In the Forward’s opinion section, you’ll find analysis and essays from diverse corners of the Jewish world.
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Opinion
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Opinion
A Threat to Jews in Hobby Lobby Decision
Much ink will be spilled about the Supreme Court’s decision in the Hobby Lobby case. It affects many things: women’s freedom, the rights of religious conservatives, and, potentially, religious exemptions from a variety of civil rights laws and Obamacare. The Court’s bitterly divided 5-4 opinion split on party lines: four conservatives siding with the conservatives,…
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Opinion ‘Pinkwashing’ Washed Out at Toronto Gay Pride
Getty Images “I knished a girl and I liked it.” That placard, waved by a member of Toronto Jewish gay group Kulanu, captured the spirit of yesterday’s massive WorldPride parade in Canada’s largest city: Joyful, fearless and boisterously irreverent. About 100 Kulanu participants joined an estimated 12,000 marchers cheered by more than a million spectators…
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Opinion A Non-Giggly Girl Causes Problems Among the Ultra-Orthodox
Ultra-Orthodox girls lean out of a classroom window / Getty Images “What do you mean he abused her?” The question was shrill and innocuous. The teacher, Mrs. Stern, looked incredibly uncomfortable. But hey, she had brought it up. “He got into the bed with her, and he abused her.” Mrs. Stern shrugged her shoulders at…
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Opinion The Freedom To Hear Offensive Speech
Much has been made of the spate of episodes on university campuses involving students and faculty seeking to block graduation speakers with whom they vehemently disagree. In the name of tolerance, transparency and “conversation,” too often the intolerant, a numerical minority, have prevailed. In the catechism of freedom of expression, from where does the “right”…
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Opinion Brandeis Gave Up On Al Quds. Its Students Didn’t.
Yasmin Khatib and Catie Stewart of the Brandeis-Al Quds Student Dialogue Initiative Talking about the Israeli occupation of the West Bank is difficult. Seeing it firsthand is harder. Living under it is nearly impossible. We learned this while leading a trip for a group of Brandeis students to Al Quds University in the West Bank…
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Opinion World War I Shaped My Life, But I’ll Never Know How
The author’s family in Romania, with great-grandfather Leib Nemes in the back row, furthest right Everyone thought he was dead. No one had seen Leib Nemes, my great-grandfather, for years — not since he was swept up into the bloody tornado of the First World War. The war was long over, but still he had…
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Opinion In Defense of the Schmaltzy
How long ago did something have to happen in order to merit nostalgia? Can we be nostalgic about last month? Last year? Can we be nostalgic about the Civil War? The Roman Era? (We’ve sure tried.) And how long did that moment have to last? Just an instant? A weekend? Or does it require more…
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Opinion Are Jews Now Safe and Free From Being Haunted?
Is the manifest decline in anti-Semitism tied in some way to the uptick in attention to the Holocaust? Bear with me. For a variety of middlingly important reasons, I’ve recently spent some days re-reading appraisals of American Jewish life that were written and published in the 1950s. And oh my, how things have changed! Back…
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Opinion Indyk Quits, Abbas Offers New Talks, Israel Erupts
Martin Indyk, the Obama administration’s special envoy for Israeli-Palestinian peace, will formally resign this afternoon and return to his think-tank job at the Brookings Institution, the Associated Press reports. If there was talk of a renewed American effort to reignite peace talks, this is probably a bad sign. It’s probably just coincidence that the news…
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Opinion Who Will Speak Out for American Families?
This summer has already given us its fair share of sensational news — from the attempted takeover of Iraq by jihadi militants to Eric Cantor’s downfall to the thrill of victory and agony of defeat at the World Cup in Brazil. And July has only just started. With all this drama, the smaller stories get…
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Opinion Two Neulanders — Two Dead Wives
(JTA) — Robert Neulander, a Syracuse, N.Y., physician active in his local Jewish community, was indicted this week in the murder of his wife. Whether the 62-year-old Robert Neulander — who chaired his local federation’s campaign and has served on the board of his JCC — is found guilty or innocent in the Sept. 17,…
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In Case You Missed It
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Opinion The Gaza hostage crisis could forever change how American Jews relate to Israel — but it’s not too late to fix that
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Yiddish ווידעאָ: היסטאָריקערין וויווי לאַקס באַשרײַבט געשיכטע פֿון לאָנדאָנער ייִדישער פּרעסעVIDEO: Historian Vivi Laks tells history of the London Yiddish Press
שבֿע צוקער פֿירט דעם שמועס מיט וויווי לאַקס און ביידע לייענען פֿאָר עטלעכע פֿעליעטאָנען פֿון יענע צײַטן.
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Yiddish World Puppet Monty Pickle is guest on the Forward’s ‘Yiddish Word of the Day’
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News Who is Bruce Blakeman, the ‘Almost Orthodox’ Jew running for New York governor?
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