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
Is this the end of the Palestinian cause?
The Israeli-Emirati deal establishing formal diplomatic relations is merely the latest blow dealt to the Palestinian people. The Palestinians are facing an unprecedented confluence of deleterious international, regional and domestic developments that make their dream of an independent Palestinian state increasingly remote. The normalization announcement was met with dismay by Palestinians, who rejected the Emirati…
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Opinion Trump is right: We Jews hate him, despite what he’s done in Israel
President Trump is the master of saying the quiet part out loud, of speaking his mind about the parts of politics that other politicians know they’re supposed to keep quiet about. And yesterday, he said the quiet part out loud more perhaps more blatantly than ever before. At a campaign rally in Oshkosh, Wisconsin on…
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Opinion Partisanship is tearing the Orthodox community apart
Recently, a handful of concerned Orthodox Jews, myself among them, wrote an open letter to the larger Orthodox community. It was titled “Sinai, Not Washington,” and its message was simple: “The unhealthy intertwining of Torah values and politics brings disrepute to Torah and harm to Torah Jews.” We had begun to witness some of the…
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Opinion What Disney can teach us about Israel: Our kids are ready for flawed heroes.
Do the following scenarios describe a Disney movie or the latest headline about Israel? The forcible separation of a baby from its mother, villagers persecuting a feared outsider, and factions competing in a deadly battle to control the land. Spoiler alert: it’s both. Dumbo, Beauty and the Beast, and The Lion King tackle these tricky…
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Opinion Despite shuttered shuls, members say they feel less lonely
Rosh Hashanah is just a few weeks away and our synagogues remain closed with no real sense of when COVID-19 will be sufficiently controlled for them to reopen. The situation has caused many in the Jewish community, from rabbis to young families to lay leaders, to question whether synagogues — physical spaces where we fulfill…
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Opinion Jews were once kept out of Harvard and Yale. Now Asians are. We must stand by them.
In the early years of the Roaring 20’s, Harvard’s President A. Lawrence Lowell was worried about the Jews. And the truth is, there were a lot of them to worry about in Harvard Yard. In 1900, just 7% of Harvard undergraduates were Jewish. By 1922, that number had tripled to 22%. Lowell reasoned that this…
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Opinion Letter | No, American Jewish Congress did not hire a white nationalist
Dear Editor, Your recent article concerning a former employee of the American Jewish Congress is highly misleading and grossly misrepresentative of the facts. While it appears that an individual with radical, far-right views was briefly employed at the American Jewish Congress, we were unaware of his beliefs until after his departure. Your article unfairly implies…
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Opinion I grew up with anti-Semitism in the UAE. Peace with Israel is a dream come true.
Never in a million years did I believe there would be a deal in my lifetime where an Arab Gulf state would recognize the Jewish state. Watching the news this week of Israel and the United Arab Emirates normalizing relations was something of a dream come true. From the age of eight until adulthood, I…
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Opinion Why we Palestinians are not celebrating the suspension of annexation
For the last few months, Palestinians have been living under Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s pledge to formally annex of large swathes of the West Bank. The pledge has, admittedly, been going nowhere, turning into a blame game between Bibi, his coalition partner Benny Gantz, and the Trump administration. What had seemed like the promise…
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Opinion Netanyahu just (accidentally) made his greatest contribution to a Jewish and democratic Israel
Two terrible ideas took a severe beating today with the announcement of a peace agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates: annexation, and the Arab refusal to acknowledge Israel’s existence. Annexation of the West Bank, at least if annexation is understood as encompassing a large chunk of territory rather than a (hopefully agreed upon)…
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Opinion They told us the sky would fall if Trump stood by Israel. They were wrong.
Look up. That’s right, look up. The sky is still there. When President Donald Trump moved the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Israel’s capital, Jerusalem, the old-guard Washington foreign policy community said the sky would fall. When President Trump approved the Israeli annexation of the Golan Heights to formalize Israel’s northern border, those same…
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Opinion A Reichstag fire is blazing in Trump’s America and we know exactly who is fanning the flames
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Yiddish נײַ בוך וועגן אַמאָליקן ניו־יאָרק איז ווי אַ סעודה פֿאַר ייִדישיסטןNew book about old New York City is like a feast for Yiddishists
דער מחבר הענעך סאַפּאָזשניק איז אַ גאָר פֿעיִקער װעגװײַזער איבער אַ פֿאַרלוירענער װעלט.
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Fast Forward Philadelphia Jewish museum won’t re-hang Israeli flag now after it was vandalized twice in a week
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Fast Forward Two congregations, two opinions as Torahs hit the floor at separate NYC services
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