Opinion

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  Francois Hollande Explains The Holocaust to Teenagers — Awkwardly

  What started out as an unusual debate on primetime television between French president Francois Hollande and five teenagers about to vote for the first time, took an even stranger turn when they argued for several minutes whether or not it’s OK to laugh at the Holocaust. The round-table discussion took place Sunday, during the and…

  By Jesse Lempel

  2 min read
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  Opinion

  The Just Way To Share Water

  With Earth Day on April 22 and the unprecedented drought in California affecting the nation’s most populous state, there’s a Hasidic story about a frog that you should hear. The legendary founder of Hasidism, the Baal Shem Tov, or Besht, was wandering a vast desert when he met a frog so large, he couldn’t tell…

  By Dan Friedman Apr 22, 2015 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  The Lost and the Land: 2 Modern Holidays

  San Diego native Marla Bennett died in a school cafeteria in Jerusalem. She was killed in 2002 at 24, in a terrorist bombing by Hamas at Hebrew University, where she was pursuing an advanced degree in Judaic Studies. Nine people died, including 5 Americans. Nearly 100 were injured. “The year that followed was one of…

  By Abigail Pogrebin Apr 21, 2015 | 5 min read

Columnists View All

• Jodi Rudoren This is my last column as editor of the Forward

  

• Jay Michaelson American Jews were played — now what?

  

• Rob Eshman A new humanitarian outrage is unfolding in the Middle East. It’s not in Gaza

  

• Nora Berman The left is turning on AOC over Israel — and imperiling its own agenda

  

• Dan Perry Actually, Trump made things between Israel and Iran way worse

  

• Emily Tamkin Zohran Mamdani’s victory proves it: The ‘gotcha’ mode of fighting antisemitism has to go

  

The Latest

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  Opinion

  Why Did Airplane Passengers Ignore Chabad Woman’s Warning?

  Have you ever been discriminated against because of how you were dressed? Or how about because of the way you spoke? Mussie Weinfeld very well might have been. have surfaced that a 22-year-old Chabad woman may or may not have saved an entire airplane full of people set to fly from Ben Gurion to Moscow…

  By Rachel Delia Benaim Apr 20, 2015 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  Jewish Filmmaker Takes On Elder Care System

  When Deirdre Fishel, a New York City-based Jewish filmmaker, watched her 85-year-old mother’s struggle with living alone, she wanted to help. What started as a simple search for a home heath aide unfolded into a two-year intensive examination of the elder care system — all through the lens of her upcoming documentary, “Care”. The film,…

  By Thea Glassman Apr 20, 2015 | 2 min read
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  Opinion

  Men Refusing To Sit by Women? That’s the Symptom. Here’s the Sickness.

  When I saw the front page of the New York Times last week with the headline a sense of dread perforated my stomach. The article was an examination of the phenomenon of ultra-Orthodox Jewish men who, when faced with being seated next to a woman, demand that the woman be extracted and moved to another…

  By J.E. Reich Apr 20, 2015 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  American Jews Should Have a New Goal — Recognizing Palestine

  Now is not the time for despair among liberal American Jewish supporters of Israel. Neither justice nor the love of Israel can accommodate resignation. Rather, we must respond to the Middle Eastern reality with one important move: urge our own government to recognize Palestine. Here’s why. Benjamin Netanyahu’s election-eve abandonment of the two-state solution fits…

  By Jay Michaelson Apr 20, 2015 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  On Iran, a Divide That Goes Beyond Bibi and Obama

  In the mid-1990s, pundits noticed an incipient breakdown in the known world order. For centuries international affairs consisted of relationships among nation-states, in an arrangement dating back to the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. Now, suddenly, it wasn’t working. The primary culprit was the rise of so-called nonstate actors — transnational entities capable of defying…

  By J.J. Goldberg Apr 20, 2015 | 5 min read
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  Opinion

  With That Very First Cut, the Child Is Tamed

  Of all the coming-of-age milestones my 2.5-year-old son has already passed through, none has impacted me quite as much as his first haircut. That first shearing, the transformation of the hair on his head from disordered to ordered, wild to tame, left me, to tell you the truth, despondent. So unsure was I of the…

  By Elissa Strauss Apr 19, 2015 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  A Forward for the Inquisitive Reader

  As I cross the country to visit synagogues, universities and community centers, I am often approached by someone with a wistful smile and a similar story: “I remember when my grandfather would give me a nickel to run down to the corner store and buy the Jewish Forward.” How could I not be moved by…

  By Jane Eisner Apr 19, 2015 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  ‘We Did More Than Just Survive’

  When it was my turn to read the names of Holocaust victims, I couldn’t see them. The print was too small, and my reading glasses were too weak. I was at Congregation B’nai Jeshurun in Manhattan at 10 P.M. last Wednesday night for the annual “Reading and Hearing of the Names” to mark Yom HaShoah…

  By Abigail Pogrebin Apr 19, 2015 | 4 min read