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
Watch How New York Reacts to This Jewish-Muslim Couple Experiment
(JTA) — What happens when a conspicuously Jewish-Muslim couple walks hand-in-hand through the streets of New York City? Three YouTube personalities set out to answer that question. Karim Metwaly teamed up with Alaaldeen Shehadeh and Moe Zahrieh for a video that has garnered nearly 1.3 million views since being posted last week. Last month, Shehadeh and…
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Opinion Why Is the Left Silent About Gaza Tunnels?
The recent discovery of yet another Hamas tunnel from Gaza into Israel elicited shock and condemnation throughout the Jewish world. Not. Actually, though widely reported in Israel, and sporadically here in the United States, you could hear a pin drop in much of the progressive world, especially among those organizations pressing Israel to pursue peace…
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Opinion What That Ben Rhodes Profile Really Tells Us About the Iran Deal
It’s hard to know whose face was more red — White House foreign policy wunderkind Ben Rhodes or Jake Silverstein, the editor of The New York Times Magazine — in the days following publication of the magazine’s embarrassingly frank May 8 profile of Rhodes. Rhodes, the president’s deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, is…
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Opinion Finally, a Ceremony That Lets Me Celebrate Israel While Mourning the Nakba
This time of year is always hard for me. In Israel, we move quickly from Passover to Holocaust Memorial Day; a week later, we mark the Memorial Day for Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terror; a day later we celebrate Independence Day. We go from attending solemn ceremonies as the sirens blare to attending joyful…
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Opinion Meet the French Jews Who Love Marine Le Pen and Her Far Right Party
Samuel Johnson’s riff on female preachers and walking dogs — “It is not done well, but you are surprised to find it done at all” — comes to mind with the news from France of the creation of the UPFJ, a bland acronym that stands for the Union des Patriotes Francais Juifs, or the Union…
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Opinion 68 Reasons To Respect, If Not Love, Israel On Its 68th Birthday
This week, as Israel celebrates the 68th anniversary of its hard-won independence, it’s worth celebrating the unlikely success story of this embattled little country, amid all its imperfections. Like other countries, Israel is a work in progress. Blemishes abound and Israelis are the first to criticize and question their own shortcomings: political corruption, a dysfunctional…
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Opinion These Rare Texts Will Remind You What Israel Once Aspired To Be
Israeli democracy is under threat. Incitement against human rights organizations proceeds with little trace of official censure; cabinet ministers aim to impose new ideological litmus tests in the realm of education and culture; government-sponsored bills place Jews on a higher plane than other citizens, and the State’s Ashkenazi chief rabbi declares that “Israel is first…
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Opinion Is New London Mayor Sadiq Khan Good for the Jews?
London has elected its first Muslim mayor, Labour MP Sadiq Khan. The inevitable questions have followed: Is Khan a front for Muslim extremists or a poster boy for enlightened secular pluralism? Is he “good for the Jews”? Fears that Khan is a closet jihadi appear groundless. Attempts by Zac Goldsmith (the Tory who lost to…
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Opinion Why If Not Now Is Right To Snub Jewish Establishment
As a small but growing anti-occupation group, If Not Now has received much recent publicity. First, one of its founders, Simone Zimmerman, was hired by Bernie Sanders’s campaign as director of Jewish outreach before being abruptly fired for an earlier Facebook post about Benjamin Netanyahu. Then came widespread coverage around the group’s Passover “liberation seders”…
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Opinion Why Jews Need the European Union — Warts and All
The European Union is going through some tough times. Next month, Great Britain, which from the beginning has had one foot out of the European project by not signing on to the European currency or the Schengen Agreement (a treaty that abolished many of the E.U.’s internal borders), will vote on whether to divest from…
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Opinion Engaging Jewish Teenagers Isn’t Hopeless — If We Do It Right
(JTA) — Welcoming teens into Jewish life is both one of the most important and seemingly challenging endeavors of the Jewish community. The rapid decline in teen engagement in Jewish life post-b’nai mitzvah is well-documented and depressing. It’s also an entirely reversible trend, but only if the Jewish community approaches teen engagement in a new way…
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