Opinion

• Opinion

  3 Questions for the Oscars

  Watching gagmeister Seth MacFarlane’s off-color, take-no-prisoners performance as host of the Oscars on Sunday night and then observing public and press reactions afterward, two things become clear. The first is that a half-century after the Civil Rights revolution and 42 years after the debut of “All in the Family,” Americans are still hopelessly divided on…

  By J.J. Goldberg

  5 min read
• Opinion

  Instagramming Purim in Hasidic Boro Park

  People in Boro Park tend to stick with traditional Hasidic clothing like headscarves, shtreimels, and rekels. But on Purim you’re bound to see people dressed as clowns, princesses and even SpongeBob SquarePants. Here are a few Instagram photos from around the neighborhood that give a sense of what it’s like on Purim in Boro Park.

  By Nate Lavey Feb 25, 2013 | < 1 min read
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  Opinion

  Oscars Host Seth MacFarlane Crossed Line To Bigotry and Anti-Semitism

  It seems as though the Oscars writers think that Hollywood is so liberal that they can get away with making offensive comments because everyone knows they’re “just joking.” I don’t agree. Sunday night’s Academy Awards ceremony featured a not very subtle onslaught of sexist, racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic “jokes.” At a time when America is…

  By Peter Dreier Feb 25, 2013 | 3 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 A billionaire Gen Z influencer is reinventing philanthropy — with this South African rabbi’s help

  

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

  

• Dan Perry Israel is not deliberately killing journalists in Gaza. But it does bear responsibility for their deaths

  

• Emily Tamkin Trump’s attack on George Soros is ludicrous. It also endangers Jews (and everyone else)

  

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  Opinion

  Beauty and The Pig

  Where is Roland Barthes now that we truly need him? Barthes was the French intellectual who founded the discipline of cultural criticism, insisting everything, from the epic to pedestrian, signifies something. Flags and photos, cars and commercials, pop stars and plastic: Barthes trawled the sea of signification for the flotsam of mass culture. He would…

  By Robert Zaretsky Feb 25, 2013 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  Farming the Jewish Way

  I recently joined more than 150 people at the Pearlstone Center near Baltimore for the 5th annual Beit Midrash to learn about the Jewish calendar and how it connects to sustainability and farming. The Beit Midrash has become an annual ritual for my family and we have watched it grow from an informal gathering of…

  By Tanya Tolchin Feb 25, 2013 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  Our Preschool Challenge

  When President Obama extolled the virtues of early childhood education in his recent State of the Union address, he voiced sentiments that any parent with a child in preschool would echo: how important it is to expose children to active learning, positive reinforcement and socialization at a young age. “But today,” the president said, “fewer…

  Feb 25, 2013 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  A Possible Pope Goes to Shul

  Timothy Cardinal Dolan, Archbishop of New York, went to shul Shabbat yesterday. Not for the usual davening. Cardinal Dolan, who is considered papabile (a candidate, albeit a very dark-horse candidate, for the papal throne recently vacated by Pope Benedict XVI), immediately captured the standing-room-only crowd in the Manhattan’s Lincoln Square Synagogue by greeting the congregation…

  By Jerome Chanes Feb 24, 2013 | 2 min read
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  Opinion

  Confessions of a Synagogue Membership Hoarder

  My family belongs to two synagogues. In two years, when our two smallest children start going to synagogue nursery school, we’re probably going to join the nursery school’s synagogue, too. Have I mentioned that we are also being actively recruited as members of a fourth synagogue? Up front, let me be clear: Not everyone should…

  By Jordana Horn Feb 24, 2013 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  Oscars Message to Israel

  “The Gatekeepers” and “5 Broken Cameras” have already succeeded in breaking one of Israel’s biggest taboos: airing out its dirty laundry on the big screen, for the whole world to see. Now the two films are both heading to the biggest stage of all: the Academy Awards. If either one of the films from Israel/Palestine…

  By Mairav Zonszein Feb 24, 2013 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  Barack Obama Returns to Roots as Community Organizer

  Back during the primary battles of 2008, my brother and I had an ongoing disagreement. He wondered how this upstart senator, his eloquence notwithstanding, could ride herd on the doyens of the House and Senate. My standard response was to invoke Obama’s experience as a community organizer. “No,” I’d say, “Obama will not go that…

  By Leonard Fein Feb 23, 2013 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  Haredi Power on the Brink

  On a cool winter evening in 2012, a senior delegation of ultra-Orthodox rabbis and politicians — members of Israel’s Ashkenazi religious party, United Torah Judaism, and the Sephardic religious party, Shas — convened in Bnei Brak, a predominantly Haredi city near Tel Aviv. The host was a 98-year-old rabbi, Aharon Shtainman, spiritual leader of the…

  By Moran Stern Feb 22, 2013 | 4 min read