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
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
Columnists View All
The Latest
-
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,…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
Opinion How Israel Killed Liberal Zionism
Whether liberal Zionism is a dead letter or merely on the ropes remains an open question. Jarrod Tanny’s recent piece on “The Loneliness of Liberal Zionism” is the latest salvo in this ongoing debate. Liberal Zionists, Tanny tells us, are attacked from both the anti-Zionist left and the right, “forced to wage war on two…
-
Opinion Camp Ramah Promised Change. Then It Broke Our Hearts.
On March 22, following months of gathering testimonies and public campaigning urging Ramah and other Jewish summer camps to talk about the Occupation and include Palestinian perspectives, we — alumni of six Ramah camps and members of IfNotNow— had the opportunity to sit down with National Ramah Commission Director Rabbi Mitch Cohen to share our…
-
Opinion The Angry Left Is Turning Me Into A Trump Supporter
During the election, the deluge of hate that came my way when I expressed my disapproval of then-candidate Donald Trump was so violent that I purchased a gun. But these days, the vitriol is coming from the other side. Chance the Rapper, for example, was was eviscerated online for suggesting that “Black people don’t have…
-
Opinion No, We Don’t Have To Be Friends With Trump Supporters
On Monday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a ruling that would change the course of American asylum policy: the closing of America’s doors to those escaping domestic violence and gang violence. Asylum seekers from Central America and elsewhere else, fleeing desperate conditions and frequently in terror for their lives, are now officially unwelcome. Coupled with…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
Exclusive Mahmoud Khalil wants to reassure you
- 2
Culture In 1989, Harold Pinter and Jerry Schatzberg made the perfect Holocaust movie for 2026
- 3
Culture 70 years ago, this Jewish choreographer predicted our epidemic of loneliness and isolation
- 4
Opinion Trump is backed into a corner on Iran. Get ready for him to start blaming Jews
In Case You Missed It
-
News Atlanta movie exec who complained of ‘nasty Jews’ is running for Congress
-
Books A new book explores the vibrancy of pre-war Warsaw
-
Opinion Mahmoud Khalil’s anti-Zionist case to Jews shows the case for skepticism
-
Opinion Mahmoud Khalil’s reassurances are bad for Jews but even worse for Palestinians
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
