Opinion

• Opinion

  News Quiz: Babs’s Honor, Israel’s Unlikely Ally

  What do Mel Gibson, Joyce Brothers, Barbra Streisand and Stephen Hawking have in common? Almost nothing! And yet, here they are, all together in this week’s news quiz, along with Isabella Rossellini, Anthony Weiner and the Zionist Organization of America. It’s got all the makings of a terrible movie — but a great quiz!

  By Lenore Skenazy

  < 1 min read
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  Opinion

  Does Anthony Weiner Have a Chance?

  Anthony Weiner’s entry into the New York City mayoral contest further crowds a packed Democratic primary field and gives the race its first major Jewish candidate. The disgraced ex-lawmaker, who resigned from Congress in 2011 after he sent racy pictures of himself to women online, announced his comeback candidacy in a YouTube video posted late…

  By Josh Nathan-Kazis May 22, 2013 | 2 min read
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  Opinion

  Hugo Chavez Protege Insists He’s a Jew

  You can’t call me an anti-Semite. My grandparents were Jewish. That’s the message from newly elected Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, who rejected charges of anti-Semitism by revealing his Jewish roots in an interview with pro-government news site Apporea. But even if the Venezuelan president is a member of the tribe, some observers are questioning his…

  By Michael Kaminer May 22, 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 There’s a shocking new report on civilian deaths in Gaza. If only it were accurate.

  

• Nora Berman Is Netflix’s new show the most Jewish cartoon ever?

  

• Dan Perry Israel’s new gift to the far right could help end the Gaza war

  

• Emily Tamkin Entering motherhood — and an obsession with the works of an Italian Jewish literary hero

  

The Latest

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  Opinion

  End Orthodox Monopoly on Jewish Marriage in Israel

  After 65 years, the State of Israel is a thriving democracy of which we can all be very proud in many areas. But it is a democracy that continues to face many obstacles to preserving its Jewish and democratic character. One obstacle that is of particular concern to non-Orthodox Jews is the absence of any…

  By Nancy K. Kaufman May 22, 2013 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  Tornadoes and Climate Change: Links and Doubts

  What do we know about the tornado that hit the Oklahoma City suburbs on Monday? And what can we learn from it? Specifically, how bad was it? How does it compare with other tornadoes? And was it related to climate change, as Democratic Senators Sheldon Whitehouse and Barbara Boxer are charging? For starters, the tornado…

  By J.J. Goldberg May 21, 2013 | 5 min read
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  Opinion

  No ‘Israeli ABBA’ — Again

  A Romanian opera singer dressed like Dracula and wailing falsetto. Dancers in a Perspex boxes and drummers dosed in baby oil. Moustachioed Greeks dancing and singing about the joys of free alcohol. A Russian plea for world peace in three minutes with a key change. In case you missed it, that was the Eurovision Song…

  By Liam Hoare May 21, 2013 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  Food and Faith

  Five years ago, what was considered the largest immigration raid in American history trained a harsh spotlight on abusive conditions for workers and animals at the nation’s biggest kosher slaughterhouse and meat packing plant. The raid on Agriprocessors in Postville, Iowa, and the subsequent conviction of its owner on federal financial fraud brought more than…

  May 21, 2013 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  Researchers Feud Over Jewish Genes

  Are Jews genetically homogenous? Though it’s certainly been a loaded question historically, the quandary has been the domain of scientists for a number of years now, all of whom have pretty much come up with the same answer: yes. But that was before Eran Elhaik entered the picture. An Israeli molecular geneticist, Elhaik is interested,…

  By Gal Beckerman May 20, 2013 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  Jewish Lessons of Murder in Greenwich Village

  Mark Carson was a 32-year-old gay man in New York City, who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. The place is one familiar to many New Yorkers: the busy corner of 6th Avenue and 8th Street, in Greenwich Village. Just two blocks from the famous Stonewall Inn, Carson talked back…

  By Jay Michaelson May 20, 2013 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  ‘War’ With Ultra-Orthodox Over Western Wall? Bring It On

  My first reaction to the ugly confrontation at the Western Wall on Friday was to be appalled and sickened. Attacks carried out mostly by ultra-Orthodox men, who heckled, shouted, and threw things at approximately 100 members of Women of the Wall attempting to pray at Judaism’s most sacred site, were a chillul Hashem, a desecration…

  By Eric Yoffie May 20, 2013 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  What ‘Jews a Race’ Debate Means for Israel

  The persistent debate over the “racial” origins of the Jewish people makes a mockery of scholarship, trivializes history and perpetuates conceptions of identity that have been misused to justify everything from violent repression to affirmative action. It is hardly surprising that Johns Hopkins’s Eran Elhaik “stirred up a hornet’s nest of controversy,” as the Forward…

  By Jarrod Tanny May 20, 2013 | 4 min read