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
Bibi’s Peace-Talk Halt: Bad Tactic — or Bad Faith?
Benjamin Netanyahu meets with Mahmoud Abbas in 2010/Getty Images Israel’s decision today to suspend peace talks with the Palestine Liberation Organization, in response to yesterday’s Fatah-Hamas reconciliation agreement, is really three distinct decisions. One is sensible. The second is understandable if questionable. The third is inexcusable. The first decision is the actual suspension of talks,…
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Opinion My Advice for Birthright? More Palestinians
Taglit-Birthright Israel Birthright’s worried. Registrations are dwindling and young Jews are growing disinterested in the free 10-day trip to Israel. Over a period of three years, applications have dropped more than 17%. To compensate for the downturn, the group has started to ease its “Jewish” definition and dig into its years-old wait lists. It’s also…
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Opinion What Will Help on Guns?
A troubling new play at Manhattan’s Public Theater begins with an eerie scene of a girl laid out on a table as if in a mortuary, and ends with an enigmatic question. For the 90 minutes in between, the audience witnesses what happens after a disturbed former student opens fire in the crowded library of…
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Opinion Palestinian Unity and the Beggar of Chelm
Palestinians in Gaza City on Wednesday celebrating Hamas-Fatah unity pact. / Getty Images Old Jewish joke: The beggar of Chelm goes to the rabbi’s house and pleads in a most pitiful tone: “Please rabbi, I haven’t eaten in days. Won’t you please give me a ruble to buy some food?” The rabbi is touched and…
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Opinion Israel Hires Psychic Uri Geller To Fight Rockets
Israeli psychic Uri Geller poses with a spoon that he bent in 2008 / Haaretz Really, can you blame them? Faced with ongoing rocket fire on the citizens it’s meant to protect, Israel’s military has done the only truly reasonable thing it could do: It hired a spoon-bending mentalist named Uri Geller. More than two…
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Opinion Anat Hoffman’s Daughter Puts Women of the Wall to Film
Tanya Hoffman is the daughter of Women of the Wall leader Anat Hoffman. / Haaretz “How I Stopped Hating Women of the Wall and Started Talking to My Mother.” That’s the title of an upcoming film by Tanya Hoffman, the 26-year-old daughter of firebrand feminist and Women of the Wall leader Anat Hoffman. The summer…
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Opinion Israel’s Bid For Visa Waiver Falls Short
Getty Images Israel is making another push to join the U.S. visa waiver program, which would allow Israelis to enter the U.S. for 90 days without a visa. Last year, another effort to enlist Israel in the program stalled amid criticisms of Israel’s discrimination against Americans of Arab and Muslim origins at its border. In…
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Opinion The Real Truth About Those Anti-Semitic Flyers in Donetsk
The world has roared with indignation at the anti-Semitic flyers distributed by masked-men outside a synagogue in Donetsk, in Eastern Ukraine. The flyers ordered local Jews to register with the separatist Donetsk People’s Republic, in light of the fact that Jewish leaders in Kiev supported the Ukrainian “junta”. Since the Donetsk People’s Republic controls all…
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Opinion What Jews Can Learn From Rwandans
A woman consoles a fellow Rwandan at a genocide commemoration ceremony / Getty Images I am no Shmuley Boteach, God knows. But I have recently learned from the Forward that Boteach and I have one thing in common – we are both rabbis who have visited Rwanda. This February, on the eve of Rwanda’s commemoration…
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Opinion 2 Women Put a Darfuri Survivor Through College
Guy Adam In the fall of 2010, I had recently arrived in Tel Aviv and had started my New Israel Fund Fellowship at ASSAF, a humanitarian aid organization helping asylum seekers and refugees in Israel. I met Guy around then at the ASSAF offices. He spoke English, so I explained to him that I was…
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Opinion Family Amulet Captures Jewish Life in India
When my grandmother was pregnant with my dad, she got a terrible — and somewhat mysterious — mouth infection. It kept her from eating and talking. It was so painful that it landed her flat on her back; for days, all she could do was lie in bed. Then her bedroom door creaked open to…
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