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
Meet the Progressive Russian Immigrants Fighting Trump — and Their Own Families
Emblazoned in handwritten Cyrillic on Olga Tomchin’s back is a word that has come to embody so much more than its literal definition. Pozor, Russian for “disgrace” (or shanda in Yiddish) has become a rallying cry for a movement of Soviet-born millennials defying their families’ ideologies and banding together in opposition to Donald Trump. Like…
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Opinion Jews Who Attack Jared Kushner And Ivanka Trump Should Cut The Hypocrisy
Last week, several CNN commentators, including Don Lemon and Alan Dershowitz, wondered aloud whether Donald Trump’s poorly executed executive order on immigration was caused because of Shabbat. Specifically, the panelists posited that Trump’s son-in-law and close adviser, Jared Kushner, an Orthodox Jew who observes Shabbat, might not have been able to properly vet the order…
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Opinion Terms of Endearment: What Should We Call Our Grandmothers?
In a recent essay in the Forward, new grandmother Rukhl Schaechter wrote of her fondness for being called “Bubbe,” the Yiddish term for grandmother. But Schaechter lamented that “the B-word” is now “seen as a vestige of a previous era, causing modern, educated women to run the other way.” Beyond Jewish-specific titles for grandmothers to…
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Letters Letter to the Editor: My Bond to My Israel Bonds Is Broken
I write this letter with sadness and a heavy heart. My 5-year Israel Bond came due on February 1. Over the past few months, I have been deliberating whether or not to renew the bond, as I have done for decades. I have decided not to renew, as I cannot support the current Israeli government…
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Opinion On My Morning Walk, Chalk Messages Mark Path of Hope for Immigrants to City College
Every morning when I walk my son Teddy to the subway station at the corner of St. Nicholas Avenue and 145th Street in our Hamilton Heights neighborhood in Harlem, we pass a sea of young men and woman making their way from the trains toward City College. Founded as the Free Academy of the City…
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Opinion An Impatient and Uninformed Electorate Dooms America To Repeat History
Those who don’t learn from history, as the saying goes, are doomed to repeat it. This is not just a cliché, as evidenced by the election of Donald Trump. It has happened so many times in history: A nation encounters difficulties, economic woes, wars, demographic changes, usually brought about by an incompetent or misguided leadership….
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Opinion How Trump Empowers White Supremacists and Jihadis Alike
Two actions by the Trump administration, intended to make us safer, instead leave us more vulnerable to attack. The administration reportedly wants to rename the federal Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) task force as Countering Islamic Extremism or Countering Radical Islamic Extremism. Doing so would empower white supremacists and jihadis alike. This follows the Executive Order…
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Opinion It’s the Jewish Way To Demand Facts Amid Trump’s Barrage of Fake News
My word of the year for 2017 is “evidence.” It’s become clear that among the Trump administration’s assaults on Muslims, Mexicans, Australians (who saw that coming?), the environment, public education, health care, women and Jews, one of its most pervasive attacks has been against the notion of truth itself. It’s as if this administration is…
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Opinion Destroying the Johnson Amendment Moves America Closer to Theocracy
Nothing threatens Jews more than theocracy. When powerful regimes have tried to impose their beliefs on religious minorities, we’ve ended up expelled (The Spanish Inquisition), dead (The Crusades) or coerced into conversion (The Almohad Caliphate in Morocco). It’s no less true today than it was in 1492: every single brick removed from the American wall…
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Opinion Last Week in Anti-Semitism: A Jew-Free Holocaust and White Supremacist Memes
The Forward plans to regularly monitor the surge of anti-Semitism in many parts of the country and the world. The mission of this column is not to unduly alarm, but rather to raise awareness of a disturbing trend that, from some vantage points, can prove difficult to spot. 1.The Trump White House erased Jews from…
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Opinion Report From the Road: Can America’s Squabbling Jews Still Listen to Each Other?
A bitter wind is coursing through the corridors and alleyways of American Jewry. Across the country, wherever they gather, Jews seem anxious and afraid. They’re afraid for America. They’re afraid for Israel. And, to an alarming degree, they’re afraid of each other. That’s the impression I’m left with after visiting Jewish communities in about two…
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Fast Forward Unarmed man who tackled Bondi Beach Hanukkah attacker identified as Ahmed al-Ahmed
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Fast Forward After MIT professor’s killing, Jewish influencers spread unverified antisemitism claim
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Opinion I grew up believing Australia was the best place to be Jewish. This Hanukkah shooting forces a reckoning I do not want.
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Opinion When my children decorate for Hanukkah, I don’t just see pride. I see pluralism in action.
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