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
Angela Davis Is Not A Human Rights Hero
The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, the Alabama museum and research center dedicated to the history of the Civil Rights Movement, has rescinded a prestigious award to activist, academic and Birmingham native Angela Davis, canceling the February gala at which it was to be presented. The news has sparked protests, and Birmingham mayorRandall Woodfin and the…
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Opinion The Shameful Misuse Of Jewish Power
In 1908, New York police commissioner Theodore Bingham wrote an extended piece for The North American Review. It was entitled, “Foreign Criminals in New York.” In it, Bingham derided his own city’s immigrants, whom he labeled criminals “of exotic origin.” While Bingham clearly viewed all immigrants with suspicion and contempt, he reserved his most savage…
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Opinion Why Jewish Organizations Should Not Be Tearing Down Angela Davis
On Sunday, the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute announced that it was rescinding the 2019 Fred Shuttlesworth Human Rights Award it previously planned to grant to Black Power icon Angela Davis, and cancelling the annual fundraising gala where it is presented. While the BCRI did not give a specific reason for the decision, local reporting and…
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Opinion Are Jews White? American History Says It’s Complicated
The first time someone told me I was white, I was seven years old. Three of my friends, all of them light-skinned black kids like me, taunted me in the schoolyard after my father dropped me off. “That’s not your real dad,” they said. “He can’t be because you’re white.” I was devastated. But I…
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Opinion It’s Time To Retire The Term ‘Self-Hating Jew’
Here is my resolution, and my request, for 2019: That we banish the use of the term “self-hating Jew.” There are Jews who hate Judaism. There are Jews who may hate Israel. There are Jews who may hate other Jews. In a society that values freedom of speech, conscience and expression, that ought to be…
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Opinion Ashkenormativity? What about Israel-Centrism?
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. I first heard complaints about Ashkenormativity in March 2009, five or six years before the term was apparently coined. I was attending a conference in Chicago for young Yiddish speakers and college students interested in studying the language. While explaining how learning Yiddish as a teenager and…
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Letters Letter | I Invite All Jews To Join Me In Fighting BDS
Dear Editor, I am the New York attorney who was written up in the op-ed piece “The Surprising New Battleground” published on January 7, 2019. I am writing in response to that article. Do you know who Oliver Brown was? The name might not seem familiar to you, but in fact you probably know it…
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Opinion Can We Finally Admit That Jews Can Be Both White And Oppressed?
The discussion over whether or not European Jews are white is like the herpes of Jewish thought spaces. No one enjoys it. It makes your skin itch and crawl. And it keeps popping up out of nowhere. Although a number of Jews of color have written extensively on this issue, many Jewish people with the…
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Opinion ‘Dual Loyalty’? Nice Try. Republicans Are The Ones Using Israel As A Partisan Football
We’ve heard a lot about the anti-Semitic “dual loyalty” canard recently. The idea that Jews are more loyal to Israel and each other than they are to the country in which they live has been used to justify the mass murder of Jews since Pharaoh in the Bible. It’s something we’re sensitive about, and in…
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Opinion I Was Sexually Harassed On Bernie Sanders’ Campaign. And No One Cared.
The morning of the 2016 New York Democratic primary, a local voter named Ray came by Bernie Sanders’ South Bronx campaign headquarters where I was volunteering. He asked for a few T-shirts from the campaign. A few minutes later, in a back corner of the office where I had gone to fetch him the T-shirts,…
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Opinion Opinion | The Surprising New Battleground In the War Against Palestinian Rights: Your Local Courthouse
On November 26, 2018, a New York-based lawyer named David Abrams announced that he had filed a lawsuit against Airbnb over its decision to stop providing services in West Bank settlements. Abrams filed the lawsuit on behalf of a “Jewish-owned” Israeli corporation based in “Judea and Samaria” — more commonly known as the West Bank…
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