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
A Masked Man at a Farm Near Baltimore, Then a Happy Ending With Boxer Shorts
The dictionary defines regret as a sense of loss, disappointment or dissatisfaction. I do not regret my abortion, the illegal one I had shortly after my 20th birthday, seven years before Roe v. Wade became law. I didn’t regret my decision then, and I don’t regret it now. I do regret the humiliation of having…
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Opinion Remembering My Abortion Every Yom Kippur
My cisgender male partner of seven years and I had sex, and the condom we were using for safer sex and birth control broke. Within the hour, we called our friend who was a nurse practitioner at the Feminist Women’s Health Clinic and got a prescription for Plan B (a prescription was needed at that…
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Opinion Saving Lives at the University of Florida
In June 1969, I was ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary. My first “pulpit” was rabbi of the Hillel Foundation at the University of Florida. I was 26 years old and married with a three-month-old child. I grew up in Boston, intensely aware of the ideas and thinking of the Catholic Church. In retrospect, I…
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Opinion A Law Student’s Brutal Dilemma
I was married and in my third year of law school when I had my first abortion. I wasn’t using the pill because physicians were warning women that the pill increased a woman’s chance of having breast cancer. I was using a diaphragm and spermicide. I got pregnant in the first semester of my last…
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Opinion Double Jeopardy for One Teenager
I am 56 years old, a wife, mother and soon-to-be grandmother. I’ve just retired from a joyful career as a teacher’s assistant in an elementary school in Georgia. This wonderful life of mine was made possible by two abortions in my teens. My first abortion was as a ninth grader. None of the adults in…
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Opinion Not Worth a Gamble
What should I do? What should I do? What should I do? Those four words went around in my head in the spring of 1973. I was 28 years old, wife, mother of two sons and I was pregnant. Being an only child, my dream was having a house full of kids with all the…
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Opinion Silent No More, Forward Readers Tell Their Abortion Stories
Inspired by the moving teen abortion tale of 1960s Chicago, told by Larry Cohler-Esses in these pages in May, many readers wrote in to tell us how the story resonated with their own experiences. So we decided to throw open our pages to share readers’ stories of the abortions in their lives. We received dozens…
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Opinion How Orlando Can Come Together To Be Symbol of Coexistence — Not Hateful Violence
Orlando, “the City Beautiful” as it is officially known, a city known to most around the world for Walt Disney World, Harry Potter and being the place “where dreams come true” is now on the map as the site of the single largest mass murder in U.S. history. Yesterday in Orlando, a different history was…
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Opinion Is Orlando About Islamist Terrorism, Homophobia, Mental Illness or Guns?
Was the hideous mass shooting at an Orlando, Florida, gay nightclub due to Islamist terrorism, homophobia, mental illness or guns? All of the above — and that is precisely the problem. In the short time since the attack — the 49 victims have only just been identified — politicians and pundits of all stripes have…
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Opinion How Hasidic-Owned B&H Photo Store Puts Money Before God’s Word
(CLARIFICATION BELOW) Muslims have the Kaaba in Mecca. Sikhs have the Golden Temple in Amritsar. Photographers have B&H on the west side of Manhattan. To call it an audio and visual equipment store is like calling Katz’s Deli a mere sandwich shop. There’s a reason you’ll hear numerous languages spoken on the floors of B&H….
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Opinion Why Avigdor Lieberman Might Just Be the Key to Mideast Peace. Really.
It could turn out to be the biggest surprise of the year in Middle East diplomacy: Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s blustering, ultra-nationalist new defense minister, just might be the key to reviving the moribund Israeli-Palestinian peace process. So, at least, say several key sources familiar with a complex round of behind-the-scenes Israeli-Arab contacts. Lieberman’s significance lies…
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