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
The Disturbing Alliance Between Zionists And Anti-Semites
Between the congressional hearing for David Friedman, the visit of Benjamin Netanyahu and President Trump’s refusal to address the rising tide of anti-Semitism, it’s been a tense time within the American Jewish community. For those on the right, Trump’s abandonment of the two-state solution, much like Friedman’s nomination, comes as an assurance that the new…
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Opinion What A 19th-Century Educator Taught Me About Jewish Home Schooling In Age Of Betsy DeVos
The contentious confirmation of Betsy DeVos as education secretary provoked a fair number of outraged folks to threaten to exercise their own right to school choice and home-school their children. Timing-wise, this announcement coincided with Orthodox Jewish parents starting to get their tuition bills for the next school year. One friend in New York City,…
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Opinion ADL Head: Speak Up Now Against Anti-Semitism, Mister President
Let’s be clear at the outset: I do not believe that President Trump is an anti-Semite. When he talks lovingly about his Jewish daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren; when he refers to his many lifelong Jewish associates and friends and to the Jewish individuals he has appointed, there is no reason to question his sincerity. These…
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Opinion Is Donald Trump’s Presidency Stillborn?
New presidents routinely suffer through hiccups, flubs and faux pas. Remember when Barack Obama mishandled the Henry Louis Gates arrest not long after his election? The president publicly charged a Cambridge, Massachusetts, cop who arrested the esteemed African-American historian for disorderly conduct w for acting “stupidly.” It may have been true, but Obama’s ill-advised comment…
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Opinion It’s Time For Republican Senators To Stand Up To Trump
President Donald J. Trump is a race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot. A delusional narcissist. An orange-faced windbag. President Trump is a megalomaniac strongman with a relentless focus on dividing Americans. A sniveling coward and a pathological liar. President Trump bragged about preying upon women. He has shown complete disregard for common decency. He opts to mock…
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Opinion What Will It Take For Donald Trump To Condemn Anti-Semitism?
I take Donald Trump at his word that he is not an anti-Semite. But he is a serial enabler of anti-Semitism. During the presidential campaign, he hesitated before condemning neo-Nazi and former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. He retweeted white supremacist postings. He hired the head of Breitbart News (a vehicle for “alt-right” white…
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Opinion Will The Real David Friedman Please Stand Up?
In pre-Trump Washington, a man like David Friedman would never have come before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as a nominee to be ambassador to Israel. Not after he insulted, in writing, a sitting U.S. president; many members of the Senate, including the Democratic Minority leader; top officials of Jewish organizations, and the entire State…
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Opinion Fox News’ Todd Starnes Redefines ‘The Deplorables’
In his new book, The Deplorables’ Guide to Making America Great Again, Fox News host and radio talker Todd Starnes proudly declares himself an “irredeemable deplorable.” He writes (with characteristic humor and directness), “Mrs. Clinton matter-of-factly dubbed half of Donald Trump’s supporters a bunch of xenophobic, homophobic, Islamophobic bigots. I’m surprised she didn’t say we…
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Opinion Unreality Show: Netanyahu And Trump Struggle With The Truth
At a White House press conference yesterday, President Trump had the opportunity to lend his administration’s support to decades of American foreign policy in favor of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He didn’t. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, standing next to him, could have expressed his sympathy to American Jews experiencing heightened anti-Semitism…
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Opinion Unholy Land: Young Democrats Are Spurning Israel for Good Reason
“My landscape wasn’t the Negev wilderness, or the Galilean hills, or the coastal plain of ancient Philistia; it was industrial, immigrant America—Newark,” declares Nathan Zuckerman, Philip Roth’s alter-ego, in the 1986 fictional masterpiece, “The Counterlife.” Like Nathan, the American reckoning with his Jewish identity, I have always struggled to hold Israel in the same esteem…
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Opinion ‘Kapo’ is the Jewish N-Word
I was an angry, hormonal 11-year old when I asked my mother why a family we were friendly with had so many grandparents, aunts, and uncles, when all we had were three aunts and a few cousins. The parents of that family had – like my parents – survived the Holocaust. But they had somehow…
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