Opinion

• Opinion

  What Saeb Erekat taught me about the peace process

  Editor’s note: Saeb Erekat died on Nov. 10, 2020, after contracting Covid-19. This article was originally published while he was in the hospital, on Oct. 23. This is an adaptation of our weekly Shabbat newsletter, sent by our editor-in-chief on Friday afternoons. Sign up here to get the Forward’s free newsletters delivered to your inbox….

  By Jodi Rudoren

  5 min read
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  Opinion

  Should former Trump officials be welcomed back to polite society? It depends.

  Toward the end of the 2016 campaign, when it appeared certain that Hillary Clinton would make history as the nation’s first woman president, a running joke on Twitter depicted the dilemma of Trump campaign officials seeking work after November: An imagined job interviewer, seeing a peculiar resume gap that covered the presidential campaign season, inquired…

  By Abe Silberstein Oct 22, 2020 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  How wokeness on campus is seeping into antisemitism — in lower schools

  Morton Schapiro, the president of Northwestern University, did something this week that passes for heroism in these cowardly times: he stood up for himself as a Jew. The context has become depressingly familiar. A group called “NU Community Not Cops” gathered outside of Schapiro’s house in the wee hours of Sunday morning and chanted “f-ck…

  By Ari Hoffman Oct 22, 2020 | 4 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 There’s a shocking new report on civilian deaths in Gaza. If only it were accurate.

  

• Nora Berman Is Netflix’s new show the most Jewish cartoon ever?

  

• Dan Perry Israel’s new gift to the far right could help end the Gaza war

  

• Emily Tamkin Entering motherhood — and an obsession with the works of an Italian Jewish literary hero

  

The Latest

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  Opinion

  We still have time to resist Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation — and we must

  Like many of my fellow Reform rabbis, I am deeply concerned about what the pending confirmation of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court might mean for our country. Barrett has historically stood against many of the fundamental rights and freedoms that the Reform Movement has supported for decades. Among those, and at the…

  By Hara Person Oct 22, 2020 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  How testifying at the Chicago 7 trial led me to put on a yarmulke

  Fifty years ago, in perhaps the most tumultuous political trial in American history, I found myself wearing a yarmulke to defend my — myself, actually. It was the first time I put one on outside of a synagogue or a Seder. Within a year, I was keeping my head covered all the time. The trial,…

  By Arthur Waskow Oct 22, 2020 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  The peace process is hospitalized in Jerusalem with Covid

  I come not to bury Saeb Erekat nor to praise him, but merely to reflect on what the possibility of him dying would say about the conflict he has toiled within for decades. Erekat, the veteran Palestinian negotiator, is hospitalized in Jerusalem with Covid-19, and his prognosis is grim. Eulogies are already being written, and…

  By Ari Hoffman Oct 21, 2020 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  The government must do more to address antisemitism and anti-Zionism on campus

  Even on COVID-closed college campuses, some students continue to find ways to harm one another. Recently, anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist incidents have been cause for alarm. A recent move by the Education Department to change the guidance on reporting campus antisemitic vandalism is good, but there is still much more to do. At the University of…

  By Kenneth L. Marcus Oct 21, 2020 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  Antisemitic slurs against Soros are not kosher just because a Jew says them

  Eric Early, a Republican candidate for Congress in California, Tweeted this weekend about the philanthropist George Soros, a Holocaust survivor — who Early called “a Nazi sympathizer” and “a danger to our nation.” As the Forward, the Anti-Defamation League, and other sources have all ably documented, there is no truth behind the spurious claim that…

  By Joel Swanson Oct 20, 2020 | 5 min read
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  Opinion

  Palestinian leadership must hold elections — and not run in them

  The Palestinian leaders of the status quo have demonstrably failed to represent their people in the reshaping of the Middle East. This week, commercial flights between Israel and the Persian Gulf are becoming regular scenery, after the Knesset voted Thursday to approve the so-called “peace deal” with the United Arab Emirates. This premature Israeli-Arab normalization,…

  By Muhammad Shehada Oct 19, 2020 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  I’m not voting for Trump or Biden — because I want my vote to count

  I, like many Americans, understand this presidential election to be one between two undesirable candidates representing two undesirable visions for America. No matter who wins, the country will have no viable path towards the reconciliation of our political divides. No matter who wins, the Constitution will be put second to preferred political ends. No matter…

  By Jack Elbaum Oct 19, 2020 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  Jewish law should guide us in November: Choose life (not Trump)

  Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik famously said that when someone comes to him for a decision on a matter of Jewish law, he can easily give them a ruling. But when someone seeks advice in choosing between two options that do not violate Jewish law, he said, individuals must make a personal decision. Though a democracy defines…

  By Beth Kissileff Oct 18, 2020 | 3 min read