Opinion

• Opinion

  How to talk about Black anti-Semitism

  December 2019: a month that the Jewish community will never forget. Though knockout attacks against Hasidic Jews had been on the radar of the broader Jewish world for some time now, the frequency and severity of violent attacks targeting the most visible members of the Jewish community set off new alarm bells. With one attack…

  By Tema Smith

  6 min read
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  Opinion

  The new socialism, like the old, will not protect Jews

  Before he was shot and then run over by a truck outside of Minsk like a dog by Stalin’s agents, Solomon Mikhoeles was one of the greatest actors of the twentieth century. Before Osip Mandelstam was starved and frozen to death, he was a poet of wondrous and haunting verse. Before lead was lodged in…

  By Ari Hoffman Jan 9, 2020 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  The first step to fighting anti-Semitism is recognizing how irrational it is

  The following is testimony delivered by Deborah Lipstadt before the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom on January 8, 2020. Recently a well-educated, accomplished man, the CEO of a Fortune 500 company — one of America’s most successful corporate entities — attended a seminar I gave on antisemitism. After my presentation, he raised his…

  By Deborah E. Lipstadt Jan 9, 2020 | 8 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 is not deliberately killing journalists in Gaza. But it does bear responsibility for their deaths

  

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

  

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  Opinion

  Cash bail criminalized poverty. Fears about bail reform are misguided.

  After a string of anti-Semitic attacks in the New York area, some Orthodox Jews have criticized a new bail reform law which includes a ban on cash bail for nonviolent offenses, which was a major triumph for new Democratic legislators. But the immediate release of a woman named Tiffany Harris, who had slapped three Orthodox…

  By Akiva Cohen Jan 9, 2020 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  Elizabeth Wurtzel’s tragic death should be a wakeup call for Ashkenazi Jewish women

  If ever there were a Gen X Jewish woman writer who made meaning out of the intimate details and dark forces that wreaked havoc on her life, it was Elizabeth Wurtzel. The author of “Prozac Nation” and “More, Now, Again: A Memoir of Addiction”, Wurtzel died, far too young, on Tuesday from metastatic breast cancer;…

  By Erica Brody Jan 8, 2020 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  What Jews can learn from the gay rights movement

  This past Sunday, I proudly joined 25,000 others at the “No Hate No Fear” march across the Brooklyn Bridge to take a stand against the violence that has afflicted New York and New Jersey’s Orthodox Jewish communities this past month and beyond. In the last three weeks alone, 14 anti-semitic incidents were reported in New…

  By Peter Fox Jan 8, 2020 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  Soviet Jews are the latest target of Israel’s Chief Rabbi’s bigotry

  As anti-Semitism surges worldwide, Jews across the globe could sure use a little unity. Unfortunately, we just got the opposite, courtesy of Yitzhak Yosef, one of the two chief rabbis of Israel. During remarks at a rabbinical conference last week, Yosef exploded in a tirade against ex-Soviet Jews who had immigrated to Israel. Yosef’s remarks…

  By Lev Golinkin Jan 8, 2020 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  Stop Calling Us Orthodox Women Who Study Talmud ‘Pioneers’

  If you were to peek inside the window of a building in Crown Heights, Brooklyn on Sunday night, you would find a group of young Jews engrossed in Talmud study. Their clothing would be conservative, and their heads would be bent over volumes of densely printed Aramaic text. Hands would be gesticulating animatedly, and Talmudic…

  By Devorah Silberstein Jan 7, 2020 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  Attacks on Jewish community threaten our most basic democratic values

  “May the children of the stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the goodwill of the other inhabitants while everyone shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree. And there shall be none to make him afraid.” These words are taken from a letter President George…

  By Alcee L. Hastings and Michael Balaban Jan 7, 2020 | 2 min read
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  Opinion

  Attacks against the Orthodox signal the return of ‘social anti-Semitism’

  “We brought you to America to get away from this,” my mother called to say the night after the deadly attack in Jersey City against Hasidic Jews this past December. Her words rang in my ears as report after report came out of Jews being attacked, most of them Orthodox or Hasidic, on the streets…

  By Alex Zeldin Jan 6, 2020 | 5 min read
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  Opinion

  This year, let’s debate everything — except Israel

  In 2020, Jews need to argue. We need to argue more than we have, but also differently. Here’s the formula: There should be fewer fights about Israel. There should be more fights about everything else. This might be difficult. Far too many American Jews have nothing to say that is not related to the Jewish…

  By Ari Hoffman Jan 6, 2020 | 4 min read