Opinion

• Opinion

  The man-made plagues of Gaza

  BG IMG LINK Previous Article Next Article The story of Passover and the ten plagues always filled me with awe: Egyptians punished with hunger and thirst, bloody water, blinding darkness and loved ones lost overnight. When I was a young person, those horrifying plagues were unimaginable. Then, I experienced similar, man-made plagues, plagues that continue…

  By Muhammad Shehada

  3 min read
• 
  Opinion

  The plague’s reminder: We only think we’re in charge

  BG IMG LINK Previous Article Next Article As COVID-19 is not the fearsome Yersinia pestis bacterium — the rod-shaped, anaerobic organism that ravages human bodies by way of rat fleas — it is not, strictly speaking, a plague. No matter. If civilization can be said to be plagued by froyo shops or LED light displays,…

  By Virginia Heffernan Mar 31, 2020 | 4 min read
• 
  Opinion

  My great-grandmother survived Stalin and Hitler. I’m thinking of her this Passover.

  BG IMG LINK Previous Article Next Article We’re going to be alone for the seders. It was the first thought in my mind that really hit home the severity of the COVID-19 crisis as New York authorities began telling people to stay home. The next one was: Are we even going to be able to…

  By Alex Zeldin Mar 31, 2020 | 3 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

• 
  Opinion

  Coronavirus is exposing the plagues of American society

  BG IMG LINK Previous Article Next Article If God sent coronavirus to our shores, it isn’t because he’s punishing us. He’s simply forcing us to look into a mirror so we can finally take a good hard look at who we really are rather than what we’ve long pretended. Or maybe it’s because he was…

  By Issac J. Bailey Mar 31, 2020 | 3 min read
• 
  Opinion

  I used to love the plagues – until I lived through one

  BG IMG LINK Previous Article Next Article I used to love the plagues. Not anymore. I used to love the plagues until I lived through them. As a child, my most favorite moment of Passover, the otherwise endless family dinner which featured a gelatinous fish dish and an overcooked meat dish, was the plagues. After…

  By Molly Jong-Fast Mar 31, 2020 | 2 min read
• 
  Opinion

  Being alone, choosing life: Jewish practice in a plague

  Our tradition is predicated on the notion that no Jew should live alone on a desert island

  By Deborah E. Lipstadt Mar 31, 2020 | 3 min read
• 
  Opinion

  In times of senseless tragedy, God manifests through us

  BG IMG LINK Previous Article Next Article The situation is devastating. An entire country, the most powerful one of its time, brought to its knees, its vast military and economic might no match for the plague that envelops it. It must have been utterly crushing to be an Egyptian back then. And yet, horrible as…

  By Shai Held Mar 31, 2020 | 3 min read
• 
  Opinion

  The Seder is a passport to the past and the future

  BG IMG LINK Previous Article Next Article In her book, “Illness as Metaphor,” Susan Sontag bans us from using metaphor to describe disease. We need to toughen up, she thinks, and forgo the flight away from the thing itself, the marauding crimes wreaked on the body by maladies too many to count. As Sontag writes,…

  By Ari Hoffman Mar 31, 2020 | 3 min read
• 
  Opinion

  From plagues to Promised Land: Let’s build a world of solidarity

  BG IMG LINK Previous Article Next Article I remember a conversation with my son, who is 12 and studying for a Bar Mitzvah that is now in a holding pattern. Last year, at Passover, he told me he didn’t think it was fair that in order to free the slaves regular Egyptians had to suffer…

  By Carin Mrotz Mar 31, 2020 | 3 min read
• 
  Opinion

  When a new plague exacerbates the old

  BG IMG LINK Previous Article Next Article Every year at Passover seders around the world, as families gather to recount the story of the Israelites’ exodus from slavery in Egypt, we recount the ten plagues that befell the Egyptians: Blood, frogs, lice, flies, pestilence, boils, hail, locusts, darkness, the killing of the firstborn. As they…

  By Tema Smith Mar 31, 2020 | 4 min read
• 
  Opinion

  Resistance to tyranny and longing for Zion, then and now

  BG IMG LINK Previous Article Next Article Of all the Jewish holidays that could coincide with a once-every-century global pandemic, there is clear divine instruction in its eclipse falling on Passover. It’s been said many times that Pharaoh was the original anti-Semite and that the plagues descended upon the people of Egypt because of his…

  By Amanda Berman Mar 31, 2020 | 3 min read