Opinion

• Opinion

  News Quiz: Do You Have ‘Chutzpah’?

  Getty Images Matzo balls, blintzes and – Beyonce? Not to mention Barbra Streisand’s agent? It’s a great start to a new year! Get quizzing!

  By Lenore Skenazy

  < 1 min read
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  Opinion

  A Kippah on the Head of Israel’s Intelligence Chief

  It seemed at first little more than a throwaway line in an otherwise wonkish interview-profile of Israel’s outgoing chief of Military Intelligence, Major General Aviv Kochavi, appearing September 19 in Yediot Aharonot. “In the final days of his term in M.I.,” military correspondent Alex Fishman wrote, “Kochavi finds himself trying to make the case that…

  By J.J. Goldberg Oct 8, 2014 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  Why Rabbi Gil Steinlauf’s Coming Out Is Watershed Moment for Jews

  In 1977, Gerson D. Cohen, chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, approved a petition by the Rabbinical Assembly to create a committee to study the role of women as spiritual leaders in the Conservative movement. The voices included were varied, some in favor of the ordination of women as rabbis, some opposed. It…

  By Rabbi Menachem Creditor Oct 8, 2014 | 3 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 Is starvation in Gaza really Israel’s fault? The facts are clear

  

The Latest

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  Opinion

  Why Hamas Never Wanted War — and Knows It Lost

  Hamas is eager to have Mahmoud Abbas’s U.S.-trained Presidential Guard take control of the border crossings between Gaza and Israel. But the Islamist organization isn’t likely to give in to pressure from Abbas and the West to put its own military wing under Abbas’s control, nor to let officials of the proposed Fatah-Hamas unity government…

  By J.J. Goldberg Oct 7, 2014 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  Why We Censor ‘Klinghoffer’ at Our Peril

  Getty Images (Haaretz) — As the Metropolitan Opera prepares to launch its production of “The Death of Klinghoffer,” John Adams and Alice Goodman’s 1991 operatic account of the 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise ship and the murder of a Jewish, wheelchair-bound passenger by Palestinian militants, the media has been abuzz. Protestors have gathered outside…

  By Mira Sucharov Oct 7, 2014 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  Same-Sex Marriage Wins at SCOTUS

  The Supreme Court decision not to hear any of the seven pending cases on state same-sex marriage bans is being hailed as a watershed moment for LGBT equality. While some of these claims are overly enthusiastic — this is only a decision not to decide, and the Court will surely take up the issue at…

  By Jay Michaelson Oct 6, 2014 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  In Defense of the Shabbos App

  Getty Images When I began going to Friday night services, I kept my cell phone on vibrate in my boot, pressed against my calf. I was 19 and living in New York; the idea of turning my phone off or simply leaving it at home was, then, as unrealistic as my walking to Manhattan from…

  By Julie Sugar Oct 6, 2014 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  New Square to Neighbors: Stay Away from Our Holy Shtetl!

  New Square You know the Village of New Square — that holy shtetl that keeps Judaism alive and well, that isolated Mecca of Hasidism and Follow-the-Rebbe-Blindly-ism? You may have heard of the arson attack two years ago on one of its residents, Aaron Rottenberg, which was allegedly incited by village leaders, or about the rampant…

  By Frimet Goldberger Oct 6, 2014 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  The Tragic Lesson of the Shabbos App

  After days of discussing the Shabbos App — the new technology that claims to allow you to use your iPhone on Shabbat without breaking any Jewish laws — someone finally asked me a question that cut to the core of the issue. It was something like this: “If the Shabbos App was halachically permissible, would…

  By Eliyahu Fink Oct 6, 2014 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  A Drug Policy That Denies Repentance

  We are emerging from the Day of Repentance — a time for contrition for misdeeds, focusing on self-improvement and making a fresh start. But what about people who don’t have the luxury of wiping their slates clean, even for minor transgressions? Are our laws and policies robbing millions of citizens of their own opportunities to…

  By Hanna Liebman Dershowitz Oct 6, 2014 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  Maybe Next Year: My Yom Kippur Report

  I vote to bring back the goat. In the days of the Temple on Yom Kippur, all sins were symbolically heaped on an actual goat — the original “scapegoat”— which was then sent off to some undefined land called Azazel. Leviticus 16:21: Thus the goat shall carry on it all their iniquities to an inaccessible…

  By Abigail Pogrebin Oct 6, 2014 | 6 min read