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
Failing To Confront Trump’s Bigotry Is a Moral Stain on Simon Wiesenthal Center — and American Jews
In the decades to come, historians of American Jewry will ask how a community that keenly remembers its own experience with state bigotry produced institutions that excused the most nakedly bigoted major party presidential nominee in modern American history. They will ask why the crowd at the policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs…
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Opinion Executing Dylann Roof Is Behind the Times and Against the Talmud
The jury’s decision to execute Dylann Roof for killing nine unarmed people in a historically black Charleston church may create its own problems for the state of South Carolina. As recently as last year, Bryan Stirling, director of the South Carolina Department of Corrections, was deprived of the means to prepare a lethal injection cocktail,…
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Opinion Paul Ryan Should Know Better Than To Make This Nazi Flub
Designers on social media enjoy going apoplectic when a famous or infamous logo is borrowed or stolen. Flagging these misuses has become a veritable pastime, like trainspotting. The designer of the recent “Paul Ryan Speaker” logo was either blind to or ignorant of the logo’s similarity to the Grosse Deutschland symbol — the national emblem…
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Opinion EXPLAINED: Could Netanyahu Be Ousted Over Talks With Sheldon Adelson’s Media Rival?
It’s a revelation that’s shaking up Israel’s political and media worlds as intensely as reports of a proposed secret deal between Donald Trump, CNN and Fox News would rock the United States. In a wide-reaching investigation by Israel Police of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, it was revealed Sunday that a tape exists of a conversation…
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Opinion What Does It Mean That Jared Kushner Might Be the Most Influential Jew in the World?
Throughout American history, there have been Jews who have held important positions in the White House as advisers to various presidents. And there have been family members of sitting presidents — wives and brothers, in particular — who have wielded enormous political power from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. But never has there been the combination reflected in…
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Opinion Obama Returns to His Chicago Jewish Roots With Audacity To Hope
With only ten days remaining in his presidency, Barack Obama will take the stage tonight back home in Chicago and bid farewell to the American people. Among those present for the speech will be Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod, two main supporters of Obama’s presidential campaigns and crucial movers in his administrations. Obama has indicated…
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Opinion Marvin Hier Must Rise Above Being ‘Donald Trump’s Rabbi’
When my children were growing up – from elementary school through high school – my wife and I frequently took them to Los Angeles’s Museum of Tolerance. I’ve also taken friends to this wonderful institution, which I consider an essential stop for out-of-town visitors. Although its roots are based in educating people about the causes…
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Opinion John Kerry’s Leaned Over Backward to Praise Israel — and the Numbers Prove It
Israel’s prime minister has claimed that John Kerry’s recent speech, given in response to U.N. Security Council Resolution 2334, was “unbalanced and anti-Israeli.” A quantitative and qualitative review of the the December 28 speech, however, shows the opposite. From the very beginning, Kerry was clearly making the case for Israel. During the speech, “Israel” received…
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Opinion Why Rabbi Marvin Hier Giving His Blessing to Trump’s Inauguration Is a Good Thing
Before last summer’s Republican National Convention, the widely esteemed Rabbi Haskel Lookstein was asked to deliver the invocation. He was reportedly honored and graciously accepted, but soon, petitions and protest led the rabbi, who served as Ivanka Trump’s sponsoring conversion rabbi, to rescind his acceptance. Despite the fact that the role has traditionally been apolitical,…
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Opinion Why Jews Must Fight for the Civil Rights of Muslims
(JTA) — As we celebrate the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr., American Jews should reflect anew upon the epic struggle he led to free African-Americans from the shackles of bigotry and take pride in the singular role played by the Jewish community in support of King and African-Americans. As we await the advent of…
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Opinion Why Jews Need To Stop Using the Word ‘Christian’ as a Slur
There is a widespread but little-mentioned problem in Judaism today: namely, the derisive dismissal of Reform Jews by the Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox. This often takes the form of slurs and insults. One of the most noxious and oft-repeated of these is the assertion that Reform Jews are not really Jews, but Christians. As a Reform…
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