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
How Israel’s Temple Mount Crisis Became A Showdown — Between Government And Generals
On Saturday evening, July 22, the eighth day of the Temple Mount crisis, Israel’s education minister Naftali Bennett, head of the religious-nationalist Jewish Home party, made a condolence visit to the family that had lost three of its members in a horrific stabbing attack the day before. It was not exactly a shiva call, as…
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Opinion Let My People Pray At The Temple Mount — It Will Teach Palestinians A Lesson
This past Wednesday, I ascended to the Temple Mount, as I have done many scores of times, and, following the police security check, was permitted to enter the compound Muslims call the Haram A-Sharif, the Noble Sanctuary. The precincts were empty, totally so. I did not see more than a half-dozen Muslims there, except for…
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Opinion WTF: Why Don’t Some Observant Jews Carry Umbrellas On Shabbat?
I’m not a rabbi, nor am I an expert on Jewish law by any means — but I have been a practicing Modern Orthodox Jew for my entire adult life. As one of the few Orthodox Jews working at the beautifully pluralistic Forward, I often become the go-to gal for questions of religious custom and…
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Opinion The West’s Response To Hungary Affects The Future Of Europe — And Its Jews
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went to Budapest earlier this week and got out of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán a promise that, to paraphrase Susan Sontag, never again will Hungarians be allowed to kill Jews in the 1940s. The government of Hungary committed a “sin” when “it did not protect its citizens of Jewish…
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Opinion 4 Things I Learned About Jews This Summer
When I was first told that my internship program was placing me at the Forward, I was apprehensive, to say the least. What would I, an atheist college student from Iowa whose experience with Jews was almost non-existent, have to offer to a Jewish publication that I had never heard of, never mind read? What…
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Opinion Trump’s Bibi-Esque Iran Policy Shows The Right’s Allergy To Diplomacy
Of the three immense embarrassments that befell the Trump presidency in mid-July, two were the fault of Trump’s aides and allies. The third was entirely his own doing. The difference is telling, and it’s critical that we understand it. The first two embarrassments — Donald Trump Jr.’s Russia meeting and Congress’s failure to repeal Obamacare…
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Opinion Why Is Bibi Aligning Israel With An Anti-Semitic Populist Who Demonizes George Soros?
When Benjamin Netanyahu begins an official visit to Hungary today, he will mark one of the most remarkable alliances in world politics: The alliance between a prime minister of the Jewish state and a group of would-be authoritarians who exploit anti-Semitism for political gain. Welcoming Netanyahu in Budapest will be Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who…
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Opinion Jane Looking Forward: From Gaza To Shoes And Shakespeare
Gaza. It’s the four-letter word of the Middle East. Nobody wants to say it. Nobody wants to think about it. Yet the contentious strip of land controlled by Hamas issued last week described living conditions as “more and more wretched” and predicted that the coastal enclave would become unlivable as soon as 2020. Electricity is…
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Opinion ‘Liberal’ Jews Are Just As Judgmental As The Orthodox Behind The Kotel Decision
Like most of my fellow liberal Jews, I find it deplorable that the Israeli government reneged on a deal for egalitarian prayer at the Western Wall. I’m also feeling something that others probably aren’t, though: hope for a lesson learned about liberal Judaism’s own walls. What the Orthodox Chief Rabbinate is doing to the liberal…
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Opinion When Is It Okay To Call Someone A Nazi?
The question isn’t really who has called someone else a Nazi, but who hasn’t. After decades of work educating young people about the awful history of the Nazi regime, we now reside in a world where every 7th grader (including myself, once upon a time) calls their teacher a Nazi, and where literally thousands of…
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Opinion What Would Jane Austen Tell Us About Marriage Today?
Jane Austen wrote her legendary novels on a small, twelve-sided walnut table situated by a window near the rarely used front door of her family’s cottage in the English village of Chawton. She used a quill pen with ink she may have made herself, on small sheets of writing paper that could easily be shielded…
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