Opinion

• Opinion

  Why We Mourn the Loss of Streit’s Matzo

  A worker at Streit’s Matzo Factory on the Lower East Side / Getty Images This week brought news of the closing of Streit’s Matzo Factory on the Lower East Side, a landmark that has been there since 1925. For the past fifteen years, on the Sunday before Passover, on behalf of the Museum at Eldridge…

  By Amy Stein-Milford

  3 min read
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  Opinion

  Why Charlie Hebdo Must Be Free to Offend All — Even Us

  It is not easy to be at the receiving end of Charlie Hebdo’s especially biting, brutal form of satire. Jews should know. Since the massacre of the French magazine’s top editors and journalists January 7, much has been made of their eagerness to criticize and lampoon people of all faiths, from the pope to presidents…

  Jan 8, 2015 | 2 min read
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  Opinion

  How Terror Attack Hits Raw Nerve for Paris Jews Like Me

  People gather outside French embassy in Berlin to say #JeSuisCharlie / Twitter Paris, my city, is under attack. All of France is shocked and shattered. As of 11:00 this morning, French TV channels and radio stations have interrupted their regular programming to cover the story of the attack. On Twitter, the hashtag #JeSuisCharlie is now…

  By Laurent-David Samama Jan 7, 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

  Was Terror Attack Tied to ‘Muslim Future’ Satire?

  By now, news of the massacre at the offices of the French newspaper Charlie Hebdo has reached the U.S. In perhaps the fullest account on this side of the Atlantic, the New York Times reports that the masked assailants—two according to a witness, three according to the police—burst into the lobby of the paper’s offices…

  By Robert Zaretsky Jan 7, 2015 | 2 min read
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  Opinion

  Would Charlie Hebdo Have Angered So Many Online?

  Getty Images I’ve had a swirl of emotions in response to the attack on France’s satirical newspaper, Charlie Hebdo, which has left 12 dead, including many of this generation’s greatest cartoonists. I’m raging at the brutality of the act and find myself utterly incapable of getting anywhere near an understanding of a worldview so insecure…

  By Gal Beckerman Jan 7, 2015 | 2 min read
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  Opinion

  1 Billion Chinese. 1 Jew. So Many Questions.

  Illustration by Lior Zaltzman One month ago, I returned from China, where I was the guest of the Guilford and Diane Glazer Center for Jewish and Israeli Studies at Nanjing University. The Glazers are not the only Jewish philanthropic connection — many American Jews have made commitments in support of China’s ten academic centers of…

  By Steven Windmueller Jan 5, 2015 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  Bridging Divide Between Universal and Parochial Jews

  I’ve been thinking about two larger stories that inform Jewish life; about the extent to which those two stories seem to overlap less and less — and whether there is anything we can or should do about this. The key challenge for the American Jewish community in 2015 is this gap that has opened up…

  By Nigel Savage Jan 5, 2015 | 2 min read
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  Opinion

  How Pepper Spray Became Jerusalem’s Weapon of Choice

  Jerusalem store owner Amir Schreiber has sold out of pepper spray multiple times / Naomi Zeveloff Pepper spray has become a hot commodity in Jerusalem as the city’s Jewish citizens are arming themselves in the wake of recent Palestinian attacks — and some innocent Palestinians are getting sprayed. On Jerusalem Facebook groups, people are asking…

  By Naomi Zeveloff Jan 5, 2015 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  The 1% Solution to Jewish Education

  The phone calls and the emails start arriving each year as the first day of school approaches. Parents desperate to give their children a Jewish education flinch at the steep cost. They all ask the same question: How in the world will they afford tuition that tops $30,000 a year? It’s a question that keeps…

  By Ari Segal Jan 5, 2015 | 5 min read
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  Opinion

  The High Cost of American Inequality

  In the closing days of 2013, President Obama gave a speech in which he declared that the growing gap in income and opportunity in America is presenting “the defining challenge of our time.” So intent was he to make the point that he repeated the word “inequality” 26 times in one 50-minute speech. Obama’s declaration…

  Jan 5, 2015 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  "Bdidut" ("Loneliness") sung by Harel Skaat

  “G-d is great – He has to forgive, If my heart is all earth. My life is light – like a rain of leaves. Not a trace remains.”

  By Abigail Pogrebin Jan 5, 2015 | < 1 min read