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
Israel’s Fight Against BDS Is Keeping A Failed Movement Alive
The German parliament’s passage on May 17 of a non-binding resolution condemning BDS as anti-Semitic — which secured the votes of parties from the left, right, and center of German politics — was, in a sense, a victory for Israeli interests and the country’s otherwise-entirely redundant Ministry of Strategic Affairs and Public Diplomacy. When the…
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Opinion The Middle Class Is Being Priced Out Of Judaism
I will never forget that mercifully mild February night in 2011 when I camped out overnight with 30 other parents. All of us hoping to secure spots for our children at the local public school. While it’s not the norm to line up overnight, families do it every year. One reason is that this school…
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Opinion As A Jew, I Cringed Over Jeffrey Epstein – And Played Into The Anti-Semites’ Hands.
When I heard that Jeffrey Epstein had been arrested on sex-trafficking charges, I cringed. I’m sure I was not the only Jewish person who did, or whose first thought was,Why does this sorry excuse for a human have to be Jewish? And I probably also wasn’t the only Jewish person whose second thought was, Given…
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Opinion Linda Sarsour And Bibi Netanyahu Are In A Cat Fight About Jesus. Don’t Engage.
Not all fights are worth having. Some things don’t matter. Others are puerile and ought to be beneath rational adult discourse. If a fellow adult approaches you on the street, looks you straight in the eye and tells you that his daddy is richer, stronger, more attractive than, or otherwise superior to your daddy, the…
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Letters A Shameful History: FDR Made It Harder For Jews To Immigrate During The Holocaust
Dear Editor: In Jane Eisner’s piece “We Failed To Save Refugees From The Holocaust. We’re Failing Again Today,” she writes: “President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was repeatedly presented with the opportunity to take in Jewish refugees but, more often than not, acceded to political expediency and public pressure by doing nothing.” Actually, FDR did worse than…
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Opinion How Young American Jews Made Palestinian Rights All About Themselves
There’s a lot of talk about how young American Jews are abandoning Israel. It’s spoken of as an existential threat for the American Jewish community, whose identity is so tightly bound up with Israel education and advocacy. But this account is wrong on two fronts. Young Jews aren’t abandoning Israel so much as vocally opposing…
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Opinion My Fellow Israelis: Black Lives Matter Is Your Fight, Too
I grew up in Kiryat Malachi, Israel. Scratch that. I grew up black in Kiryat Malachi, Israel. My family came to Israel from Ethiopia when I was somewhere between five and six years old. I was number eight of ten children, part of a veritable private tribe. Generations of my family dreamed of making aliya….
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Opinion When Our School Integrated, We Jewish Kids Were The Only White Ones Who Didn’t Boycott
In 1972, I was six years old and attending first grade at an elementary school in Augusta, Georgia. My two older brothers and I were, as far as I knew, the only Jews in the school. But on March 15 of that year, we would also be the only white students in attendance. The previous…
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Opinion I Was One of 36 Jews Arrested Protesting ICE. Never Again Is Now.
“But Daddy, why didn’t anyone do anything? Didn’t they know? Didn’t they care?” The first conversation I had with my father about the Holocaust is seared into my memory. I was maybe seven or eight when he explained to me that millions of people had been murdered because of their religion, where they came from,…
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Opinion It’s Time To Admit That The US Is Signing The Checks For Greater Israel
As part of their alleged plan for the Middle East, the Trump administration held what they called an economic “workshop” in Manama. It was an utter failure. The plan presented was nothing more than a real-estate brochure, and its revelation in Bahrain a poorly attended affair. What Trump’s team, led by his son-in-law Jared Kushner,…
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Opinion A Protest to Leaders Of the Ashkenazi Community in Mexico
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. I had the pleasure of working and visiting Mexico — specifically Jewish Mexico — several years ago. I am familiar with its Yiddish teachers and some of these teachers and members of the community were my students in courses I gave there at that time. Several weeks…
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Opinion The Gaza hostage crisis could forever change how American Jews relate to Israel — but it’s not too late to fix that
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Yiddish ווידעאָ: היסטאָריקערין וויווי לאַקס באַשרײַבט געשיכטע פֿון לאָנדאָנער ייִדישער פּרעסעVIDEO: Historian Vivi Laks tells history of the London Yiddish Press
שבֿע צוקער פֿירט דעם שמועס מיט וויווי לאַקס און ביידע לייענען פֿאָר עטלעכע פֿעליעטאָנען פֿון יענע צײַטן.
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Yiddish World Puppet Monty Pickle is guest on the Forward’s ‘Yiddish Word of the Day’
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Culture We tried to fix Hallmark’s Hanukkah problem. Here’s the movie we made instead
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