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
The ‘Draft Dodgers’ in Our Midst
When 50,000 ultra-Orthodox Jews flooded the streets of lower Manhattan this past Sunday, clogging the alleyways that curl through the Financial District with black hats and single-minded devotion, they did more than recite psalms in protest at what is now a new law in Israel. They introduced a new challenge to the Israel conversation at…
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Opinion EBSCO Backtracks On ‘Anti-Jewish’ BDS Index
Pro-Palestinian activists hold a banner reading ‘Boycott Israel’ in Paris in 2010. / Getty Images Score this one in the victory column for BDS supporters and, much more broadly, for anyone who believes we should use language accurately — especially when we’re dealing with loaded terms like “anti-Semitism.” EBSCO Information Services, a major provider of…
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Opinion 3 Dangerous Bills That Will Rock Israel This Week
Getty Images This is a big week in Israeli politics. Three sets of bills are being introduced into the Knesset for their second and third readings, and all of them have far-reaching consequences. Though there has been much handwringing over them, over fears that Israeli democracy is being ruined, there is no doubt that the…
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Opinion News Quiz: Albert Einstein, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Moe Howard
Albert Einstein, Moe Howard and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad together in the same quiz? What could possibly go right?
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Opinion Fighting Anti-Gay Hate on Purim
Demonstrators in Nairobi, Kenya rally against wave of anti-gay legislation in Africa. Getty Images. The ancient rabbi Hillel famously asked: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when?” I feel it is important to answer the first two questions…
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Opinion Why Vladimir Putin Will Keep Playing Jewish Card in Ukraine Crisis
The Kremlin has issued more condemnations of anti-Semitism in the past week than in the preceding decade. The danger of anti-Semitism was on the lips of the Russian Ambassador to the United Nations, Vitaly Churkin, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, and President Vladimir Putin himself. Not Russian anti-Semitism, of course. It was Ukrainian “Neo-Nazism, fascism and…
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Opinion The Dark Side of Purim
Esther denouncing Haman / Ernest Normand These days, many liberal Jews think of Purim as a play date for the kids and a night of drunken debauchery for the grown-ups. We think of costumes and songs and noisemakers, a kind of carnival spirit. But the levity with which we approach Purim is actually pretty astonishing….
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Opinion Leaving the Ultra-Orthodox World — With No Other Choice
A young ultra-Orthodox Jewish woman once contacted me with a serious question: ”Should I leave the ultra-Orthodox community?” My reply to her was, “Since you have asked, ‘Should I?’ — then the answer is, ‘No!’” Leaving the ultra-Orthodox Jewish fold is called in Hebrew yetzia bishe’elah — literally, “leaving with a question.” It is a…
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Opinion Letty Cottin Pogrebin Looks Back at ‘Free To Be’
Letty Cottin Pogrebin / Wiki Commons When I think back to my childhood record collection containing Burl Ives stories, the Broadway cast recording of Fiddler on the Roof, and Top Disco Hits of the 1970s, one LP stands out: the generation-defining, gender-equality kids album Free to Be You and Me. Released in 1972, the platinum…
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Letters No Conclusive Evidence on Circumcision Rite and Herpes
In its editorial, compellingly titled “Protect the Children,” the Forward implores Mayor Bill DeBlasio to not “go wobbly,” urging him to “curtail” Metzitzah B’Peh (often referred to as simply MBP), a part of many ritual circumcisions, which has been asserted to cause Herpes Simplex (HSV1) infections. The editorial is misguided in its medical and policy…
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Opinion 3 Ways To Support Our Jewish Troops and Build Community
In 2009, my husband, an active-duty naval officer, was deployed to Iraq for 12 months. To prepare for a year without him, my children (then ages 6 and 4) and I moved from our military base in Washington State back into the home we owned in the Washington, D.C., area to be close to our…
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