Opinion

• Opinion

  When Ashkenazi Jews Eat Kitniyot on Passover, Is It Cultural Appropriation — from Sephardim?

  How do millions of Ashkenazi Jews react when, after hundreds of years, they finally get permission to eat kitniyot on Passover? We’re about to find out. Last December, the Conservative movement’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards approved a teshuvah, a Jewish legal ruling, permitting the consumption of kitniyot on Passover. Kitniyot — foods like…

  By Arielle Levites

  4 min read
• 
  Opinion

  How To Talk Politics at Your Family Seder Without Killing Each Other

  An estimated 70% of American Jews participate in a Passover Seder — in any Jewish religious observance. This year, as we recount the story of the Exodus and symbolically taste the bitterness of slavery, we also must ask what, in 2016, makes this Passover different? At my Seder table this year, as we remember how…

  By Rick Jacobs Apr 17, 2016 | 3 min read
• 
  Opinion

  Why Simone Zimmerman and Bernie Sanders Are Still on Same Side on Israel — Suspension or No

  Just weeks after thousands of Israel advocates applauded Donald Trump at AIPAC, some of the same voices attempted a coordinated campaign to force Bernie Sanders to back off from his progressive positions on Israel before a Brooklyn debate. Sanders refused to back down in the debate. In order to solve the Mideast conflict, he argued,…

  By Isaac Luria Apr 17, 2016 | 2 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 Americans keep getting killed in the West Bank. Here’s how the US could fight that awful trend

  

• Nora Berman First Camp Auschwitz, now Alligator Alcatraz — why the right is obsessed with commodifying brutality

  

• Dan Perry What exactly is going on between Israel and Syria — and is the prospect of peace dead?

  

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

  

The Latest

• 
  Opinion

  The Huge Irony That Jews for Cruz Can’t — or Won’t — Admit

  Republican Jews are engaging in a to back Ted Cruz as the likely alternative to Donald Trump, but they seem to be missing the irony of their actions: They’re backing a candidate largely because he is pro-Israel, when his real motivation for taking that stance is that it fulfills a New Testament prophecy in which…

  By Ari Paul Apr 17, 2016 | 3 min read
• 
  Opinion

  How John Kasich Accidentally Rehashed a Classic Jewish-Christian Debate

  Invoking Jesus , as John Kasich did last week, is obviously incompetent campaigning. Visiting Borough Park before the New York Primary, Kasich explained to several ultra-Orthodox Jews that the paschal lamb prefigures Christ, the “lamb of God.” For a politician, this is roughly equivalent to biting a baby when you were supposed to kiss it….

  By Raphael Magarik Apr 17, 2016 | 3 min read
• 
  Opinion

  Why I’m for Hillary (and Not for Him)

  I am for Hillary Clinton. She represents some of my most basic beliefs about this country and the world in general. She has a view of an inclusive society in which all people – children in particular – have a chance. At the same time she believes in a strong America that can make a…

  By Deborah E. Lipstadt Apr 17, 2016 | 4 min read
• 
  Opinion

  Will Bernie Sanders’s Debate Criticism End Grip of Israel Lobby — or Be a Footnote in History?

  University of Wisconsin Professors Vernon Allen and John Levine conducted a series of experiments in the late 1960s to examine psychologist Solomon Asch’s theories about conformity and the influence of social forces on individual opinions. They found that even one dissenter from supposedly unanimous views enables others to express their opinions more freely. Liberals and…

  By Chemi Shalev (Haaretz) Apr 17, 2016 | 4 min read
• 
  Opinion

  Why Am I Irrationally Worried About Kitniyot?

  The grand Passover themes of slavery and freedom resonate deeply nowadays, in the pleading eyes of Syrian refugees and the plight of the homeless on our streets. So I’m embarrassed to admit that what’s keeping me up at night is a Passover quandary much more mundane: whether to serve string beans at my Seder. My…

  By Jane Eisner Apr 16, 2016 | 3 min read
• 
  Opinion

  Why Did John Kasich Bring Up Jesus Christ’s Blood in Orthodox Brooklyn?

  (JTA) — If Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s visit to Hasidic Brooklyn this week had yielded only one amusing moment, Dayenu – it would have been enough. But, thank God, there were many in the Republican presidential candidate’s visit to a Jewish bookstore, shmura matzah bakery and Hasidic school in Borough Park on Tuesday. “It’s a…

  By Uriel Heilman Apr 14, 2016 | 2 min read
• 
  Opinion

  How To Talk About Refugees at Your Passover Seder

  Each year at Passover we gather together with family and friends to retell the story of our persecution and exodus from Egypt to freedom. For many, a particular highlight of the Seder is the singing of Dayenu. “If God had freed us from slavery in Egypt, but not given us the Torah, a new home,…

  By Rabbi Jennie Rosenn Apr 14, 2016 | 4 min read
• 
  Opinion

  Why Israeli Young People Are So Much More Right-Wing Than Americans

  (JTA) — American young people are rallying behind Jewish socialist Bernie Sanders. Their Israeli counterparts look more likely to back Jewish nationalist Naftali Bennett. A poll of Jewish-Israeli teens released Wednesday by Israel Hayom, the free Israeli right-wing daily, portrays a generation that’s staunchly nationalist, pessimistic on peace and, in part, dismissive of Arab-Israeli civil…

  By Ben Sales Apr 14, 2016 | 3 min read