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
Shavuot Is Tough Sell in Age of 140 Characters
The festival of Shavuot marks God’s announcement of his commandments on Mount Sinai. Occurring seven weeks after Passover, the holiday involves no prescribed rituals and can pass virtuously with little ceremony. Those who observe Shavuot often honor the occasion with all-night Torah classes. Because of its boundless significance, the Sinaitic revelation is commemorated by engaging…
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Opinion A Bronx Fire, Rekindled
It was just another fire story. Cities are riddled with them: images of flames gushing from an aging building, firefighters scrambling to contain the blaze, neighbors agape, traffic rerouted, burnt holes created in the crowded urban landscape. This story appeared in the New York papers May 2. A five-alarm fire devastated a block of small…
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Opinion Bangladesh Factory Collapse, Like Triangle Fire, Should Bring About Change
On April 24, just outside of Bangladesh’s capital city, one of the worst industrial disasters in history killed over one thousand workers and injured scores more in the dubious service of making cheap clothing for consumers like you and me. Around the same time, about 8,000 miles away in Brooklyn, my wife and I were…
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Opinion Taxed to Death in Israel
Israelis are about to be taxed to death — literally. Israelis are furious at the austerity budget, and thousands took to the streets last night to demonstrate. You may have read about the planned spending cuts or the planned tax increases, but you probably haven’t heard about the cemeteries plan. The government wants to impose…
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Opinion Agriprocessors Raid Made Us, Briefly, Rethink Kashrut
Sunday, May 12, marks the fifth anniversary of the massive immigration raid that shook Postville, Iowa, in 2008. Some 1,000 federal, state and local agents descended on the tiny town, population 2,200, and arrested 389 undocumented immigrants working at the town’s largest employer, Agriprocessors, then the nation’s largest kosher slaughterhouse. To mark the anniversary, immigration…
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Opinion Six Words for the (Bad) Jewish Mother
For Mother’s Day, the Forward challenged you, our readers, to write six-word memoirs encapsulating your mothers — and then we picked 12 winners who penned sweet and silly salutes. In the process of sifting through your six-word submissions, we learned something important: mommy issues abound in the Jewish world. While most of the memoirs were…
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Opinion Kotel Miracle: No Stone Throwers Killed by Cops
There must have been divine intervention at the Western Wall in Jerusalem on Friday, when no one was killed or injured by the volley of police fire that surely must have been unleashed at the rioters who threw stones at Jewish worshipers that morning. If memory serves, that is what the police do when people…
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Opinion Anger Is Missing Ingredient in Making Unions Strong Again
The AFL-CIO posts the following question on it Web site: “The sustained war on workers from the right has left unions trying to prevent rights from being weakened rather than setting the agenda. Where are the opportunities to play some offense?” The answers are all over the lot; no coherent agenda is evident. But that…
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Opinion Kotel Ball Is in Tzipi Livni’s Court
Could Tzipi Livni be sweetening feminists before dropping a bombshell? As discussed earlier on Forward Thinking, Justice Minister Livni has just announced that she is working on legislation to criminalize the exclusion of women from the public sphere. The timing is interesting — just as she could find herself in a very awkward position on…
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Opinion Church of Scotland Insults Jews With Denial of Claim to Israel
The injection of theology into the Israeli-Palestinian real estate dispute has rarely proved helpful, particularly in cases where one side seeks to make a claim to all the land at the expense of the other. The Church of Scotland’s laughably regressive new document, “The Inheritance of Abraham?: A Report on the ‘Promised Land,” which wilfully…
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Opinion Thin Line Between Hate and Free Speech
If you’re like me, you’re probably wondering where to draw the line between free speech, which should be defended, and hate speech, which should be combated. Well, I’ve found some useful insight in a series of articles that appeared the Jewish Tribune, the weekly journal of B’nai B’rith Canada. I’m not sure the articles were…
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