Opinion

• Opinion

  Guide to Israeli Elections as Read by a MacBook

  MacBook’s Dictation function / Apple So, while messing around with my MacBook Pro, I must have inadvertently hit the “fn” button twice, thus triggering the computer’s Dictation function. I’d never tried it before, so I spoke a few sentences into it. It’s actually astoundingly good at converting speech into text. In advance of the upcoming…

  By Adam Langer

  2 min read
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  Opinion

  Sometimes You Feel Like a Nut: Preparing for Tu B’Shvat

  Mike Wallace, the legendary 60 Minutes correspondent, kept to a Tu B’Shvat diet. When I was one of his producers years ago, he prided himself on his intake of nuts and raisins, insisting they were the secret to his longevity and jet black hair. Mike, rest his soul, would never have called his regimen the…

  By Abigail Pogrebin Feb 2, 2015 | 5 min read
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  Opinion

  Should I Fly Home To Vote in Israeli Elections?

  Illustration by Lior Zaltzman I was exactly 18 the first time I voted in the Israeli elections. I was a newly minted soldier, uniform all fresh and stiff, with the dent of the strap of my M16 on my shoulder, waiting in line at an army base. More than anything I was welling up, filled…

  By Lior Zaltzman Feb 2, 2015 | 3 min read

Columnists View All

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

  

• Jay Michaelson Have we become the ‘ordinary Germans’ now?

  

• Rob Eshman Oh, great, Elon Musk’s antisemitic AI is about to ride shotgun in my Tesla

  

• Nora Berman First Camp Auschwitz, now Alligator Alcatraz — why the right is obsessed with commodifying brutality

  

• Dan Perry What exactly is going on between Israel and Syria — and is the prospect of peace dead?

  

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

  

The Latest

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  Opinion

  How Ultra-Orthodoxy Is Most Feminist Faith

  Cris de coeur over the economic state of Israel’s Haredim are commonplace these days. Understandably so; the community is in dire financial straits. Some of the alarm may be motivated by concern for members of the Haredi community; much of it is clearly born of disquiet over what Haredi poverty and unemployment rates seem to…

  Feb 2, 2015 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  A Hasidic Rabbi With a Latin Heart

  Five years ago, Rabbi Mendy Weitman could have moved anywhere in the world to pursue his dream of building a Jewish community as a Chabad Lubavitch emissary. But instead he chose to stay in New York, where he spotted a greater group in need of a community: Jewish immigrants from Latin America. In 2009, Weitman…

  By Mariana Cristancho-Ahn Feb 1, 2015 | 5 min read
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  Opinion

  Why I, an Israeli Jew, Will Vote for the Arab Party

  Arab politician Ahmed Tibi addresses the press / Getty Images The general mood in Israel, ahead of the second general election in just two years, is that little to nothing is going to change. Whether you’re an admirer of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or his sworn enemy, everybody agrees that his chances of a third…

  By Gilad Halpern Feb 1, 2015 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  Why Megachurch Concept of Sin Is So Dangerous

  Last week, I waxed rhapsodic about what the Jewish community could learn from megachurches. As communal institutions, they are far more spiritually-focused, inspiring, diverse, well-managed, and accessible than all but the best synagogues. They meet a demonstrated, expressed need for spiritual meaning and connection, and they deliver the goods in a carefully thought out way….

  By Jay Michaelson Feb 1, 2015 | 5 min read
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  Opinion

  Probing Mrs. Netanyahu’s Bottle Deposits

  Two days after Israel’s election season opened officially with the registration of party lists on Thursday, the campaign is already just about the dirtiest in memory. Various parties are suing to have the Central Elections Commission disallow the names of certain rival parties or bar individual candidates from running. And accusations of financial misdoing are…

  By J.J. Goldberg Feb 1, 2015 | 6 min read
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  Opinion

  Why Was Alan Gross Anyone’s Guest of Honor?

  Alan Gross basks in applause at the State of the Union address./Getty Images If you didn’t know anything about Alan Gross other than what you saw on television, you probably thought it was right for him to sit next to first lady Michelle Obama as guest of honor at this year’s State of the Union…

  By John Stoehr Jan 30, 2015 | 5 min read
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  Opinion

  Knesset Briefs: Kahanist on Board, Bennett’s Soccer Foul & More

  The final deadline passed this afternoon for Israel’s political parties to register for the March 17 Knesset elections. Several last-minute decisions will substantially affect the map in the weeks ahead: Kahanism Redux: Eli Yishai, the former Shas party chairman who quit in December and formed his own religious-right party, Yahad-Ha’am Itanu (“Together – The People…

  By J.J. Goldberg Jan 29, 2015 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  The Nazi Commandments for Pure Aryan Society

  Blind German schoolgirls learn about heredity. Photo by Courtesy “The Ten Commandments For Choosing a Spouse,” was written by the public health committee of the Reich and published in Germany in 1935. Beginning Tuesday, International Holocaust Remembrance Day, it will be on display in Hebrew translation as part of the “Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master…

  By Ofer Aderet (Haaretz) Jan 29, 2015 | 7 min read