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
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Opinion
Our Synagogue’s Custodian Is A Member Of Our Family – And ICE Just Deported Him
A week before the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer told him he was going to a detention facility, Armando, our synagogue’s custodian for two decades, had come in to work on President’s Day to be there for my family as we held a small service to celebrate my son’s upcoming bar mitzvah. Afterwards, as we…
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Opinion Aaron Schlossberg Goes Viral — And Reminds Us To Respect Others
Welcome to a special abbreviated edition of Jane Looking Forward. For those of you who celebrated, I hope you had a lovely and meaningful Shavuot. If you wish to continue reading this weekly newsletter, please subscribe here. And spread the word! A man walks into a New York restaurant. He hears workers speaking Spanish. He…
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Letters Scott Wallace Says He Is ‘J Street Democrat’ — And Opposes BDS
To the editor, I was surprised and disappointed to see that the Forward published an article incorrectly characterizing me as a supporter of the BDS movement. I do not support the BDS movement and never have. I disavow it. The grants in question were made from an account in the foundation that was assigned to…
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Opinion Violent Anti-Semitism Is Gripping Ukraine — And The Government Is Standing Idly By
A wave of anti-Semitism has swept over Ukraine. In the past three weeks alone, a far-right leader publicly called for cleansing Ukraine of zhidi (a slur equivalent to “kike”); a Holocaust memorial in Ternopil was bombed; hundreds marched through Lviv, in honor of an SS unit, complete with Nazi salutes; “Death to Zhidi” graffiti was…
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Letters Deborah Lipstadt On Her Comments About Jordan Peterson
To the Forward: Last week Ari Feldman interviewed me for “Is Jordan Peterson Enabling Jew Hatred?” When Feldman contacted me, I explicitly told him that I had never read Peterson’s work and knew very little about him. Throughout the interview, I repeated that point and refused to offer any assessment of the work itself because…
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Opinion What’s Next After Bloodshed In Gaza?
You can find some of our other opinions about the conflict in Gaza here and here. Sixty Palestinians in Gaza were killed by Israel in one day this week, along with over 2,400 injured. As each day passes, the public justifications for their deaths have grown louder and louder: that the killed were members of…
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Opinion These Days, We Jews Have To Call Each Other Out – Because No One Else Will
Nearly forty-one years ago, a letter sorter for the U.S. Postal Service was arrested. He’d shot and killed six people, and wounded nine others in New York City. Among those upset by the arrest in 1977 were Jews, because the perpetrator was one of their own. His name was David Berkowitz, or as he signed…
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Opinion The Racism Of Blaming Palestinians For Their Own Deaths
On May 14, Israeli soldiers shot and killed 60 Palestinians and wounded over 2,500 while they were demonstrating inside Gaza. That fact is not in dispute. But according to Matti Friedman, a Canadian-Israeli author who lives in Jerusalem, neither the snipers who chose their targets and pulled the triggers nor the officers who ordered them…
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Opinion Why We Still Need Intersectionality
Intersectionality is fundamentally broken. It has failed Jews — not by accident, by design — and should be abandoned as a model for achieving equality. So argues Batya Ungar-Sargon in her recent opinion piece, “Intersectionality Has Abandoned Jews. Should Jews Abandon Intersectionality?” in The Forward. The latter point, I will concede. Those using intersectionality as…
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Opinion Memo To The World: Israel And Hamas Are Both To Blame For Carnage In Gaza
Last Monday, Israel’s security forces faced off against 40,000 angry Gazans. Some were armed. All were incited by Hamas to tear down the fence separating Gaza from Israel and implement en masse the sacred principle of “return.” And though the majority kept their distance, time and again groups of young men would approach the fence,…
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Opinion Why On Earth Is Ivanka Being Blamed For Bloodshed In Gaza?
The day after the dedication of the embassy in Jerusalem, the cover of the New York Daily News featured a front page photo of Ivanka Trump with the caption “Daddy’s Little Ghoul: 55 slaughtered in Gaza, but Ivanka all smiles at embassy unveil.” The headline implied two things: first, that she was responsible for the…
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News Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s selection as JTS commencement speaker roils graduating class
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Sports NBA coach Steve Kerr: ‘Israel sought revenge for Oct. 7 and now 72,000 Palestinians have been killed’
In Case You Missed It
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Antisemitism Decoded The great antisemitism rug pull
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Culture An Israeli genocide scholar looks to Israel’s history to understand ‘what went wrong’
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Yiddish טשיקאַוועסן: אַ ירושה פֿון 200 ייִדישע חפֿצים געפֿינט אַ הייםTidbits: An inheritance of 200 pieces of Judaica finds a home
דעבאָראַ בראָדי, אַ לערערין פֿון קינדער מיט ספּעציעלע באַדערפֿענישן, האָט זיי געלאָזט אָנטאַפּן די זאַכן.
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Opinion The new face of Holocaust denial is harder to spot — and more dangerous