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.
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
It’s no secret that American Jews and their Israeli counterparts have less in common with every passing day. But where you locate the source of that chasm depends on which side of the Atlantic you’re standing on. For American Jews, Israel’s dispossession of Palestinian civil rights, the monopoly of the ultra-Orthodox over religious matters, and…
At a Hanukkah party on Sunday night, Congresswoman-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez shared that “generations and generations ago, my family consisted of Sephardic Jews.” In doing so, she publicly joined a vast community of people, including my family, in embracing the space where Jewish and Latinx identities intersect. It is a story that, sadly, has long sat…
It’s the age of identity on the left. But the lines of what that entails change daily. On one hand, your identity at birth is paramount. Intersectionality could not exist without it. Your sex, your race, your religion, your sexuality, it all plays a part in what claim to victimhood you can stake. On the…
American Jewish life is witnessing a transformation. A new perspective, informed by intersectionality, inclusion and other left values, is replacing the old one marked by matrilineal heritage and religious ritual. On topics ranging from who is a Jew to where to stand on Israel to what policies domestically Jews should support, young American Jews are…
It happens at least once every semester: a student learns that I teach courses in Jewish studies at my university here in southeast Texas and comes to visit me during my office hours. In most cases, I have never met this student before, and at first, the conversation is hesitant, as if the student lacks…
It started off like a fable, the two young princelings, one Jewish and one Arab, both modern and polished, both believing themselves to be their kingdoms great modernizers. But of course, it turned out to be something much more sinister. The bromance between Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son in law, and Mohammed bin Salman, the…
President Trump’s two Hannukah addresses at the annual White House Hannukah Party included a number of moving tributes, one to a group of Holocaust survivors and a second to the Jews he calls family – Ivanka and Jared Kushner. He also issued a shocking insinuation that America was not the home of its Jewish citizens….
Several weeks ago, the Forward hosted a symposium about being Jewish in America in the wake of the Pittsburgh massacre. If I’m being honest, some of the responses annoyed me; we aren’t living in 1930s Europe, or 1900s Poland, or 1490s Spain. There is no need to keep bags packed waiting for a pogrom; we…
This Wednesday, Lena Dunham, creator of the HBO series “Girls,” published an open letter in which she apologized for lying to discredit a rape survivor. In November 2017, Aurora Perrineau, a biracial black woman, filed a police report claiming that “Girls” writer Murray Miller raped her when she was 17 — and he was 35….
Last weekend, while her father President Trump was wandering around the stage looking longingly at the blossoming friendship between Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman and Vladimir Putin, Ivanka Trump was pressing the flesh at this year’s G-20 summit in Argentina. But it’s hard not to notice that the president’s favorite female has certainly been…
CNN’s recent decision to sever ties with Marc Lamont Hill following his controversial speech at the UN in late November triggered a veritable tsunami of critical commentary. The furious reactions by Hill’s supporters reflected the widely-held conviction that he should be applauded for his passionate advocacy for Palestinian rights and that his critics were trying…
אין דעם קאַפּיטל וועט איר הערן וועגן דעם ערשטן מאָל וואָס משהלע אַלפֿאָנסאָ האָט געטראָגן אַ יאַרמלקע אויף דער באַן.
הײַיאָר האָט מען אָפּגעגעבן כּבֿוד די ייִדישע פּאַרשױנען פֿונעם פֿאָלקלאָר פֿון דער אָרטיקער קהילה.
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