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
6 Things To Remember on Quebec Election Day
On Monday, citizens of Quebec will go to the polls to vote for a new provincial government. Two main players are facing off in this year’s elections: the Parti Quebecois (PQ), Quebec’s nationalist party currently ruling as a minority government and led by Premier Pauline Marois, against Quebec’s Liberal Party, ousted from power in 2012…
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Opinion This Oped Will Not Tell You How Great We Are
Let’s begin with a truth: Much of what gets published by and in the Jewish communal world is pure self-promotion. Look around, and you’ll see articles, comments, essays, posts and tweets whose chief purpose is to extol the virtues of this or that Jewish communal organization or program. Most authors of this material don’t even…
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Opinion Rightist Foils Bid to Open Books of Settlement Unit
Tzufim settlement outpost, western Samaria, October 2012 / Getty Images The chairman of the Knesset’s law and legislation committee on Thursday postponed, for the second time in two weeks, a scheduled vote on a bill requiring transparency in government funding of West Bank settlements. The bill has majority support in the committee, whose membership mirrors…
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Opinion The Year of Magical Thinking
“That’s the good thing about science: It’s true whether or not you believe in it. That’s why it works.” So said Neil deGrasse Tyson, joining Bill Nye as players in a strange cultural moment: the resurgence of magical thinking. Magical thinking, you’ll recall, refers to the misattribution of causality: The black cat meowed, and then…
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Opinion On Yarzeit, Recall King’s Last Battle: Labor Rights
Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis, 1968. Left: April 3. Right: April 4. Today is the 46th anniversary of the death of Martin Luther King Jr. Below is the editorial I wrote for the Forward seven years ago, on what would have been his 78th birthday — the moment when the years since his death…
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Opinion Why Nate Silver Should Listen to Abraham Joshua Heschel
Nate Silver has pissed a lot of people off lately. In an interview with New York Magazine about the then upcoming launch of the new FiveThirtyEight site, the data-journalism enthusiast took a jab at traditional opinion journalism. He told the interviewer that pundits might “have really high IQs, but they don’t have any discipline in…
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Opinion Bash-J Street Audience Turns on Dershowitz
The Philadelphia screening of the anti-J Street film “The J Street Challenge” by the Jewish federation and the regional Hillel council reportedly turned into a rowdy right-wing roast in which the audience turned its fury on Alan Dershowitz. So reports Matthew Berkman, a University of Pennsylvania Ph.D. candidate writing a doctoral thesis on American Jewish…
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Opinion Memo to New York Times: Women Are Jews, Too
Protesters call for the release of Jonathan Pollard / Getty Images So I check the homepage of the New York Times on Thursday afternoon, as I regularly do several times a day, to see a prominent story proclaiming that all the talk of freeing convicted spy Jonathan J. Pollard is dividing American Jews. “More and…
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Opinion Watching Porn While Sitting Shiva
Digital Spy It was my first shiva call, and it shocked me out of my wits. Sarah, one of the residents in the Jewish retirement community where I’d been conducting seminars on world news, had passed away. A cheerful lady in her 90s, she had always brought an international aspect to our weekly discussions. I…
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Opinion Israel’s Missed Energy Opportunity
The Tamar drilling natural gas production platform near Israel / Getty Images It’s now a week since the scheduled start of one of the most important energy deals in Israeli history. But the signing was called off, hasn’t been rescheduled since, and now, uncertainty hangs over the future of the deal. Australia-based Woodside Petroleum was…
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Opinion Donor Slams Federation for Divisive ‘Political Attack Ad’ Aimed at J Street
For more than 30 years, my relationship with Jewish federations, Israel Bonds, the America Israel Public Affairs Committee, J Street and Hillel has been the focus of my life. I have chaired federation and Israel Bonds campaigns, led and helped create Jewish day schools in both Milwaukee and Tucson, Ariz., and donated millions of dollars…
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Fast Forward Unarmed man who tackled Bondi Beach Hanukkah attacker identified as Ahmed al-Ahmed
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Opinion I grew up believing Australia was the best place to be Jewish. This Hanukkah shooting forces a reckoning I do not want.
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Fast Forward Hanukkah shooting leaves at least 15 dead at Australia’s most popular beach
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Fast Forward Father and son suspects in Bondi Beach Hanukkah attack identified as Sajid and Naveed Akram by law enforcement
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