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
Sanitizing Italian Fascism Sullies Fight Against Antisemitism
This past Tuesday the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee hosted Italy’s deputy prime minister, Gianfranco Fini. I didn’t attending the session. In plain terms, I boycotted it. I had no wish to play any part in sanitization ceremonies for fascists, neo-fascists and antisemites of all kinds. Fini is the leader of an important Italian…
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Opinion Federations Must Raise More Funds for Israel and Overseas Needs
When the Overseas Needs and Distribution Committee of United Jewish Communities meets on December 8 to decide how to allocate federation money, an unavoidable conclusion must be reached: The federation system has to raise more funds for overseas needs and continue to place Israel as its prime responsibility. To decide otherwise given today’s realities would…
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Opinion The Assyrian Test of Pluralism in Iraq
Although Iraq’s future remains uncertain, it can be said at least that the long Ba’athist nightmare is now over. Moderate and secular Islamic voices now have an opportunity to foster a new pluralistic political system which simultaneously acknowledges the fact that Iraq’s population is overwhelmingly Muslim and guarantees Christians the same legal and religious rights…
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Opinion History of Ford Due for ‘Tune-up’
This past week saw three exercises in revisiting history: the annual ritual, replete with conspiracy theories, of reexamining the Kennedy assassination; the Pulitzer Prize board reconsidering New York Times correspondent Walter Duranty’s prize for his discredited 1930s coverage of Soviet collectivization, and the Ford Foundation acknowledging that several of its pro-Palestinian grantees had channeled their…
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Letters November 28, 2003
Revisit Religious Texts On Abortion Argument Opinion writer Rabbi David Ellenson grievously misrepresents both how the Jewish religious tradition views partial-birth abortion as defined in the recently enacted federal law and what that law says (“Abortion Ban Degrades and Devalues Women,” November 21). It is indeed true that Jewish tradition considers a Jewish mother’s life…
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Opinion Our Lives Of Sarah
A black-clad young man interrogated my wife and me in the foyer of Istanbul’s Neve Shalom synagogue, exactly three years ago. I thought about our visit to Turkey when Neve Shalom and another synagogue a few miles away, Beth Israel, were bombed this past Shabbat during the crowded morning services. At least 25 died. I…
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Opinion No Appeasement on Ashrawi Award
Australian Labor parliamentarian Michael Danby claims that it was only the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council that campaigned against the appropriateness of this month’s awarding of the Sydney Peace Prize to Palestinian activist Hanan Ashrawi, and that this campaign ended up being counter-productive (“Over the Top Protest Down Under,” November 14). He is wrong on…
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Opinion Standing in Istanbul
Dispersed though we may be, there are moments when all Jews come together in one spot, or so it’s said. Tradition teaches that we all stood together at Mount Sinai to receive the Law. Sociologists tell us that we all, or nearly all, sit together around the Seder table and gather together for Atonement prayers….
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Opinion Soros and the Jews
Our annual Forward Fifty list, published last week, always seems to raise a host of eyebrows, mostly over who is left off. We try to list the 50 persons we see as most influential in shaping the public life of the American Jewish community, whether by their roles within the community or by public activity…
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Letters November 21, 2003
Little Frank a Class Act It was with great satisfaction that I read the November 14 profile of Frank Luntz (“Political Pollster Grows Into His Jewish Identity). I was Frank’s principal and teacher for seven years at religious school. I knew him and his family very well. Although not heavily observant, Frank always had a…
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Opinion Open Our Communal Eyes to Spousal Abuse
It is really most appropriate that the Hebrew month Tishri, and Succoth in particular, coincided last month with the National Domestic Violence Awareness Month. After all, the succah, the hut that Jews inhabit during the autumn harvest festival, represents the fragility of life. The winds blow and the rains fall, leaving its dwellers vulnerable to…
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Fast Forward ‘Dilbert’ cartoon creator once questioned the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust
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Fast Forward Mourner’s Kaddish for Bondi Beach victims recited in Australian parliament as tougher hate crime laws pass
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Fast Forward An activist criticized Miami Beach’s Jewish mayor on Facebook — then police came knocking
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News How the push to unionize at Breads Bakery became a debate over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
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Film & TV A Jewish lawyer sued Henry Ford and changed how we think about hate speech
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