Opinion

• Opinion

  It’s Time Israel Believed the Victims in the Yemenite Babies Affair

  Between 1948 and 1954, hundreds of children of immigrant families, about two thirds of them Yemenis and the rest of other Mizrahi background, disappeared from hospitals and transit camps in Israel. Parents were told that their children had died, though no bodies or death certificates were presented. Seventeen years later, many of the children received…

  By Ayelet Tsabari

  4 min read
• 
  Opinion

  Abner Mikva’s Lesson On Democracy Is More Urgent Than Ever

  I grew up four blocks away from Abner Mikva’s house in Evanston. In the late 1970s, my contact with then-Congressman Mikva was limited to trips to his house on Halloween when he or one of his family members would hand out full-size Hershey bars to the neighborhood ghosts and pirates. I appreciated his largess so…

  By John Opdycke Jul 11, 2016 | 3 min read
• 
  Books

  When Meyer Wolfsheim From ‘The Great Gatsby’ Is the Only Jewish Character You Know

  As a high school English teacher who writes poetry in her free time, I read a poem a day at the start of each class period. Last September, I read poems by Emma Lazarus, because students were going to be writing an essay about her famous sonnet “The New Colossus.” When I introduced her to…

  By Jamie Wendt Jul 11, 2016 | 4 min read

Columnists View All

• Jodi Rudoren This is my last column as editor of the Forward

  

• Jay Michaelson American Jews were played — now what?

  

• Rob Eshman A new humanitarian outrage is unfolding in the Middle East. It’s not in Gaza

  

• Nora Berman The left is turning on AOC over Israel — and imperiling its own agenda

  

• Dan Perry Actually, Trump made things between Israel and Iran way worse

  

• Emily Tamkin Zohran Mamdani’s victory proves it: The ‘gotcha’ mode of fighting antisemitism has to go

  

The Latest

• 
  Opinion

  The Flawed Legal Reasoning That Says We Shouldn’t Force Secular Studies on Hasidic Jews

  Writing in the Forward, Yitzchak Adlerstein and Michael Broyde recently argued that if New York State tried to force Satmar schools to provide an adequate secular education, the State would lose, because of a 1972 Supreme Court case, Wisconsin v. Yoder. This is a profound misreading of the case. In Yoder, the Court upheld the…

  By Dena S. Davis Jul 11, 2016 | 3 min read
• 
  Opinion

  My Hasidic Students Need You To Support Enforced Secular Education

  As a sixth-grade teacher of math and literacy at a Hasidic school in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg, I am extremely disappointed by the silence of mainstream Jewish organizations regarding a secular education bill moving through the New York State Legislature. The bill in question, introduced by Assemblywoman Ellen Jaffee, would enforce a law passed in 1928 that…

  By Yitzhak Bronstein Jul 11, 2016 | 4 min read
• 
  Opinion

  How Republicans Tried To Flip the Jewish Vote — and Created Donald Trump

  On the Shabbat morning of June 19, 1943, in a tiny upstairs shtibl in the East Bronx, my Uncle Seymour became a bar mitzvah. My grandmother had given the rabbi very specific instructions for the occasion. As Seymour walked through the congregation, bearing the Torah scrolls, the rabbi followed right behind him, holding aloft a…

  By Samuel G. Freedman Jul 10, 2016 | 21 min read
• 
  Opinion

  What Can Jews Do About Police Violence After Shootings — and Dallas?

  “Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground!” The ground this week is not East of Eden, where Cain slew Abel; it is St. Paul, Minnesota, where Philando Castile was gunned down while reaching for his ID. It is Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where Alton Sterling was shot at point-blank range, already immobilized and…

  By Jay Michaelson Jul 8, 2016 | 5 min read
• 
  Opinion

  6 Concrete Things You Can Do To Help End Police Brutality

  Two men who were alive on Monday are dead. Two men who were alive on Monday are dead, and they are dead because officers participating in a systemically broken police establishment encountered them as black men and made the decision to take their lives. The deaths of Alton Sterling and Philandro Castile join the ongoing,…

  By Lana Adler Jul 7, 2016 | 3 min read
• 
  Opinion

  Donald Trump Sinks to New Level of Absurdity With ‘Frozen’ Tweet

  Nothing’s sacred anymore in this election cycle. Not even Elsa and Anna. The two beloved characters from the Disney movie “Frozen” were the subjects of a Wednesday night tweet by Donald Trump. He wanted to know why nobody was kicking up a fuss over the six-pointed star on a bit of “Frozen” merchandise. He wrapped…

  By Bethany Mandel Jul 7, 2016 | 3 min read
• 
  Opinion

  Is Donald Trump’s Inadvertent Anti-Semitism Worse Than the Real Thing?

  Is Donald Trump a committed anti-Semite? I don’t think so. This is a man who is exceptionally proud of his daughter, a traditional Jew who is giving her children a solid Jewish education. His son-in-law, upon whose advice he increasingly leans, is an Orthodox Jew. This is not the profile of an anti-Semite. I also…

  By Deborah E. Lipstadt Jul 7, 2016 | 3 min read
• 
  Opinion

  Meet Tair Kaminer, the 19-Year-Old Conscientious Objector Who Just Made Israeli History

  IDF military prison number 6 lies in one of the most picturesque spots in Israel, at the bottom of the Carmel Mountain, between green fields and banana plantations. The prisoners can see the mountains from the yard, but there is no view of the Mediterranean, less than a mile away. The prison includes a separate…

  By Noam Sheizaf Jul 6, 2016 | 3 min read