In the Forward’s opinion section, you’ll find analysis and essays from diverse corners of the Jewish world.
To pitch an opinion piece, email our Opinion Editor, Talya Zax.
In the Forward’s opinion section, you’ll find analysis and essays from diverse corners of the Jewish world.
To pitch an opinion piece, email our Opinion Editor, Talya Zax.
I grimaced when I heard about the racist and sexist emails exchanged at the Alpha Epsilon Pi Chapter at the University of Chicago, my alma mater. Then I read the emails, and I became furious. They are awful. They are disgraceful. They are racist, sexist, sometimes both, often more. Whoever wrote them is a disgrace…
In an editorial published on January 21, Jane Eisner opposes Human Rights Watch’s call for businesses to pull out of Israeli settlements because it “would grind economic activities to a halt, hurting ordinary citizens both Israeli and Palestinian,” amounting to “collective punishment.” This assessment doesn’t stand up to analysis. There are two separate economies in…
In casting the first official ballots of the 2016 presidential race, Iowa’s caucus voters delivered more questions than they did answers. Chief among them: Who really won the Democratic contest — Hillary Clinton, leading by a fraction of a percentage point, or Bernie Sanders, fighting her to a virtual tie? One historic milestone can be…
Many are celebrating the official setting aside and expansion of a part of Jerusalem’s Western Wall for non-traditional public prayer. I’m not among them. Over nearly 50 years, the Kotel has been the only place in the world where Jews of all sorts — black-hatted and hair-covered Haredim, National-Religious, Reform and Conservative and agnostic —…
There are a lot of ways to be an American, but for a long time it seemed there was only one way to be an American running for the Republican nomination for the presidency: Have deep roots in America and a storied American family. John McCain’s father and grandfather were both four-star admirals in the…
For the past several years, February has been Jewish Disability Awareness and Inclusion Month, prompting Jewish communal groups to issue statements, hold events and publish blog posts on the topic of more fully welcoming people with disabilities into our community. The month is often a celebration of intent rather than action. In many parts of…
The new plan to create a larger, official egalitarian space at the Western Wall is a compromise of a compromise. In all the celebration, we can’t lose sight of that. Those who believe in promoting and protecting pluralistic Judaism in Israel have every right to proclaim victory — a rare emotion after years of increasingly…
Reading the substance of the new Western Wall deal, described in a news report posted by the Forward as a is heartbreaking. As Shulamit Magnus rightly argues in the Jerusalem Post, the Kotel is not now, nor has it ever been, a synagogue. Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz is not the Wall’s mara de’atra (“master of the…
Middle East passions are being enflamed again on university campuses, with York University in Toronto as the latest cauldron. In response to a painting hanging in the student union building, Canadian film mogul Paul Bronfman is pulling his company’s support (reportedly totaling “thousands of dollars” of film equipment and training seminars) from the university. In…
“The Jews control Hollywood.” It’s one of those anti-Semitic tropes that, we all know, contains a certain grain of truth. “Control,” no — not with that ominous, conspiratorial connotation. But “helped create”? “Disproportionately populate?” Sure. From the founding of California’s motion picture industry (well documented in books like Neal Gabler’s “An Empire of Their Own:…
When I woke to the news about the new policy for the Kotel, I was surprised to see so many of my friends celebrating. I suppose I should be, too: I’ve been wearing tefillin since I was bat mitzvahed over a decade ago. In that time, I have been to Israel twice, first with my…
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