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
Did the Torah Give Rabin’s Assassin License To Kill?
On November 4, we will commemorate the 20th anniversary of the tragic assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, murdered by Yigal Amir while speaking at a rally in Tel Aviv in favor of peace and reconciliation. Although Amir pulled the trigger, the arsenal he employed included the edict of various rabbis who provided a cloak of halachic…
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Opinion Yitzhak Rabin Has an Urgent Message for Israelis — But They Can’t Hear It Now
It has been 20 years since the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. The assassination was easily one of the most significant moments in Israel’s brief history, and arguably in Jewish history altogether. Why has there been so little talk of it — and so limited a commemoration — in the Jewish public square?…
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Opinion Watching the Violence in Israel From Abroad
Comic: An Israeli expat watched the violence in Israel from abroad. You can find Lior Zaltzman’s work at , Saturday, November 7.
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Opinion Why Is Chabad Helping Christian Extremists?
As readers of this column know, I have long praised Chabad Lubavitch’s spirituality, its outreach tactics and its mystical roots. But over the past several years, Chabad leaders have begun propping up far-right Christian extremists — not mere cultural conservatives, or right-wing politicians, but the extreme fringe that opposes human rights and, in some cases,…
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Opinion 5 Times GOP Bogeyman Sidney Blumenthal Advised Hillary Clinton on Israel
(JTA) Sidney Blumenthal’s name came up 49 times in a hearing convened Thursday by the special congressional committee investigating the deadly 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Why? Well, the star witness was Hillary Rodham Clinton — the secretary of state at the time of the attack, whom Blumenthal has advised for…
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Opinion Blame Mahmoud Abbas for Violence? But He’s ‘Mr. Irrelevant’
It seems there are almost as many explanations for the current terror wave plaguing Israel as there are people trying to explain it. We’re told it’s caused by economic despair, rage at the occupation, hatred of Jews, alarm (false or otherwise) over the Temple Mount, and incitement by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Each theory…
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Opinion Let’s Keep Judaism Boring!
It’s hardly a new complaint about Jewish observance, though it is one gaining traction. How — clergy and directors of non-Orthodox synagogues across the country are asking themselves – can we make services less boring? It’s a justifiable aim. Attendance is down and there’s a lot to compete with, whether cell phones, delicious food, or…
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Opinion Does Gleaming Palestinian City on Hill Offer Hope Amid Violence?
A gleaming bus stop greets visitors on the main road to the new Palestinian city of Rawabi in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Construction equipment is busy carving blocks out of the hillsides. A sign directs traffic to the police station in one direction and to the showroom filled with scale models in another. A giant…
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Opinion Why Benjamin Netanyahu’s Defense of Hitler Is So Wrong — and Matters So Much
Once the laughter and groans have died down, the unorthodox version of Holocaust history offered by Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem the other day confronts us with a deeply unsettling question: What to make of the fact that the Jewish state, of all places, has a Holocaust revisionist for a prime minister? Too harsh? Perhaps “Hitler…
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Opinion Stop Enabling Donors’ Outsized Influence on Jewish Life
I don’t presume to know all the positive attributes that define true leadership in our age, but I can confidently tell you what does not, by itself, constitute a good Jewish leader: money. Financial capacity to donate to an organization or a cause is not the same as leadership — and yet, all too frequently,…
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Opinion When Prayer Becomes Provocation on the Temple Mount
To tell Jews that their connection to the Temple Mount is a fraudulent invention, to attempt to erase thousands of years of documented historical ties, to ignore that every Jew in prayer faces that hilltop in Jerusalem from wherever he or she is in the world, to pretend that Jews are just colonialist interlopers on…
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Fast Forward Unarmed man who tackled Bondi Beach Hanukkah attacker identified as Ahmed al-Ahmed
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Opinion I grew up believing Australia was the best place to be Jewish. This Hanukkah shooting forces a reckoning I do not want.
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Fast Forward Hanukkah shooting leaves at least 15 dead at Australia’s most popular beach
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Fast Forward Father and son suspects in Bondi Beach Hanukkah attack identified as Sajid and Naveed Akram by law enforcement
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Fast Forward Ben Shapiro denounces Tucker Carlson at Heritage, urges policing of conservative movement
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Fast Forward Citing Sydney attack, police in London say they will now arrest those who chant ‘globalize the intifada’
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