Opinion

• Opinion

  Labor Quakes As Scandal Shakes Lieberman Party

  All bets are off regarding the outcome of Israel’s March elections, thanks to a massive corruption investigation involving senior figures in Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu party. See the details here. Early signs suggest it could cripple his political career, even though he hasn’t been implicated. And it might badly hurt the chances of the Labor-Livni…

  By J.J. Goldberg

  6 min read
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  Opinion

  Why This Jew Stands With Christians on Christmas

  Displaced Christians sell holiday crafts at a market in the Kurdish city of Erbil / Getty Images As a Jew, I’m not literally celebrating Christmas — it’s not my tradition. But I will spend the day celebrating the fact that Christians are proudly observing their traditions amid relentless persecution. This year has seen more global…

  By Eliyahu Federman Dec 25, 2014 | 2 min read
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  Opinion

  Why I Hate the Christmas Version of ‘Hallelujah’

  Have you heard the Christmas version of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” a recently released YouTube sensation by Kansas-based band Cloverton? Well, I have, and I hate it. But not for the reasons you might think. Am I pissed off — as many Jews appear to be — on Cohen’s behalf, because he’s Jewish and these musicians…

  By Sigal Samuel Dec 24, 2014 | 2 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 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

  6 Ways To Cure Your ‘Serial’ Withdrawal

  Illustration by Lior Zaltzman Season one of Serial is over. I don’t know about you, but I shed a tear. My Thursdays just won’t be the same without the sensational “This American Life” spin-off, produced and narrated by Sarah Koenig. While Serial was a Serious podcast — serious with a capital “S,” because the true…

  By Lior Zaltzman Dec 24, 2014 | 3 min read
• Letters

  Defending the Poles

  I read with great disappointment Jane Eisner’s piece, “Chasing Ghosts, Reviving Spirits: The Fall and Rise of Poland’s Jews” (December 5). The feeling that Jews have toward Poland is understandably painful, because millions were killed there. But most of that anger is misplaced. And, the Jewish perspective on Poland is not the only one. For…

  Dec 24, 2014 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  When the Two-State Solution Collapsed

  The proverbial definition of insanity, doing something over and over again and expecting a different outcome, seems like a good way of explaining the “peace process” that the Israelis and Palestinians have been engaged in for more than 20 years. Time and time again the Israeli and Palestinian leadership have been forced to negotiate the…

  By Dan Goldenblatt Dec 24, 2014 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  Stop Babying Israel at the U.N. Security Council

  Young Jews argue with pro-Palestinian supporters beside a banner calling for a Palestinian state The prospect of a U.N. Security Council vote on parameters and a timeline for Israel-Palestinian negotiations, coming as it does in the lead-up to Israeli elections, is eliciting this tricky argument: “We can’t pressure Israel when Israelis are going to the…

  By Lara Friedman Dec 23, 2014 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  Light in Unexpected Places: My Post-Hanukkah Report

  Why did sitting in my father-in-law’s Chicago hospital room two weeks ago crystallize the meaning of Hanukkah? Because so many rabbis had talked to me about light, and I saw it there. How to say this without treacle? My husband’s mother and his twin sisters never left. Or barely left. They just sat and read,…

  By Abigail Pogrebin Dec 23, 2014 | 5 min read
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  Opinion

  Jon Simon’s jazzy “I Have a Little Dreydel”

  Download his album: “Hanukkah and All that Jazz.”

  By Abigail Pogrebin Dec 23, 2014 | < 1 min read
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  Opinion

  Europe’s Last Jews

  This has been a tough year for Jews. But you’ve heard that before. I used to attend a synagogue where every Yom Kippur the rabbi, as part of his Israeli Bonds appeal, would begin by bemoaning what a bad year it had been. Each year things were worse than before. The problem? They weren’t. The…

  By Deborah E. Lipstadt Dec 23, 2014 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  A Threat to Israel in America’s Cuba Policy?

  Obama is caricatured as Che Guevara, an iconic symbol of Cuba’s revolution, on the cover of Brazilian magazine Veja / Getty Images As a life-long Democrat, I was deeply disturbed by the Obama Administration’s decision to act unilaterally on the Cuban question. The policy option may have been a valid one, but the process invoked…

  By Steven Windmueller Dec 22, 2014 | 3 min read