Opinion

• Opinion

  My Jewish family is being bombed in Ukraine

  Sometimes it feels like history is doing its best to prove to my family that there’s no safe place on earth. As an Israeli national born to Jewish Ukrainian parents, I often joke that I feel comfortable in Quebec, where I have lived for the past seven years, because here, too, there is a generations-old…

  By Osnat Ita Skoblinski

  4 min read
• 
  Opinion

  ‘I’m terrified for him’: American Jews hearts are tied to Zelenskyy’s fate

  When Stephanie Gold, a Los Angeles lawyer, read that Volodymyr Zelenskyy told European Union leaders, “this might be the last time you see me alive,” she broke down and cried. “I’m terrified for him,” she said. There’s something unique about the way that Zelenskyy has entered the hearts of American Jews. In a week, Ukraine’s…

  By Rob Eshman Mar 8, 2022 | 3 min read
• 
  Opinion

  On dissonance: watching the war as a Ukrainian-American Jew

  Before last week, my greatest concerns were avoiding Omicron and looking for a new job. Now I’m waiting for news on when the war in Ukraine, the country my parents and grandparents were born in, will stop. Over the past few days, my grandmother has made several calls to distant friends and relatives overseas, checking…

  By Michele Kirichanskaya Mar 8, 2022 | 3 min read

Columnists View All

• Jay Michaelson A Yom Kippur confessional for 2025

  

• Rob Eshman When did Donald Trump become a liberal Zionist?

  

• Nora Berman The terrifying Nazi precedent for Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension — and the reasons to stay hopeful

  

• Dan Perry Trump is finally absolutely right about something in the Middle East

  

• Emily Tamkin Trump’s attack on George Soros is ludicrous. It also endangers Jews (and everyone else)

  

The Latest

• 
  Opinion

  I’m a cantor in Texas and parent of a trans child. My state’s assault on trans youth is terrifying

  I am sickened by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s recently announced nonbinding opinion regarding gender-affirming care, which states that medical treatments used in the transition process for transgender minors (ie: those whose gender identity does not correspond with the sex they were assigned at birth) ought to be defined as acts of child abuse. I…

  By Sheri Allen Mar 7, 2022 | 4 min read
• 
  Opinion

  Babyn Yar is a site of Jewish death. Its memorial is a testament to a democratic Ukraine

  “My sister, brothers, mother and father are all buried in Babi Yar,” Fania Khasidovich told me when I visited her in 2008 in Fastiv, a city of 40,000 people about 50 miles southwest of Kyiv. It was only a few days before her 92nd birthday. “I was with them,” she continued, “I lived through it,…

  By Jeffrey Veidlinger Mar 7, 2022 | 4 min read
• 
  Opinion

  The impossible is happening: Talking to Natan Sharansky about the crisis in Ukraine.

  This is an adaptation of Looking Forward, a weekly email from our editor-in-chief sent on Friday afternoons. Sign up here to get the Forward’s free newsletters delivered to your inbox. Download and print our free magazine of our most memorable Ukraine stories so far. One of Natan Sharansky’s vivid early childhood memories is the 300th…

  By Jodi Rudoren Mar 4, 2022 | 7 min read
• 
  Opinion

  Destroying the memory of what the Nazis did to us at Babyn Yar is de-Nazification

  For over a decade, I lived down the street from a small urban park improbably named Babi Yar. It was located on the border of Brighton Beach, a community in Brooklyn primarily populated by Jewish members of the former Soviet Union since the 1920s, and Manhattan Beach at the southern tip of Brooklyn. A small…

  By Shoshana Batya Greenwald Mar 3, 2022 | 3 min read
• 
  Opinion

  I’m a rabbi in Warsaw. I’m terrified for the future of Ukraine — and the free world

  I live in Poland and work as a rabbi in the local Jewish community, but I’ve been paying close attention to Ukraine since Putin’s last invasion in 2014. I was invigorated by the election of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in 2019, and even more impressed when he stood up to President Donald Trump, refusing to take…

  By Rabbi Yehoshua Ellis Mar 3, 2022 | 3 min read
• 
  Opinion

  What the two leading Jewish heroes of 2022 have in common

  If there is one thing nearly every human being who is even remotely aware of world events would agree upon this week, it’s that Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a hero. Just as most reached the same consensus in January about Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker, who engineered escape for himself and several congregants after hours being held hostage…

  By Robin Washington Mar 2, 2022 | 3 min read
• 
  Opinion

  ‘The needs are so intense’: United Hatzalah medic speaks from Moldovan border

  Linor Attias is a volunteer United Hatzalah medic and an emergency management specialist at the Israeli Ministry of Justice. She spoke by phone from Moldova’s border with Ukraine on Tuesday with our Nora Berman. At 3 a.m. on Tuesday, a bus full of refugees arrived. Everyone is working constantly — I rose at 3 to…

  By Linor Attias Mar 1, 2022 | 4 min read
• 
  Opinion

  I live in Ukraine. We’re under bombardment — but still working to serve our Jewish elders

  Air raid sirens now set the rhythm of my life. This new reality, one of many that have emerged since the invasion of Ukraine, is marked by constant worry for relatives, friends and colleagues. We lose contact with those we love for many long hours between the blasts, and we’re forced to acquire the grim…

  By Elena Proskurnja Mar 1, 2022 | 3 min read