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
Despite Numerous Anti-Hunger Organizations, Many Go Hungry
Let us speak of SNAP. “SNAP?,” you ask. “What is SNAP?” SNAP is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly know and still best recognized as the food stamp program. And now it is in danger. Here’s the story: SNAP has benefited enormously from the 2009 Recovery Act, which temporarily boosted SNAP benefits. But come November,…
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Opinion Jewish Week Publishes Orthodox E-Rate Investigation
An investigation out today from the Jewish Week sheds more light on apparent Orthodox abuse of the E-Rate subsidy program, which the Forward first reported on last week. E-Rate, a federally mandated subsidy program, funds internet and telephone connectivity for schools and libraries. The Forward investigation revealed that Orthodox institutions that didn’t actually qualify as…
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Opinion The Last Pope Shaped by the Shoah
The resignation of Pope Benedict XVI will symbolically bring to an end a remarkable period in Catholic-Jewish relations. Benedict and his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, were personally involved in two 20th-century events that had a profound effect on this relationship — the Shoah and the Second Vatican Council. It is nearly certain that the…
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Opinion Naftali Bennett Says ‘No’ to Bibi (Or Not Yet)
The new star of the Israeli right may be heading for the opposition benches. Israeli media are reporting that Naftali Bennett and his religious-Zionist Jewish Home party have rejected an offer that would have made it part of the government with control of the Education Ministry and other prominent positions. To Bennett’s irritation Prime Minister…
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Opinion BDS Is Not the Answer
As it transpired, the brouhaha surrounding Brooklyn College’s BDS event was a good deal of hullabaloo over not a lot. Roughly 300 people turned up to listen to Judith Butler and Omar Barghouti speak about the need to boycott and divest from Israel, while outside the hall 150 protested either in favour of or against…
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Opinion Is BDS Hate Speech?
When the national director of the Anti-Defamation League takes out a large advertisement in the print edition of The New York Times, you kind of have to take notice. Given the cost of such an ad (surely more than one in the Forward!), the February 7 statement by Abraham Foxman signals that his organization believes…
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Opinion Deserving a Vote
They deserve a vote. With that simple exhortation, President Obama cleverly married two causes that were certainly the emotional high points of his recent State of the Union address. In introducing his idea for a nonpartisan commission to “improve the voting experience in America,” he cited the hours-long wait some citizens endured last November just…
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Opinion Dedicating SOTU Moment to Slain Dad
As far as Sami Rahamim knows, the seating at the State of the Union address is random. He told the Forward that there “were couples invited who were separated.” His seat, as the guest of his congressman, Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), was “up in the gallery, facing the President on the left side.” The man…
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Opinion Jonah Lehrer’s $20K Mea Culpa
‘I’m sorry’ never felt so good — nor paid so handsomely. Jonah Lehrer, the disgraced New Yorker writer who quit his job in July after it was discovered he was recycling his own work, for blog posts, acknowledged his plagiarism and fabrications at a February 12 talk in Miami. It wasn’t just any talk. It…
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Opinion Why Can’t Jewish Settlements Remain in a Palestinian State?
“There’s no greater cliché,” I wrote in this column a month ago, “than the one that keeps insisting that the settlements are an obstacle to peace. They may have been that once, when they were few and sparsely populated enough to be removed. Now that they’ve long passed that point, any peace agreement will have…
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Opinion Pro-Gun Backlash to Newtown Could Help Elect Republicans
Two devastating tragedies struck the American northeast last fall with a deadly force that riveted the nation’s collective imagination, battered our conscience and rewrote our national agenda. One was the massive destruction of Superstorm Sandy. The other was the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Sandy and Sandy Hook. They came at a pivotal…
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