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
Your Father’s a Peach Compared to These 5 Godawful Biblical Dads
Father’s Day wasn’t celebrated in ancient Canaan. If it had been, it would have been awkward. Very awkward. The fathers depicted in the Hebrew Bible are an imperfect bunch: some are womanizers, many play favorites with their children, and a select few try to kill their children altogether. In Jewish tradition, every day is supposed…
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Opinion This Is Not My Charleston
JTA) — The unspeakable murder of nine accomplished, beloved and respected African-American Charlestonians of faith in their own church on Wednesday has hit our city like an earthquake. These murders occurred in my neighborhood, across the street from Buist Academy, the public magnet school my daughter and son attended with their white, black and Hispanic classmates….
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Opinion After Charleston, Let’s All Look in Mirror
The grim-faced look of President Obama as he addressed the nation after the attack on a Charleston church seemed not only to reflect his personal pain. It encapsulated the resignation of a man who thought he would not have to minister again on these occasions, would not have to continually remind us that the toxic…
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Opinion Michael Oren vs. The New York Times
In Michael Oren’s forthcoming book, “Ally,” Israel’s former ambassador to Washington relates numerous surprising displays of hostility toward Israel by American government officials, media figures and others from whom one might expect something different. Our faith in these anecdotes is fostered not just by the fact that Oren was there, on the inside; it’s buttressed…
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Opinion What the Pope’s Climate Change Edict Means For Jews
Today Pope Francis made history. He just published a much anticipated encyclical on the environment, called Laudato Si’ (Praised Be). This is the first time that someone who may well be the moral and spiritual leader of the world has made preservation of the environment part of official Catholic moral teaching. Right off the bat…
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Opinion Will ‘Jewish Quarter’ Win Over Egyptians — or Backfire?
Today is the first day of Ramadan. In the Arab world, that means fasting and praying and post-sunset binging. It also means lots and lots of TV. Among the many soap operas aired around this time each year to entertain Muslims as they break fast, there have been plenty featuring anti-Semitic tropes. Plot lines referencing…
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Opinion The Jewish Leadership We Need
I’ve been part of a dozen Jewish leadership initiatives. Some have been excellent, others were gigantic wastes of time and money. But I wonder if we should move beyond “leadership” in the Jewish community, to value those idiosyncratic and introverted traits that don’t make for good leaders, traits that leaders themselves may not possess.** Recently…
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Opinion 3 Jewish Lessons on Rachel Dolezal and Caitlyn Jenner
I’ll start with an old joke. Mr. Rosenbaum enjoys cooking a steak on his outdoor barbecue grill every Friday afternoon, for his family’s Sabbath meal. But because he is the only Jew in a very Catholic neighborhood, the smell of the cooking meat drives his neighbors — who are forgoing meat on Fridays during Lent…
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Opinion Why Michael Oren’s Blame Game on Israel Is So Wrongheaded
Every so often an idea or phrase enters the public square in a way that changes the discourse, often for the worse, sometimes dangerously so. Example: Michael Oren’s wrongheaded June 15 op-ed essay in The Wall Street Journal, “How Obama Abandoned Israel.” It’s not easy to say this. Oren is a distinguished historian who writes…
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Opinion How Rachel Dolezal Crossed Line From Solidarity to Slumming
A few years after graduating from college, when I was living in the racially mixed Chicago suburb of Oak Park, I played pick-up basketball at the local YMCA. Among the regulars was another young white man, who habitually augmented his gym gear with knee-high tube socks striped with red, green and black, the colors of…
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Opinion What Can Women of the Upper East Side Teach Us About Gender Roles?
Marketed like a cross between “Gossip Girl” and “The Feminine Mystique,” Wednesday Martin’s new “Primates of Park Avenue” is a quasi-anthropological tell-all about navigating the world of housewifery on Manhattan’s Upper East Side and its discontents. Martin, a self-described “cultural critic at large in high heels,” gives us a window into the highly competitive, and…
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Yiddish „קיין שוועדיש רעדט מען נישט!“ — אַ ייִדיש־טאָג בײַם לונדער אוניװערסיטעט ‘No speaking Swedish here!’ — Yiddish Day in Lund University
די 30 אָנטייל־נעמערס זענען געקומען פֿון גאַנץ שװעדן, נאָרװעגיע, פֿינלאַנד און אַנדערע אייראָפּעיִשע לענדער.
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Opinion We’re forgetting the lessons of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire
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Theater Roald Dahl’s monstrous views have a seat at the table today
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