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
Is This How We Defend Israel — By Firing Teachers, Lawyers and Repair Men?
The Intercept today published an account of what happened to Bahia Amawi, a speech pathologist who has worked for the last nine years with developmentally disabled, autistic and speech-impaired elementary school students. Every year since 2009, Amawi has signed a contract with a school district that includes Austin, Texas to provide assessment and support for…
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Opinion Did Jared Kushner Learn To Fail Up From Trump?
Last week, we learned that in 2016, Jared Kushner was appointed to be the new Michael Cohen. That’s when Trump made his son-in-law “the main conduit between Trump and his friend David Pecker, the National Enquirer publisher and chief executive of AMI, who prosecutors said on Wednesday admitted to making a $150,000 hush-money payment ‘in…
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Opinion Why Louis Farrakhan Can No Longer Be Excused
Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam, is an unrepentant bigot. His hatred of, and disdain for, Jews, gay men and lesbians, trans people and white people in general is consistent and unwavering. It forms the basis of his prophecy and his politics, which he will shamelessly preach to anyone who will listen. Farrakhan…
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Opinion It’s Not Just Jews. Let’s Remember The Other People Europeans Love To Hate
Some years ago, I was discussing the history of Jews in Poland with a Polish academic. He pointed out to me that while anti-Semitism has certain unique characteristics, in pre-war Poland it was part of a web of inter-ethnic conflicts that also included Ukrainians, Lithuanians, and Germans, to name a few. Timothy Snyder makes a…
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Opinion American Jews And Israelis No Longer Agree On What Anti-Semitism Is
Last week, Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu shocked Jews worldwide when his office revealed it would be working with Hungary on a museum dedicated to Holocaust revisionism. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the museum will be curated by a woman whose magazine targeted the Hungarian Jewish community’s president, András Heisler, in an anti-Semitic…
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Opinion How Did Ashkenazi Jews End Up With Famous Non-Jewish Last Names?
It’s a fact: Ashkenazi Jews often bear surnames also used by Christians. What, if anything, does that tell us? Surnames used by a population often contain clues about the historical, linguistic and cultural past of the group. Certain names reveal migration patterns, others provide clues about the occupations of the ancestors and some names provide…
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Opinion TIME’s Honor Of Brave Journalists Shows What Happens When Our Leaders Embrace Despots
As a journalist, especially as a Jewish journalist, I was gratified that TIME magazine chose to honor the members of our profession who have displayed extraordinary courage, even at the cost of their own lives, simply to do their jobs. “The Guardians” is how editor Ed Felsenthal described the group of journalists, alive and dead,…
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Opinion Can The Occupation’s Cheerleader Win Over American Jews? Q&A With Naftali Bennett
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…
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Opinion Like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, My Latinx And Jewish Histories Intersect
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…
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Opinion Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Is The Donald Trump Of The Left
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…
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Opinion Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Is All Young American Jews
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…
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News Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s selection as JTS commencement speaker roils graduating class
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Opinion How Israel became a country where teenagers murder each other in cold blood
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Sports NBA coach Steve Kerr: ‘Israel sought revenge for Oct. 7 and now 72,000 Palestinians have been killed’
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Film & TV A new documentary challenges stereotypes about Orthodox Jewish women — and their wigs
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Opinion Reform Judaism helped craft the Voting Rights Act. Its evisceration gives Jews a new mission
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Books This graphic novel illustrates the story of America’s first Jewish congregation — pirates and all
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Theater A new musical wonders: What happened to solidarity with English Jews?
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Fast Forward Support for Iran war among ‘connected’ US Jews falls again, poll finds