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
I Was Kicked Out Of A Restaurant In Israel For Being Gay. It Made Me More Zionist Than Ever.
A year and a half ago, I was thrown out of a pizza shop in Jerusalem for being gay. I was celebrating the LGBTQ+ Pride weekend with three fellow rabbinical students, and wearing a T-shirt with rainbow colored lettering. After entering the pizza shop, an employee asked me if I was gay. I said yes….
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Opinion Israel Is Using Archeology To Erase Non-Jewish History
Every Jerusalem Day, thousands of people descend on Jerusalem, waving flags as they march through the Old City in what is known as the “flag parade” to celebrate the Six-Day war victory in Jerusalem. Dancing through the streets of the Muslim Quarter, the crowd, a large proportion of whom are Yeshiva students, are often heard…
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Opinion Good News For The Jews This Week: Boozing, And Breaking The Glass Ceiling
Great news: the air is warm, it’s the season of low-commitment Jewish holidays, and Shabbat is here. Let’s recap the good Jewish news of the week — because there is good news every week, if only we know where to look for it. If you have a tip for a Jewish news story that brought…
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Opinion Trump’s ‘Peace’ Team Shows Its Hand In Off-The-Record Meeting
Jason Greenblatt, the Trump administration’s envoy for the Middle East peace process, could have picked from a number of Jewish communities and organizations at which to speak during his stop in New York this week. That he chose the Young Israel of Kew Gardens Hills, and under the sponsorship of Jexodus and the hard-right Coalition…
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Opinion When American Jews Talk About Israel, We’re Really Talking About Ourselves.
The great Jewish debates of the 1950s and 1960s revolved around whether the Bible was or was not divine. It wasn’t a new conversation for Jews, but it took on new meaning in the wake of the Holocaust. We weren’t just arguing over whether God wrote the Bible, but over whether God was in Auschwitz,…
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Opinion The Jewish Community Shuts Down Extremists On The Left. Why Tolerate Them On The Right?
Last May, I was perplexed and amused to see Mort Klein, head of the Zionist Organization of America, respond to an article posted on Twitter about “sex robots.” In a since-deleted tweet, Mort lamented that they didn’t exist while he was in high school, because he apparently was not the suavest with women at that…
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Opinion A Letter To My Gay Conversion Therapist
Dear Dr. S, How have you been since I dropped out of conversion therapy? I’m doing okay, I think. Well, at least I’m doing better than before. I still suffer from anxiety and depression, which was exacerbated by the conversion therapy. But I’ve certainly come a long way since you tried to “cure” me of…
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Opinion It’s The Occupation, Stupid. No Amount Of Cash Can Buy Palestinian Freedom
On Sunday, the White House announced it would be co-hosting a conference with Bahrain focused on Palestinian economic prosperity to kick start the always-delayed Trump peace deal. “Finance ministers, but not foreign ministers, will be invited along with delegations of business leaders,” CNN reported. It appears that they also decided that the Palestinians will not…
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Opinion Our Schools Are More Segregated – And More Discriminatory – Than Ever
This past February, an 11-year-old Black child who was arrested at his school in Lakeland, Florida for choosing to sit quietly during the Pledge of Allegiance. You read that right. While it wasn’t the first time the student had sat for the Pledge, the substitute teacher leading the class that day took particular offense. Rather…
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Opinion It’s Time to End America’s Blank Check Military Aid to Israel
Last month, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez declared that American aid to Israel is “something that can be discussed” in Washington. Her comments made news precisely because America’s policy of giving Israel billions in aid without expecting any policy changes in return hasn’t actually been discussed — or at least questioned — in either party in more…
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Opinion This Week In Good Jewish News: Octogenarians Had Bat Mitzvahs And Seinfeld Saw ‘Fiddler On The Roof’
Bad news breaks every single day, and it breaks our hearts. But good news happens every day too, and reading it helps put the pieces back together. If you have a tip for a Jewish news story that brought you joy, please send it to [email protected]. Hallelu!: On shabbat last week, 21 women ages 85…
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News Jews paused Indiana’s abortion ban — by turning a religious freedom law against the evangelical right
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Culture In 1989, Harold Pinter and Jerry Schatzberg made the perfect Holocaust movie for 2026
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Opinion An abominable new Israeli law is a death warrant for democracy
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Culture Inside the ancient Christian theology driving modern antisemitism
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