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.
Opinion
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Opinion
Yes, Black Lives Matter is religious. That’s a good thing.
No sooner had protesters poured into the streets following the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer than commentators started offering interpretations. One provocative thesis: The Black Lives Matter movement has become a new religion. It was not meant as praise. One writer cringes at the “surrender-worship posture” of one Bethesda, Maryland demonstration…
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Opinion It’s time to work together to prevent an upsurge of anti-Semitism
While the United States was celebrating American Jewish Heritage Month in May, the global Jewish community was experiencing a further increase in anti-Semitic incidents, which cannot continue. As the world reeled from the COVID-19 global pandemic in March, the Iranian Ministry of Health decided to hold a cartoon contest entitled “We Defeat Coronavirus,” garnering thousands…
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Opinion Editorial | What James Bennet taught me about terrorism – and courage
The problem, James Bennet wrote in the opening lines of an internal New York Times memo, “was always where to stop, rather than where to start.” When “you draw a line” and say something “does not qualify,” he cautioned, “you commit what looks to the world like a political act, and may in fact be…
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Opinion How our growing consensus against racism turned into a moral panic
I remember going to Eric Garner’s funeral in the summer of 2014. And I remember the fights I had with conservative family members after it, screaming matches that left us bruised and unwilling to talk for months at a time. They were the same fights we had over Michael Brown’s death and the Ferguson protests…
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Opinion What does Jewish tradition say about ‘Defund the Police’? It’s complicated.
In the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hands of police officer Derick Chauvin, a new cry has emerged from amidst the protests against racism and police brutality shaking the nation: Defund the Police. The cry means different things to different people, but in addition to addressing the fraught tensions between black communities and…
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Opinion Why I Have Come to Support Defunding the Police
The murder of George Floyd was a revelation for white America. The image of a man lying on the street for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, his body limp beneath the officer’s knee, has transfixed and could transform the nation. To witness the breath of life casually pulled from a man’s body is to see…
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Opinion You don’t have to choose between Black Lives Matter and Israel
All of last week and into this one, Americans grieved and demonstrated and were beaten in the streets by police as we protested George Floyd’s murder. It is an emotional time, with the wins of the Black Lives Matter movement making change seem, finally, possible. Yet existing communal tensions remained. All week, I’ve been asked…
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Opinion As the next generation of Modern Orthodox leaders, we demand real change.
We are Modern Orthodox success stories: products of day school education, Jewish summer camps, and gap years in Israel. We are active participants in Jewish life on our campuses, ardent Zionists, and Torah enthusiasts. Our religious upbringings have taught us that Jewish communities do not stand idly by when faced with injustice. And George Floyd’s…
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Opinion ‘You can’t reconcile a nation that’s never been equal.’ Three black pastors reflect on this moment.
We’re living through a historic time. On the heels of a devastating coronavirus pandemic that left over 100,000 Americans dead and 25% of Americans without a job, racist episodes started to hit our newsfeeds. We watched as Ahmaud Arbery, a young black man jogging near his home, was hunted down and lynched by his neighbors….
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Opinion Jews came to America to escape darkness. For African Americans, America was darkness.
This weekend, I marched across the Brooklyn Bridge. To the left, through the thick cables and ropes of the bridge, I could see the Statue of Liberty, clear and strong. My grandmother had learned the Emma Lazarus poem by heart when she was a child, so I memorized it, too, and now the words came…
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Opinion It’s time for the Conference of Presidents to kick out Mort Klein
Louis Brandeis, the first Jew to be confirmed as a Supreme Court justice, embodied the image of the liberal moderate so famously taken to task in Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” On race, Justice Brandeis usually sided with progress but was not particularly outspoken in favor of racial justice and equality….
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Culture ‘My mayor Muslim, my bagel Jewish’ — the Knicks chant capturing New York’s soul
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Opinion It’s time for Jews who love Israel to give up on Zionism
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Opinion New York’s Israel Day parade was a shanda — but not because of Mamdani
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