle East peace…
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Opinion Welcoming the New Jews
The question is so obvious, you have to wonder why nobody thought of asking it before: If only one-quarter to one-third of children in interfaith families are raised “in the Jewish faith,” as repeated surveys have shown, what becomes of the others? Do they become Christians? Do they melt into the broader population, with never…
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Opinion The Line of Decency
There’s something tedious about the continual back-and-forth between Republicans and Democrats accusing one another of abusing the memory of the Holocaust. First there was Senator Robert Byrd, the West Virginia Democrat, comparing Republican threats to cancel the filibuster in March with Nazi manipulation of German law during the 1930s. That prompted an angry retort from…
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Letters July 8, 2005
Give Proper Credit on Civil Rights Movement A reply to the June 24 editorial on the conviction of Edgar Ray Killen is in order (“What They Did”). I write as a 50-year veteran of the civil rights struggle, having first joined the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and helped found its first…
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Opinion Whoso Sheddeth Man’s Blood, by Man Shall His Blood Be Shed
One of the most gruesome scenes of the ongoing intifada happened right at its beginning. On October 12, 2000, Israeli military reservists Vadim Norzhich and Yosef Avrahami were beaten to death in a Ramallah police station. Their bodies were then thrown out of the window into the hands of a mob of Palestinians, who mutilated…
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Opinion A Word From the Pews
The news that the chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, Ismar Schorsch, has announced his plans to retire has naturally created a lot of attention in the seminary community. There is far less commotion within the lay community — and that is as it should be. Jews don’t have a pope whose presence or absence…
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Opinion The Making of a Leader
The Catholics got it right. They choose a pope in secret. They mourn the last pope, collect the cardinals in seclusion, and poof — black smoke, black smoke, white smoke. Then everyone goes back to work. But choosing a pope for a billion Catholics is one thing; choosing a chancellor for a million and a…
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Opinion Looking ‘White,’ Thinking ‘Other’
‘Be a Jew in private and a human being in public.” This was the mantra with which a generation of American Jews was raised, and the idea was to keep the Jewish particulars to yourself and blend in to the American dream. But the quality of the American Jewish experience has changed in the past…
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Opinion What If the Biblical Ruth Came to America?
If the biblical Ruth came to America today, what would happen? In the biblical story, Ruth was welcomed onto the fields of Boaz, where she gleaned what the regular harvesters had left behind. Boaz made sure that even this despised foreigner had a decent job at decent pay. When she went one night to the…
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Opinion Between Religious Equality and Liberty
Lawyers will be arguing for a long time about the practical effect of this week’s Supreme Court decisions in two cases related to the public display of the Ten Commandments. About the only thing that can be said with certainty is that the hope that the court would establish clear rules about religious displays to…
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