In the Forward’s opinion section, you’ll find analysis and essays from diverse corners of the Jewish world.
To pitch an opinion piece, email our Opinion Editor, Talya Zax.
In the Forward’s opinion section, you’ll find analysis and essays from diverse corners of the Jewish world.
To pitch an opinion piece, email our Opinion Editor, Talya Zax.
On Wednesday afternoon, our national crisis came to an end as the impeachment saga finally drew to a close. It ended, as predicted, with the acquittal of President Trump in the Senate, with the votes split nearly along party lines. Republicans are boasting that the verdict is vindication for the President, and that these charges…
At a terribly disturbing time for American Jews, with the greatest anti-Semitic violence and incidents experienced by the community in decades and questions being raised about its fundamental security after deadly attacks in Pittsburgh, Poway, Jersey City and a brutal stabbing in Monsey, there is a piece of good news among the bad. ADL recently…
So, it could really be Bernie. Amidst the wreckage of Iowa, Sen. Bernie Sanders, the democratic socialist from Vermont, looks ensconced in the catbird seat. He is seemingly ahead in the Hawkeye popular vote, and poised for a win in New Hampshire. Meanwhile, the ostensible front runner, Vice President Joe Biden, seems to be going…
Perhaps nothing represents the strange duality of the place of Jews in the United States in 2020 than the fact that a Jew may well have won the Iowa Democratic caucuses — and he did it with very little support from actual Jewish voters. Though the massive debacle that was the caucuses means we don’t…
Whether anti-Semitism stems more so from the far-right, far-left, or Muslim extremism remains a matter of contentious debate. Germany’s interior ministry says the far-right is responsible for 90% of anti-Semitic hate crimes in that country. The monitoring organization RIAS Berlin paints more of a mixed picture. And now the Institute for Zionist Strategies—a not-particularly-prestigious right-wing…
I was sitting on our couch, trying to come up with a tidbit to share on Shabbat morning. It had to be short, since I wanted to leave most of the speaking time for our scholar-in-residence, Dr. Susannah Heschel. (Yes, she was amazing. Yes, your shul should bring her.) I flipped through our copy of…
American Orthodox Jewry is often viewed as a single, undifferentiated mass, with little or no appreciation of the extent of the diversity within the group. Conventional wisdom has it that Orthodox Jews are conservatives who vote Republican, while the rest of U.S. Jewry leans strongly Democratic and Liberal. But it turns out, this is a…
We’re living in an age where public trust in the media is at an all-time low. Just 21% of Americans say they have “a lot of trust in the information from national news organizations.” In my community, it’s probably much lower. Routinely, Orthodox and haredi Jews are forced to read news reports about us that…
In January of 2019, when Kamala Harris officially announced the launch of her Presidential campaign, she was immediately met with a scathing meme: “Kamala is a cop”. Her attackers’ point was that Harris’s previous work as a prosecutor in California, in San Francisco and as State Attorney General, was disqualifying. Harris had many attackers, but…
This past week, the Super PAC Democratic Majority for Israel began running ads in Iowa attacking Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, as polls showed him tied with Joe Biden in the lead for the Iowa Democratic caucus. The group, which has said it is “deeply disturbing” that Sanders has “surrogates and endorsers who hate Israel,…
On Tuesday, Donald Trump rolled out a historic agreement between the United States and Israel. For the first time in the history of the peace process, the United States debuted an end-of-claims accord that offered the Israelis unprecedented concessions, including the right to annex 30% of the West Bank. By contrast, the U.S. has presented…
100% of profits support our journalism