Opinion

• Opinion

  On the first night of Sukkot, ‘rain feels very 2020’ — and your weekend reads

  This is an adaptation of The Forward’s weekly Shabbat newsletter. To get the Forward’s free email newsletters in your inbox, click here. And click here for a PDF of the following stories that you can download and print to savor over the weekend. It was another surreal morning. Breakfast was tie-dye waffles with a side…

  By Jodi Rudoren

  3 min read
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  Letters

  Letter | A Public Thank You to Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, or The Losses We Sustain When We Think of Jewishness as a Race

  I am grateful to Rabbi Angela Buchdahl for her recent Yom Kippur sermon, which touched on the intersectionality of race, ethnicity and religion, and turned on its head the old notion that Jewishness is a race. Instead, Rabbi Buchdahl explained, we should take the more expansive view of Jewishness not as a race, but as…

  By Jodi Bromberg Oct 2, 2020 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  Why did the Orthodox relax COVID restrictions? Our hopeless optimism

  Despite a common stereotype of Jews as worrisome or depressed, at heart we of the tribe are really inveterate optimists. That’s why we’re always barking up utopia trees (though many of the “progressive” isms we’ve embraced over the centuries turned out to be disappointments). I think that our inherent optimism may figure into why parts…

  Oct 2, 2020 | 2 min read

Columnists View All

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

  

• Jay Michaelson Mamdani’s victory is an opportunity for Jews to relearn the art of disagreement

  

• Rob Eshman ‘Israel is seen as violent’ — and Israeli chefs, once global culinary icons, are feeling the heat

  

• Nora Berman Did Netanyahu coerce Trump into attacking Iran? No — but he tried with Obama

  

• Dan Perry For Trump and Netanyahu, statecraft is now synonymous with stagecraft

  

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

  

The Latest

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  Opinion

  Dear Chrissy Teigen: Thank you for sharing your loss, for all of us who have been there

  Dear Chrissy, As a mom who has experienced pregnancy loss, thank you. Thank you for publicly sharing the heartbreak that so many of us have experienced in one form or another. I hope that in the past few days, as you grieved, you also felt the warm embrace of your community, which I’m sure includes…

  By Sandy Myers Grawert Oct 2, 2020 | 2 min read
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  Opinion

  Don’t call Hasidim anti-science. They kept COVID at bay all summer.

  There’s been a rise in COVID cases among Hasidim, and the world is pointing a finger. See? Hasidim have been ignoring COVID precautions, they’ve been doing their old (old) normal like nobody’s business, no masks or measuring tape or shields or baths of hand-sanitizer, and now naysayers are saying I-told-you-so with barely masked glee, pun…

  By Frieda Vizel Oct 1, 2020 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  This Sukkot, as we contemplate our vulnerability, remember the Uighurs

  Sukkot is a holiday of vulnerability. For a week, we enter a temporary dwelling at the mercy of the elements. In so doing, we remember the period when a newly born nation of refugees and escaped slaves from Egypt wandered in the desert. We submit ourselves to life beneath the stars and embrace the uncertainty…

  By Jonah Kaye and Leon Kraiem Oct 1, 2020 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  Debate | Can you compare the Proud Boys to Antifa?

  By almost all accounts, Tuesday’s debate between President Trump and Vice President Biden will be remembered most for the President’s refusal to condemn the anti-Semitic white supremacist group known as the Proud Boys. But the context of those words involved another controversial group altogether: Antifa. Chris Wallace asked President Donald Trump to condemn white supremacists…

  By Ari Hoffman and Joel Swanson Sep 30, 2020 | 10 min read
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  Opinion

  They criticized us for comparing Trump’s hate to the Nazis. Then he told the Proud Boys to ‘stand by.’

  The Jewish Democratic Council of America, the organization which I lead, released a political ad on Tuesday highlighting the parallels between President Donald Trump’s use of hatred for political purposes and the rise of Nazism in the 1930s. The ad, which juxtaposes images of Nazis inspired by Hitler with those inspired by President Trump, was…

  By Halie Soifer Sep 30, 2020 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  Stop saying ‘science is on the ballot.’ Only morality can sway voters.

  In last night’s debate, when Joe Biden said “we don’t trust” President Trump on a coronavirus vaccine, but “we trust the scientists, we trust Dr. Fauci,” he wasn’t just talking about the politics of a vaccine; he was sounding a theme that has become prominent in Democratic politics: trust in science and scientific experts to…

  By Benjamin Dueholm Sep 30, 2020 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  AOC abandoned peace to satisfy the purity demands of the left

  Last week, the pro-peace organization Americans for Peace Now proudly announced that Bronx Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the young and charismatic avatar of the new American left, would participate in an event honoring Yitzhak Rabin, who was assassinated 25 years ago for making peace with the Palestinians. But their announcement resulted in a barrage of online…

  By Etan Nechin Sep 29, 2020 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  On the federal bench and carpool too? Amy Coney Barrett is making us working moms look bad

  Amy Coney Barrett is bad for women. Her nomination to the Supreme Court might actually be a setback for working mothers. I’m not talking about her anti-abortion ideology or her opposition to the Affordable Care Act. Let’s stipulate that reasonable people can disagree about such things. Even reasonable women: 38% of American women believe abortion…

  By Jodi Rudoren Sep 27, 2020 | 4 min read