In the Forward’s opinion section, you’ll find analysis and essays from diverse corners of the Jewish world.
To pitch an opinion piece, email our Opinion Editor, Talya Zax.
In the Forward’s opinion section, you’ll find analysis and essays from diverse corners of the Jewish world.
To pitch an opinion piece, email our Opinion Editor, Talya Zax.
Imagine every car on a main street suddenly screeching to a stop and all the passengers running out, with only a siren wailing in the background. When the first siren went off, we thought it was a test. It took us 10 seconds to realize that it was the real thing. We hurried to our…
A few weeks ago, more than 500 rabbis signed their names to a letter urging the Cuban government to release Alan Gross. He’s the 63-year-old Jew who has served three years of a 15-year term in a Cuban jail for “crimes against the state” — that is, spying for the United States. He has lost…
Some news, apparently, is fit to print, but not too boldly. Take, for example, the demure self-censorship on display Saturday in the New York Times’ eye-opening report, headlined “On Island, Largely Blue, an Exception: Trump Tower,” on the handful of New York City neighborhoods that voted for Mitt Romney over President Obama. Overall, the city…
By all accounts, it was a nerve-wracking time for the 75,000 Israeli reservists called up in preparation for a ground offensive in Gaza last week. “The next days were an emotional roller coaster ride,” wrote Marc Goldberg, who reported to duty on November 18, in a blog post for The Times of Israel. “I was…
It looked as if today’s primaries to choose the candidate roster for Israel’s ruling Likud party was going to be delayed by Operation Pillar of Defense. But the party showed resilience and went to the polls as scheduled — only to have the process descend in to a shambles by problems with the snazzy computerized…
Whatever happens in Gaza — and the news changes by the minute as this editorial is being written — all sides have to accept some very hard truths. If not, the bloodshed will resume, the anger and frustration will spread and the region, Israel’s neighborhood, will squander the hope and potential of the fragile cease-fire….
The Drunken Ship pub in Rome was host to 30 Tottenham Hotspur fans, in town to watch their soccer team’s Europa League encounter with S.S. Lazio last Wednesday night. At approximately 1 a.m. Thursday, Lazio so-called ultras —extremist hooligan fans — turned up at the bar armed with stones, metal bars, and knuckle dusters and…
There had been a relative calm in my small part of the world — a gentrified area of south Tel Aviv where the tree-lined narrow streets are scattered with bustling restaurants and coffee shops — where my biggest concern was finding a working Telo-Fun bike machine. Before last week, words like miklat (bomb shelter), Iron…
Tel Aviv is not a symbol. It is not, as the “lev” (Hebrew for “heart”) sound in Tel Aviv suggests to some, a bubble of the heart. It is a real city. It is a home for so many people, embodying so many stories of the Jewish journey. Eli Mohar who wrote some of the…
Rev. Justin Welby, Bishop of Durham, will be enthroned as the 105th Archbishop of Canterbury on March 21, 2013. He will be the latest principal leader of the Church of England in a line that goes back more than 1,400 years. Notably, Welby is also most likely the only head of the worldwide Anglican Communion…
For many Israelis, two accomplishments of the current round of war are cause for joy: First, Israel killed senior Hamas leader Ahmed al-Jabari; and second, Hamas fired missiles at Tel Aviv. The celebrations among online “talk-backers” now that Tel Aviv residents have joined the missile-target club include some gloating, but they also imply an optimistic…
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