Opinion

• Opinion

  ‘Our house is your house’: Meet the Florida rabbi hosting a family of Ukrainian refugees

  “Seamless” is how Rabbi Watstein described the transition for both families

  By Jodi Rudoren

  6 min read
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  Opinion

  Activists are calling to ‘globalize the intifada.’ It’s a call for death, not peace

  In the span of one week, three separate terror attacks in Israel have claimed the lives of 11 innocent people. Those killed included Arab, Druze, Jewish and Christian citizens of Israel, and two Ukrainian nationals. A young father who was taking his infant son for an evening stroll died protecting his child from bullets in…

  By Nora Berman Apr 1, 2022 | 5 min read
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  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 Mar 31, 2022 | 3 min read

Columnists View All

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

  

• Jay Michaelson American Jews were played — now what?

  

• Rob Eshman A new humanitarian outrage is unfolding in the Middle East. It’s not in Gaza

  

• Nora Berman The left is turning on AOC over Israel — and imperiling its own agenda

  

• Dan Perry Actually, Trump made things between Israel and Iran way worse

  

• Emily Tamkin Zohran Mamdani’s victory proves it: The ‘gotcha’ mode of fighting antisemitism has to go

  

The Latest

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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
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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