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
Bernie Sanders Rises — and the Ghost of Saul Alinsky Will Surely Follow
Decades before the term was coined, community organizer Saul Alinsky was already exploiting the advantages of “intersectionality,” the contemporary buzzword of social protest. Alinsky, once described by conservative thinker William F. Buckley as “close to an organizational genius,” united groups of underprivileged minorities with diverse grievances in mid-20th century Chicago to form a protest bloc…
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Opinion How Britain Remembers the Holocaust, More Than 70 Years On
As the UK Deputy Ambassador in Warsaw from 2004 to 2008, I attended many events during my time in Poland to commemorate World War II. But one I will never forget was the 60th anniversary of the liberation at Auschwitz. In the middle of Polish winter, world leaders, including the UK Foreign Secretary and Prince…
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Opinion 100 Years Later, Has Louis Brandeis’s Supreme Court Nomination Changed Anything?
“Louis D. Brandeis, the first Jew nominated by President Wilson to the Supreme Court of the United States,” the “magic bulletin board” outside the Forward building on the Lower East Side of Manhattan announced in Yiddish on Friday, January 28, 1916. “God be blest!” an onlooker quoted by the New-York Tribune responded. “In Russia we…
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Opinion How the Truths Marco Rubio Told an Atheist Could Lure Jews to GOP
At an intimate campaign stop in Waverly, Iowa, on January 18, an atheist asked Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio why his recent ad said nothing about policy ideas and instead went into great detail about faith, God and heaven. The questioner wanted to know how Rubio planned to uphold the religious rights of all, not…
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Opinion How Eugene Borowitz Reached My Heart With Inspiring Imperatives of Jewish Thought
(JTA) — In Ethics of the Fathers, the rabbis teach that we must grant respect and honor to an individual who teaches us even the smallest bit of knowledge. For those of us who were the students of Rabbi Eugene Borowitz, who died last week at the age of 91, the obligation is increased a…
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Opinion Israel’s Top General Praises Iran Deal as ‘Strategic Turning Point’ in Slap at Bibi
Remember the nuclear agreement between Iran and the West? You know — the one that Benjamin Netanyahu insisted was the biggest danger to Israel and the Jews since time immemorial? Well, Israel’s military chief of staff told a prestigious defense conference last week that far from being a mortal threat, the deal has actually removed…
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Opinion Don’t Worry, Bernie — Being Jewish Won’t Hurt You in Iowa
As one comedian online, if Hillary Clinton loses the Iowa caucus February 1 to an underdog, it will be the most shocking thing that’s happened — since it happened eight years ago. In 2008, the pundit class was united in the opinion that Clinton was clearly next in line for the Democratic nomination and that…
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Opinion ‘Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’ Is Jewish Comedy for the Truly Enlightened
The opening credits of the musical sitcom “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” now entering its second season, perfectly sum up the show. And it’s not just because they recap the story — Rachel Bloom’s character sings about leaving a job at a fancy New York law firm for West Covina, California, which “happens to be where Josh lives,…
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Opinion Wishing Your Opponents Dead Is Not Good for Israelis or Palestinians
This column is not about the recent anti-Israel , which partially shut down a reception featuring Israeli LGBT activists. It’s about the ugly, angry way we talk about such things. And as usual, I’m going to call out both the right and the left. As journalists and Internet trolls “discussed” the events at the conference…
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Opinion How the Left’s ‘Yes, But’ Mourning for Slain Israelis Actually Hurts Palestinians
The horrifying murder of Dafna Meir, an Israeli who was stabbed to death on January 17 while fighting off a Palestinian assailant in her West Bank home, posed a moral and political test to both the right and the left in Israel. Judging from my social media feeds and email inbox, it was a test…
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Opinion The Right-Wing Tactic All Jewish Leftists Should Be Stealing
In the early 1990s it felt as if the Israeli Left had won. In 1992, the first election I ever voted in, Meretz won 12 Knesset seats. A year later Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin signed the Oslo agreements. At that time, my IDF unit was working on a just and fair distribution of water resources…
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Opinion When my children decorate for Hanukkah, I don’t just see pride. I see pluralism in action.
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Fast Forward ‘The most Australian name’: Matilda, the youngest victim of the Bondi Beach attack, embodies a nation’s grief
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Fast Forward A Wider Bridge, a pro-Israel advocate in LGBTQ spaces, is shutting down
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Yiddish פֿאַר וואָס הערט מען ניט וועגן דעם גלעצנדיקן וווּקס פֿון דער ישׂראל־בערזע? Why aren’t we hearing about the dramatic growth of the Israeli stock market?
וואָלט דער אָפּרוף געווען אַנדערש, ווען דער ציל פֿון די טעראָריסטן וואָלט ניט געווען ייִדן, נאָר אַן אַנדער גרופּע?
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