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
Commentary’s Race Baiting Of Blacks And Jews Is So 1963. Literally.
A few weeks ago, I chastised journalist and progressive activist Shaun King for perpetuating a false binary between Blacks and Jews that erases my identity as a Black Jew. Just two weeks later, the conservative magazine Commentary did the exact same thing. On Friday, Commentary published a shockingly tone-deaf and inflammatory cover that screamed, “African…
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Opinion Israel Made A Huge Mistake. Trump Is Terrible For The Jews
A recent poll found that three out of four Israelis approve of U.S. President Donald Trump’s handling of U.S.-Israel relations, while nearly 60% of American Jews disapprove of it. In the wake of these results, an Israeli colleague asked me: Is it possible that Israelis are right? That Trump is actually good for Israel? It’s…
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Opinion We’re In A State Of Moral Emergency. Jews Must Join The Fight.
I firmly believe that fighting for the human rights of immigrants and refugees is the moral responsibility of every single U.S. citizen. Recognizing this inalienable truth — that protecting the most vulnerable among us is our collective duty — has never been more urgent. The Jewish story is also one of immigration and of forced…
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Opinion Letter To An Israeli-Jewish Friend
Forty years ago, Hillel Halkin wrote a powerful defense of Zionism in the guise of letters to an imaginary American friend. This year, Yossi Klein Halevi published what has become a best-selling book framed as letters to an imaginary Palestinian neighbor. I wouldn’t be so presumptuous as to mimic the skill and impact these two…
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Opinion How The GOP Hacked Orthodox Jews
Last week saw a number of horrifying spectacles. Jeff Sessions, the attorney general, overturned asylum protections for domestic violence and gang violence victims while also quoting the New Testament to justify separating illegal immigrant parents from their children. As if that weren’t bad enough, Corey Stewart, a fervent praiser of white nationalists, won his GOP…
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Opinion Jeff Sessions Is Right About Biblical Precedent. He’s Pharaoh
Yesterday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders defended the current administration’s policy of separating immigrant families at the border as “Biblical.” Sessions referred specifically to Romans 13 in the New Testament, but Sanders later claimed that it is “very biblical to enforce the law,” and that this “is actually…
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Opinion How Important Are The Meanings Of Jewish Names?
In a previous piece in these pages, I discussed the importance of the semantics of traditional Jewish female names. In various countries, Jewish women have often had personal names with pleasant meanings in their local, everyday language. At first glance, that doesn’t seem to be the case for Jewish men. Indeed, since at least the…
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Letters Liberal American Jews Have A Right To Celebrate Israel
In their response to my recent piece, “The Loneliness of the Liberal Zionist,” Harry Reis and Yoav Schaefer have argued that Israel bears responsibility for the decline (if not death) of liberal Zionism as a viable future path for the Jewish state. Because of five decades of occupation, unremitting settlement expansion beyond the Green Line,…
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Opinion The Rebbe Lives On, 24 Years After His Death
I was almost 15 that night in June 1994 when we received the devastating news of the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s passing. It was Saturday night; I had spent Shabbat in Manhattan along with hundreds of others camping in and around Beth Israel Hospital, hoping and praying to hear of an improvement in the Rebbe’s condition. I…
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Opinion When Did The Orthodox Community Become So Anti-Immigrant?
In March, a friend of mine posted an article that appeared in these pages about Orthodox Jewish families who hired drivers to take their undocumented workers to Florida for Passover. The families subjected the workers to long and arduous journeys, risking their deportation so that they could have help for the holiday. The friend who…
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Opinion The OU Should Stick To Kosher Laws – Or Become Treif
The Orthodox Union has a branding problem. This week, Attorney General Jeff Sessions spoke at their Advocacy Center’s annual Leadership Mission, amid protests over the policy, which Sessions created and presides over, of separating masses of children from their parents at the United States border. At the OU conference, Sessions enthusiastically endorsed the Supreme Court’s…
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