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
Rabbi Haskel Lookstein, How Can You Shill for Donald Trump at Republican Convention?
I was spending my five free minutes on Facebook when I saw my younger daughter’s posting. “Seriously? This is embarrassing…” She was referring to the July 14 article in the Forward, “Donald Trump Taps Ivanka’s Rabbi Haskel Lookstein for GOP Convention.” Our daughter had attended Ramaz High School, also known as the Joseph H. Lookstein…
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Opinion After Nice, We Should Fight Islamic State Terror With Ruthless Progressivism
Will this season of death ever stop? Nice, Dhaka, Istanbul, Orlando, Brussels, San Bernadino, Paris – and those are just the mass murders in cities we know. Over 1200 people have died in ISIS-inspired attacks around the world, not counting those in Iraq and Syria. It is practically impossible to defend against an endless, global…
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Opinion Can You Spew Sexism and Homophobia and Still Be Rabbi for ‘Most Moral Army in the World’?
Another sexism scandal involving a male authority figure erupted in Israel on Monday, when it emerged that the army’s choice of new spiritual leader had previously implied that it was permissible for IDF soldiers to rape non-Jewish women during wartime. Rabbi Col. Eyal Karim is on his second round of scrutiny for this suggestion, which…
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Opinion The Lasting Harm of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Notorious Attack on Donald Trump
I’m glad that Ruth Bader Ginsburg apologized. I fear that won’t erase the lasting harm of her inappropriate comments about Donald Trump. As a brilliant, bold, trailblazing jurist, Bader Ginsburg is someone I’ve long admired, so it is difficult to criticize her for speaking her mind, as she has encouraged so many women to do…
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Opinion How Donald Trump’s Republican Party Veered to Right of Benjamin Netanyahu on Israel
Several weeks ago, the Republican Jewish Coalition unleashed an online advertising campaign with three dramatic, 30-second ads asserting that radical, anti-Israel extremists had taken over the Democratic Party. One ad focused on Cornel West, the firebrand who called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a war criminal, another on the Arab-American activist James Zogby, and the…
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Opinion Ask How Theresa May Will Relate to Britain’s Jews — Not Israel
It’s official: Theresa May has been confirmed as Britain’s next prime minister in the wake of David Cameron’s departure. Already the think pieces are pouring in, offering opinions and predictions about the woman who will lead the U.K. into its post-Brexit reality. In the Jewish press, per tradition, these pieces are focusing largely on what…
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Opinion Why Benjamin Netanyahu Is Suddenly Looking Like a Diplomatic Superstar
Israel’s chattering classes had a field day in early July savaging Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over his four-day, four-nation African tour. With an entourage filling four jumbo jets, a price tag some put at $7.3 million (the prime minister’s office said it was just $3.25 million), plus more pomp and circumstance than a Viennese operetta,…
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Opinion No, Bernie Sanders Did Not Sell Out by Endorsing Hillary Clinton — Just the Opposite
Did Bernie Sanders sell out by endorsing Hillary Clinton? Some of his more ardent followers seem to think so. They’ve accused him of compromising his values, of going back on what he claimed to believe in, and of throwing his lot in with the enemy. But an ancient rabbinic distinction between different types of arguments…
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Opinion How Israel Shoots Itself in the Foot With Left-Bashing NGO Law
Israel’s parliament, in a dazzling display of perverse logic, managed to shoot itself in the foot on Monday with formal approval of a law that hobbles human-rights organizations. The law’s sponsors have been working for five years to craft a measure that reins in organizations they believe damage Israel’s international reputation, particularly in the West,…
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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…
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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…
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