Opinion

• Opinion

  Giving Women a Voice Is Powerful Message for High Holidays

  Each year when I sit in synagogue during Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, I’m struck by the complex stories we read about biblical women and by the wisdom these stories offer about ensuring the dignity of women and girls today. The past year was one of paradoxes. At a time when Sheryl Sandberg, Malala Yousafzai,…

  By Ruth Messinger

  3 min read
• 
  Opinion

  Chelsea Manning’s Identity Crisis Is One Jews Should Relate To

  ‘Yes, but is it good for the Jews?” We Jews know this question well. Henry Kissinger: good for the Jews? Brandeis? Koufax? Seinfeld? As an American minority, Jews are naturally sensitive to the way we are perceived, and to the messengers who — without our endorsement or permission — represent us to the world. Likewise…

  By Jay Michaelson Sep 4, 2013 | 3 min read
• 
  Opinion

  Bill Thompson and 2 Josephs

  New York mayoral candidate Bill Thompson’s political tour guides to Hasidic Brooklyn are two guys named Joseph — both famous influence-peddlers with strong community connections and checkered pasts. When he campaigned in the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Williamsburg on Labor Day, Thompson was accompanied by Hasidic fixers Joseph Menczer and Joseph Goldberger, the New York Observer…

  By Josh Nathan-Kazis Sep 3, 2013 | 2 min read

Columnists View All

• Jodi Rudoren This is my last column as editor of the Forward

  

• Jay Michaelson American Jews were played — now what?

  

• Rob Eshman I have the answer to Jon Stewart’s toughest question about Israel

  

• Nora Berman ‘Eddington’ is full of conspiracy theories but it’s not about Jews. Or is it?

  

• Dan Perry Recognizing a Palestinian state is a great way to doom Palestinians

  

• Emily Tamkin Is starvation in Gaza really Israel’s fault? The facts are clear

  

The Latest

• 
  Opinion

  Do the Right Thing on Syria

  When President Obama decided to delay a military strike against Syria to first obtain Congressional approval, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his usually raucous and unscripted government ministers they needed to stay quiet. It was a wise move on Netanyahu’s part. Even though Israel has a huge stake in the outcome of the Congressional debate,…

  Sep 3, 2013 | 3 min read
• 
  Opinion

  News Quiz: Sergey Brin’s New Lady

  Jews and Sex. That could be the title of this week’s new quiz, because… why not? That’s a title that gets readers. But, in this case, it’s also a title that pertains to the content. So much sex and so many Jews! Read on! (As if I could stop you.)

  By Lenore Skenazy Sep 3, 2013 | < 1 min read
• 
  Opinion

  A Truce in the Kotel Wars?

  The ongoing drama over who is allowed to pray at the Western Wall, and where, and how, and under what circumstances, encapsulates all that divides and distresses the Jewish people today, and all that can unify us. We understand the skeptics and cynics. We appreciate how difficult it will be to pry control over what…

  Sep 3, 2013 | 3 min read
• 
  Opinion

  Holiday Songs: Robeson’s ‘Joe Hill,’ Solidarity in WI

  Some songs for the holiday. First, Paul Robeson’s immortal rendition of “The Ballad of Joe Hill.” It still has incredibly moving power. (Read this and this for some fascinating comment on Joe.) Then, Harry “Haywire Mac” McClintock (author of “The Big Rock Candy Mountain”) sings Joe Hill’s “The Preacher and the Slave” (“Pie in the…

  By J.J. Goldberg Sep 2, 2013 | 2 min read
• 
  Opinion

  A Jewish Fight for Public Education

  Jews hold education sacred, and for good reason. An educated citizenry is a necessary precondition for any democracy. Similarly, for Jews of the rabbinic era — characterized by, among other things, a devolution of authority to local rabbinic leaders — education and learning have become a necessary precondition for engagement in the full kaleidoscope of…

  By Amy B. Dean Sep 2, 2013 | 4 min read
• 
  Opinion

  Ron Paul To Keynote Parley of Anti-Semites

  Former Texas Congressman and perennial GOP presidential contender Ron Paul is scheduled to keynote a conference in Canada next weekend of a “radical traditionalist” Catholic organization that’s described by human rights organizations as a major center of anti-Semitism. Other scheduled conference speakers include John McManus, president of the John Birch Society, the hoary staple of…

  By J.J. Goldberg Sep 2, 2013 | 4 min read
• 
  Opinion

  End of Jonathan Sacks Era

  Two countries; two chief rabbinates. But the institutions could hardly be more different. I have spent part of this summer observing the Chief Rabbi elections in Israel, and part in the U.K., hearing the opinions of British Jews about the end of the Jonathan Sacks era, with their Chief Rabbi (or strictly speaking the Chief…

  By Nathan Jeffay Sep 1, 2013 | 2 min read
• 
  Opinion

  Syria in the Crosshairs, All Outcomes Terrible

  Rosh Hashanah, tradition teaches, is the birthday of the world, the mother of all new beginnings. This year, alas, you’d be forgiven for feeling as though it’s more like the end of the world. If so, it’s somehow fitting that it’s ending right where it began, somewhere east of Eden in the Fertile Crescent, in…

  By J.J. Goldberg Sep 1, 2013 | 4 min read