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
How is the Russia-Ukraine war different from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Let me count the ways
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 stories to savor over Shabbat and Sunday. Perhaps you’ve seen the Twitter posts: paired photographs of a Ukrainian…
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Opinion I’m an American Jew who was born in Russia. Will my community demonize me?
“If anyone asks, you’re not Russian. You’re Moldovan.” That’s what my mother-in-law advised me a few days ago, as the world reacted with justified horror to the Russian military invading Ukraine. She wants to protect me. Originally from Moldova herself (as is my husband), she’s relieved to be able to tell people truthfully that she’s…
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Opinion Soviet Jews built the start-up nation. Israel should rush to welcome Ukrainian refugees today
Over 2 million Ukrainians have fled their country in the 14 days since the aggressive Russian invasion began, creating the fastest refugee crisis in modern history. Ukraine’s neighbors — such as Poland, Hungary, Moldova and Belarus — have been the first destination for most of these refugees, as the rest of the world watches in…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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,…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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Fast Forward Robin Kelly, running for Senate in Illinois, says Israel committed ‘genocide’
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Fast Forward Isaiah Zagar, renowned Jewish mosaic artist who created Philadelphia’s Magic Gardens, dies at 86
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Fast Forward South Africa pulls out of Venice Biennale — because its selected artist wanted to focus on Gaza
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Film & TV Dear internet: Having Jews in movies isn’t ‘Zionist propaganda’
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