Opinion

• Opinion

  Where Is The Jewish Outcry On Chechnya?

  The matzah crumbs are still on the tablecloth on the dining room table. The leftover charoset still sits in the refrigerator. The haggadot from the seder still sit in a corner of the kitchen counter. The text from the haggadah cries out to us: “In every generation, a person must see himself or herself as…

  By Jeffrey K. Salkin

  3 min read
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  Opinion

  How CNN’s ‘Believer’ Smears Israel’s Ultra-Orthodox As Intolerant ‘Black Peril’

  Reza Aslan, host of the modestly named “Believer With Reza Aslan” on CNN, has rendered his verdict: “ultra-Orthodox” Jews in Israel are to the Jewish state what the mullahs were to Iran in 1979. Sensationalism isn’t entirely unexpected from a presenter who, on the segment of his show dedicated to Hinduism, focused on a sect…

  Apr 16, 2017 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  Sean Spicer Is Dangerous — Whether He’s Malevolent Or Incompentent

  Jews emerged from the Passover holiday to learn that Sean Spicer, the malaprop-spouting, reporter-bashing White House press secretary, had managed to outdo himself with a barrage of Holocaust ignorance (to put it charitably). Should we care? Yes. Though Spicer has apologized, and some of his apologists have insisted it was simply a “gaffe,” in fact…

  By Jay Michaelson Apr 16, 2017 | 4 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

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  Opinion

  Could Temple Mount Feud Unleash Netanyahu’s Worst Crisis Ever?

  Passover came early to Jerusalem this year when a group of Jewish religious nationalists gathered in the Old City of Jerusalem on April 6 for a live re-enactment of the original, biblical holiday ritual: sacrificing a lamb. Hundreds gathered in the Jewish Quarter to watch barefoot, white-robed priests slaughter, skin and roast a lamb on…

  By J.J. Goldberg Apr 15, 2017 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  Why Jews Should Go Fur-Free

  As Jews, our faith teaches us that having mercy and empathy for animals, and recognizing that they are also able to suffer and feel pain, fear and despair, is a gift from God. Tsa’ar ba’alei chayim is the gift of compassion and enlightenment and of treating animals, with whom we share this world, with dignity…

  By Sandra Iseman Apr 14, 2017 | 2 min read
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  Opinion

  Spicer’s Holocaust Insult Just Trump’s Latest Jab At Jews

  Earlier this week, Jews throughout the world gathered around dining room tables with family and friends to celebrate Passover. At the Seder meal, participants are made to feel they were slaves in Egypt by recalling one of humanity’s fundamental stories about freedom from oppression. The ancient Exodus story serves to remind us of the ongoing…

  By Mathew S. Nosanchuk Apr 14, 2017 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  How Trump Served Us An Extra Helping Of Fear This Passover

  Rosa spent five years of her young life being hunted by the Nazis and their accomplices in Eastern Europe. When Nazi troops entered her native town of Lublin, Poland, in 1939, she escaped to Ukraine. Along with her sister and an in-law, she then fled the Kolomiia ghetto in south-western Ukraine in 1941. Many others…

  By Jared McBride Apr 13, 2017 | 5 min read
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  Opinion

  Why Can’t This White House Get The Holocaust Right?

  (JTA) — We interrupt this Passover to bring you two news bulletins: Bashar Assad is worse than Hitler. The “Soup Nazi” was almost a real Nazi. Let’s start with the second revelation, since Sean Spicer’s Hitler gaffe about Hitler is probably better known. Entertainment Weekly reported that, according to a former writer-producer for the sitcom…

  By Andrew Silow-Carroll Apr 13, 2017 | 4 min read
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  Letters

  Letter To The Editor: Why Sean Spicer’s Holocaust Gaffe Should So Worry Jews

  Trump administration Press Secretary Spicer’s recent Holocaust gaffe seemed an honest mistake, and that’s what, as a Jew, worries me most. In condemning Syria’s President Assad, Spicer somehow said, “even Hitler didn’t gas his own people.” Spicer’s statement reinforced Hitler’s narrative that the German Jews were not, in fact, “his own people,” that their citizenship…

  By David Nurenberg Apr 13, 2017 | < 1 min read
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  Opinion

  How The Shunned Jews Of Egypt Found A Warm Welcome In Brazil

  I am an immigrant. In fact, if you consider that adjusting to new habits, embracing new cultures, learning new languages, and adapting to different ways of life are all part of the immigration experience, I have emigrated three times. I have lived in four countries on four continents — Egypt, Brazil, France, and the United…

  By Jacques Sardas Apr 13, 2017 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  Grave Matter: Rising Sea Levels Threaten Jewish Cemeteries

  It is for Shmuel ben Shimson and Pauline Bernstein, among others, that I am marching. Shimshon lived in Italy in the 14th century, Pauline in Texas in the 19th. Though their lives were separated by centuries and by thousands of miles, they have something in common: They are buried in Jewish cemeteries that are threatened…

  By Ben Orlove Apr 13, 2017 | 3 min read