In the Forward’s opinion section, you’ll find analysis and essays from diverse corners of the Jewish world.
To pitch an opinion piece, email our Opinion Editor, Talya Zax.
Opinion
-
Opinion
Bibi’s Cabinet Rattled as Key Livni Ally Quits
The Netanyahu government’s most left-wing member, environmental defense minister Amir Peretz, quit the cabinet on Sunday and declared war on the prime minister, vowing to work for a new government committed to peace and economic justice. Peretz, a onetime Labor Party chairman and defense minister, is a member of Tzipi Livni’s Hatnuah party. The move…
-
Opinion Judge Posner’s Delightfully Jewy Legal Ruling
An Orthodox Jew wears a reggae costume as he buys a bottle of wine on Purim / Getty Images Last Thursday, prominent judge and University of Chicago professor Richard Posner offered his decision on Lubavitch-Chabad v. Northwestern University. The case was brought against the university after it disaffiliated itself with its former Chabad organization. The…
-
Opinion My Sephardic Guilt on Kristallnacht
Postcard of Madeira While other Jewish families suffered unimaginable brutality in the Holocaust, my family lived like royalty in the Portuguese paradise known for its wine, Madeira. I know: I sound like an entitled, unsympathetic brat. And what I’m trying to say is, I feel guilty about this. I always have. Every time a Holocaust…
Columnists View All
The Latest
-
Opinion The Shrinking Jewish Middle
As the Jewish Federations of North America holds its annual General Assembly this week, newly emerging evidence from the Pew Research Center’s 2013 “Portrait of American Jewry” points to enormous challenges facing federations, Jewish philanthropy and organized Jewish life, more generally. Virtually every Jewish institution is contending with a sharply diminishing base of people who…
-
Opinion More Dire Signs of Liberal Jewry’s Demise
There’s a pair of new studies just out that sheds important light on the future of Judaism in America. One paints an alarming picture of a population headed for precipitous decline, but offers hope that certain measures can turn things around. The other suggests that the most hopeful measure actually might not offer much hope…
-
Opinion Adelson and Saban Try To Out-Hawk Each Other
Haim Saban and Sheldon Adelson / Getty Images What do you get when you put two of the largest pro-Israel donors — Sheldon Adelson and Haim Saban — on one stage? For participants at the Israeli American Council’s inaugural conference, this meeting of Jewish finance titans produced several historical insights about the roots of the…
-
Opinion A New Kristallnacht for Today’s European Jews?
Protesters took to the streets of Paris this summer to demonstrate against Israel / Getty Images (JTA) — Each year on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, we recall the opening salvo of the violent assault on Jews that foreshadowed the Holocaust and ask ourselves what should have been done at that moment. In thinking about Kristallnacht,…
-
Opinion Why the Nazis Are Still Winning Kristallnacht
Wikimedia Commons Broken and Burning: The main synagogue in Frankfurt-am-Main burns in the November pogrom, 1938. The word Kristallnacht is poetic, alluring: A night of crystal — perhaps in today’s context we might think of Cristal champagne. The name the Nazis gave the violence of November 9 and 10, 1938, is redolent of European sophistication…
-
Opinion Two Jewish Berlins, Divided by the Wall
In the fall of 1972 I moved to Berlin from Frankfurt, Germany, to begin my studies at the Free University, which was founded in 1948 in the American zone. The upper-middle-class villas of this section of town had not been bombed during World War II; they had once been owned by well-to-do Jews who had…
-
Opinion Building Jewish Life on the Rubble of the Berlin Wall
The French writer François Mauriac is quoted with the sentence, “I love Germany so much that I am glad that there are two of them.” This was pretty much the attitude among the Jewish community in Germany, in which I grew up in the 1970s and ’80s. The Jews of postwar Germany felt protected by…
-
Opinion Settler Yeshiva Battles IDF Over…Treadmills?
Thinkstock Score one for the settlers. In the ongoing battle between the most extreme West Bank settlement and the Israeli Defense Forces, the settlers of Yizhar have now announced a modest, if bizarre win. Following the threat of legal action, the IDF has agreed to move treadmills it had set up in Yizhar’s religious study…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
Fast Forward CA Gov. Newsom says he regrets apartheid comment, ‘reveres’ Israel in new interview
- 2
Opinion We must rewrite the rulebook for fighting antisemitism — or conspiracists like Joe Kent will win the narrative wars
- 3
News Mamdani voices concerns about synagogue buffer zone bill poised to pass NYC Council
- 4
Looking Forward We need to talk about New Jersey’s Jewish master of literature. No, not that one
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward Man arrested over alleged firebomb plot targeting pro-Palestinian activist Nerdeen Kiswani
-
Opinion The moral degradation of Israel’s far-right is even worse than you think
-
News Jews in Iran and in the diaspora find respite in celebrating Nowruz amid war
-
Opinion The Orthodox world has abandoned its values by abandoning Palestinians
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
