Opinion

• Opinion

  Why Do We Feel Dread On Yom Kippur?

  I Godology is a monthly conversation between writer Elissa Strauss and Rabbi Scott Perlo in which they explore what it means to be “God-ish” — to kind of, sort of, believe in God. SCOTT: It always strikes me as a strange paradox that the theology of the holidays is expressed through the image of God…

  By Elissa Strauss and Scott Perlo

  5 min read
• Opinion

  A beautiful Kol Nidre from composer Jon Simon

  By Abigail Pogrebin Oct 2, 2014 | < 1 min read
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  Opinion

  Death and More Death: Preparation for Yom Kippur

  Yom Kippur is all about death? I thought it was about atonement. Yet all you have to do is start talking to rabbis — or reading their books about preparing for the High Holidays — and death takes center stage. I don’t mean DEATH! IN! CAPS! — in the sense of a morbid fixation, or…

  By Abigail Pogrebin Oct 2, 2014 | 5 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 Recognizing a Palestinian state is a great way to doom Palestinians

  

• Emily Tamkin Is starvation in Gaza really Israel’s fault? The facts are clear

  

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  Opinion

  Why Yom Kippur Tells Us To Fight Ebola

  A newly arrived patient suspected of suffering from the Ebola virus sits on the ground at Island Hospital in Monrovia, Liberia./Getty Images As Jews around the world prepare for Yom Kippur — a day when we pray to be “sealed in the Book of Life” for the year to come — the people of West…

  By Ruth W. Messinger Oct 1, 2014 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  Netanyahu’s Convenient Lies About ISIS and Hamas

  Benjamin Netanyahu, left; anti-ISIS fighter, right / Getty Images Speaking at the General Assembly this week, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu repeated a refrain he has sounded for three decades (since his days as Israeli ambassador to the U.N.) — that all forms of terrorism are different sides of the same coin and have civilization as…

  By Nathan Brown Sep 30, 2014 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  UN Week: Obama’s Pivot, Abbas’s Bile, Bibi’s Flub

  This should have been Bibi Netanyahu’s big year at the United Nations. World revulsion toward ISIS was at a peak, putting Islamist terrorism at center stage. President Obama, long derided by Netanyahu and his allies as a naïve peacenik, had suddenly become a wartime president. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict was, at last, the least of the…

  By J.J. Goldberg Sep 30, 2014 | 5 min read
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  Opinion

  9 Sephardi Dishes That Won’t Make Buzzfeed Gag

  If your signature dish can be mistaken for cat food, you’ve got a problem. Or that’s what Buzzfeed’s most recent experiment would have you believe. They got “random people” (aka non-Jews) to try classic Jewish foods for the first time and recorded their reactions. The response to gefilte fish? Gag. To kugel? Gag. To matzo…

  By Anne Cohen and Sigal Samuel Sep 30, 2014 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  Two Bad Speeches — and Scant Hope for Peace

  Well, that was helpful. If you were the leader of your people and you really wanted to extend a hand to your enemy, you wouldn’t call him a racist. And genocidal. You probably wouldn’t want to say that this enemy assassinated thousands of children, devastated homes and schools and destroyed the dreams of a generation….

  Sep 29, 2014 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  We Are All Pamela Geller

  Well, now we know what it takes to stop Pamela Geller’s crusade against terrorism: an actual victim of it. Condemned by such noted liberals as the ADL, Dinesh D’Souza, and the Daily News, banned by the Great Neck Synagogue (but embraced by Chabad), Geller is the anti-Muslim wacko who takes ads on buses and subways…

  By Jay Michaelson Sep 29, 2014 | 5 min read
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  Opinion

  No, Pamela Geller, the Qur’an Is Not Anti-Semitic

  Pamela Geller, left; Qur’an, right / Getty Images Soon you will see ads, courtesy of Pamela Geller, in the New York City subway system that state, “Islamic Jew-Hatred: It’s in the Qur’an.” Is she right? It’s easy to understand why many Jews might think so. Anti-Semitism has become a frightening force in much of the…

  By Reuven Firestone Sep 29, 2014 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  Is the Israeli Left Anti-Democracy?

  In Haaretz, Moshe Arens has accused the Israeli left of not accepting, first, that Israeli democracy is working fine, and second, the specific “verdict of the electorate.” Arens’ framing of Israeli democracy is flawed because he leaves several important points out of his description. To begin with, the Israeli left doesn’t wonder why the system…

  By Brent Sasley Sep 29, 2014 | 3 min read