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 and Why Tribes Are Taking Over
The world is going to hell, and it turns out Jean-Paul Sartre almost got it right. Sartre’s wartime play, “No Exit,” starts like a lame joke: a pacifist, a lesbian and a murderer die and go to hell. But the cruel joke is on them. There are no corporeal flames, only a conscious inferno: the…
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Opinion 50 Things To Fear From the Trump Administration
Looking toward 2017 can be overwhelming. The coming Trump administration presents so many potential risks, it’s hard to know which to feel anxious about. When I feel overwhelmed, I find that it helps to make lists. Here, then, in a rough order of danger, but also grouped by category, are 50 things for American Jews…
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Opinion ‘Jewish Youth, Learn To Shoot’?
In the communities I sing and pray with, Hanukkah is all about light, freedom and hope. Not so much about war. That was the choice of the ancient rabbis too. Instead of writing about the Maccabees’ war against the Hellenists, the Talmud chose to tell us only one thing: there was a miracle when oil…
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Opinion Intermarriage Will Shape a New American Judaism
When Rabbi Seymour Rosenbloom, a retired rabbi from Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, performed an intermarriage ceremony for his stepdaughter and her fiancé in 2014 more than a glass got shattered at the end of the wedding ceremony. Rabbi Rosenbloom’s membership in the Rabbinical Assembly wound up in pieces as well. In December 2016, the rabbinical body…
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Opinion The Top 10 Scribe Stories of 2016
2016 is almost behind us — and what a year it’s been for Scribe, the Forward’s contributor network. Since launching in July, nearly 250 contributors from 6 continents have shared their insightful, inspirational, and impactful stories, providing a 360 degree view of the world around us. Our Scribes not only come from all over the…
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Opinion What Progressive Jews Can Learn From David Friedman and Dani Dayan
In the northeast part of the settlement of Beit El, there is a building bearing the name of the newly appointed American ambassador to Israel — David Friedman. The Friedman edifice is located on the grounds of a girls’ high school (Ulpana), which was built in the late 1990s on privately owned Palestinian land from…
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Letters How You Can Help Us Help Refugees, From Syria and Beyond
In her recent piece, “Our Great Moral Failure in Syria,” Forward Editor-in-Chief Jane Eisner calls attention to the American Jewish community for “inexcusably turning our backs on those in need” in Syria. Like Eisner, we are all grappling with the unconscionable amount of death, suffering and displacement we’ve witnessed in Syria over the past few…
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Opinion Was John Kerry’s Speech a Swan Song to Israel — or a Last Gasp Peace Push?
There are two ways to interpret the speech (text here, video here) that Secretary of State John Kerry delivered December 28 on his vision of Israeli-Palestinian peace. One interpretation is that it was his swan song, his angry farewell to the global community and the Middle East that he tried to reshape, Through four years…
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Opinion After UN Resolution, This #NeverTrump Conservative Is Wondering If Donald Is So Bad After All
At the conclusion of his second term as President, there are many areas of the world to which President Obama could have directed his attention. From Chinese and Russian cyber-warfare to the human rights catastrophe taking place in Syria, the world doesn’t lack opportunities for leadership from the leader of the free world. So where…
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Opinion Actually, This UN Resolution Is Much Better Than 71 Others the U.S. Allowed To Pass
There’s not much that’s new or remarkable in that new resolution from the United Nations Security Council (text here) condemning Israel’s West Bank settlements as illegal. You might call that very fact remarkable — that the resolution is so unremarkable — given all the fuss the resolution has stirred up. Surely with all that smoke…
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Opinion Why Obama’s Failure To Veto U.N. Resolution Was Bad for America
President Obama’s stinging December 23 refusal to veto a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements as a “flagrant violation of international law” did more than just excite enraged claims that America abandoned Israel or stabbed it in the back. In departing from the custom of every American administration of the last four decades, Obama…
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