Opinion

• Opinion

  Is It Anti-Semitic To Schedule Something On Yom Kippur?

  Have Your Say is your chance to tell us what you think. This week, we asked you if it’s anti-Semitic to schedule something on Yom Kippur. Here are some of your answers: “If there is a significant specific population and if the event is likely to be of interest or concern to that population, then…

  4 min read
• 
  Opinion

  Yom Kippur Made Me An Atheist

  Yom Kippur made me an atheist. Or at least it confirmed for me that I already was one. By age 10, it was clear to me that the persona of a God that punishes the wicked and rewards the good — and the corresponding High Holiday liturgy — was a false explanation of how the…

  By Paul Golin Sep 28, 2017 | 4 min read
• 
  Opinion

  The Secret Friendship Behind Israel’s Support Of Kurdish Independence

  “We have no friends but the mountains,” is an old Kurdish saying. No friends but the mountains — and Israel — is the reality. There is a deep affinity between Israel and the Kurds. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was alone among world leaders when he endorsed Kurds preparing to vote in an independence referendum….

  By Michael Goldfarb Sep 28, 2017 | 5 min read

Columnists View All

• Jodi Rudoren This is my last column as editor of the Forward

  

• Jay Michaelson Being Jewish in America today feels like walking multiple tightropes at once

  

• Rob Eshman The righteous rabbis protesting those immigration raids in Los Angeles

  

• Nora Berman For new parents, the aid crisis in Gaza is hitting hard

  

• Dan Perry Don’t be grateful two hostages’ bodies were recovered. Be furious.

  

• Emily Tamkin The two things I fear most after the horrifying attack on Jews in Boulder

  

The Latest

• 
  Opinion

  I Spent The Past Year Bailing People Out Of Jail. This Is My Prayer

  The journey to “The Boat” — a prison barge floating in the East River of New York City — is long. The Bx6 bus winds through the most industrial parts of Hunts Point. I get off at the head of a road flanked on either side by a wastewater treatment facility and the fish market….

  By Rachel Davidson Sep 27, 2017 | 4 min read
• 
  Opinion

  When Roy Moore Compared Gay Marriage To The Holocaust

  Roy Moore has won a primary election to run as the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate from Alabama. Two years ago, he compared gay marriage to the Holocaust to explain why he refused to accept a Supreme Court decision on the issue. If you’d even consider asking “What’s the difference?” between Nazi Germany’s systematic murder…

  By Larisa Thomason Sep 27, 2017 | 3 min read
• 
  Opinion

  Bernie Sanders Should Just Keep His Mouth Shut On The High Holidays

  Last week, Bernie Sanders gave a much-touted foreign policy speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, the same location where Winston Churchill delivered his famous “Iron Curtain” address in 1946. The contents of the speech were intriguing. So was its timing. Sanders delivered it on the first day of Rosh Hashanah. This has become a…

  By Peter Beinart Sep 27, 2017 | 3 min read
• 
  Opinion

  How Israel Got It Right On Monuments

  On Tel Aviv’s Frishman Beach stands a statue of Israel’s founding father, David Ben Gurion — on its head. Wearing only blue briefs branded ‘Tel Aviv’, Israel’s first prime minister performs a handstand in the sand in the iconic pose made famous in a photograph from 1955. This flippant tribute to Ben Gurion is the…

  By Eylon A. Levy Sep 27, 2017 | 5 min read
• 
  Opinion

  As a Soviet Jew, Yom Kippur Makes Me Feel Like An Outsider

  For many years, I had my own personal tradition that I would observe on Yom Kippur. The day before, I would go to the big supermarket in our neighborhood in Southern Jerusalem and buy myself a watermelon. On the morning of Yom Kippur, I would split the watermelon in half, and declare the official beginning…

  By Tanya Mozias Slavin Sep 27, 2017 | 4 min read
• 
  Opinion

  The Campus Israel Wars Are Not About Israel

  Last month, American parents across the country drove their daughters and sons to college to begin a new academic year. These parents had little to temper their excitement and optimism, except maybe some concerns about costs, or academic performance, or perhaps their beloved offspring’s choice of extra-curricular activities. American Jewish parents, however, were not quite…

  By Daniel Kohn Sep 27, 2017 | 6 min read
• 
  Opinion

  Israel Has Created A Palestinian Ghetto In Hebron

  A small group of children stand behind the fence in the early morning. They are waiting for the gate to be unlocked. In their hands are empty plastic jugs their mothers have given them to fill for the day’s cooking needs. The gate is supposed to be unlocked every day at 6 a.m. But this…

  By Issa Amro Sep 27, 2017 | 4 min read
• 
  Opinion

  Israeli Weapons Are Being Used To Ethnically Cleanse The Rohingya. This Must Stop.

  As hundreds of thousands of Rohingya people are expelled from their homes in Myanmar in one of the most severe examples of ethnic cleansing in recent times, Myanmar has been getting weapons, military training, and skills from a dismaying source: Israel. I’m not the only one who feels dismay that the Jewish State is allowing…

  By Matthew Gindin Sep 26, 2017 | 4 min read