Opinion

• Opinion

  The long, sad echo of applause for Will Smith

  If, as the Talmud tells us, silence is akin to complicity, what about … applause? The guests at Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre for the 94th Academy Awards Sunday night weren’t required to wear masks, but with both Purim and the worst of the pandemic in the rear-view mirror, we finally got to see who they really…

  By Rob Eshman

  3 min read
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  Opinion

  My family was murdered in Austria during the Holocaust. Now they’re offering me citizenship. Should I accept?

  My mother and I discovered my grandmother Erika’s faded birth certificate on a trip to Austria in 2019. It was in an administrative office building adjacent to the Stadttempel synagogue, the only synagogue built before 1938 that was not burned by the Nazis — and only because it was too close to the Nazi headquarters…

  By Erik Sommer Mar 30, 2022 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  Want more Reform rabbis? Stop turning away Jews in interfaith relationships

  The board of Hebrew Union College will soon vote on a proposal to stop enrolling rabbinic students at its Cincinnati campus, one of the Reform movement’s three North American rabbinical college locations. As revealed in publicly available papers and the proposal itself, enrollment across HUC’s three campuses is down 37% over the past 15 years….

  By Edmund Case Mar 29, 2022 | 4 min read

Columnists View All

• Jodi Rudoren This is my last column as editor of the Forward

  

• Jay Michaelson I supported Israel’s actions in Gaza in October 2023 — not anymore

  

• Rob Eshman The staggering hypocrisy behind Trump’s deal to free the last living American hostage

  

• Nora Berman How the Oct. 7 aftermath splintered the New York Dyke March

  

• Dan Perry It looks like Israel totally underestimated Trump

  

• Emily Tamkin This week proved it: Trump’s approach to antisemitism at Columbia is horribly ineffective

  

The Latest

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  Opinion

  I am a Ukrainian Jew. I have lost my mother to Russian disinformation

  My mother has been brainwashed by Russian propaganda. Aside from a brief phone call during the first week of the war, I haven’t been communicating with her. It’s too painful to expend energy on reasoning with her while my people are getting killed at the front lines. I choose to spend that time and energy…

  By Michael Rozhkov Mar 29, 2022 | 3 min read
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  Looking Forward

  An umbrella with holes, Israeli clowns, and other tales from my trip to Ukraine’s border with Poland

  "My heart was so full just standing next to them," a lawyer from Tampa said.

  By Jodi Rudoren Mar 25, 2022 | 6 min read
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  Opinion

  American Jews ignore a far-right Jewish presidential candidate at their peril

  With the world’s attention focused on the carnage in Ukraine, American Jews can be forgiven for not paying much attention to the upcoming French presidential elections; the first round of voting begins on Apr. 10. But they do so at their own peril. American Jews should know about Éric Zemmour, a right-wing author, media figure,…

  By Brad Rothschild Mar 25, 2022 | 3 min read
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  Letters

  Members of Congress, including those AIPAC-allied, condemn group’s comments about Rep. Andy Levin

  To the editor: As former and current members of Congress and supporters of a strong U.S.-Israel relationship, we are all too familiar with how differing policy approaches to ending the Middle East conflict have been used to divide and polarize us as a community, especially during elections. That’s why at a moment when so much…

  Mar 25, 2022 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  Why my synagogue is building a 55-unit housing development for the homeless

  (JTA) — When IKAR, the Jewish spiritual community where I serve as the director of community organizing, realized our long-held dream of buying land in Los Angeles so that we could build a home for ourselves, we invited the community to imagine what we’d like to see included as part of this new physical space….

  By Brooke Wirtschafter Mar 24, 2022 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  ‘It changed my life in ways I never expected:’ Readers share stories of personal firsts

  Last week marked the 100th anniversary of Judy Kaplan becoming the first American bat mitzvah. In a column noting the occasion, our editor-in-chief, Jodi Rudoren, published a column considering the many female “firsts” women have racked up in the last century — and what comes next. “I’d been thinking that the era of female firsthood…

  By Forward Staff Mar 24, 2022 | 8 min read
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  Opinion

  Why did the Academy leave the Jews out of its museum, anyway?

  Amid all the controversy created over the Academy Museum’s initial decision not to include the story of the motion picture industry’s largely Jewish immigrant founders in its permanent exhibit, one question remains unanswered: Why? Why would the museum organizers, with $484 million and more than  300,000 square feet, decide to tell the story of the…

  By Rob Eshman Mar 23, 2022 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  AIPAC’s endorsements risk irreparably damaging the U.S.-Israel relationship

  For pro-Israel Americans and the journalists who cover them, AIPAC Policy Conference was the annual see-and-be-seen event. More than 18,000 of us descended on Washington each March for three days of parties, panels, networking and a lobbying day on Capitol Hill. Top donors were treated to a blowout party with enough members of Congress to…

  By Laura E. Adkins Mar 23, 2022 | 5 min read