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
Anthony Lewis, Teacher and Thinker, Cared More About Israel Than His Critics
In all the richly deserved encomiums that came in the wake of Tony Lewis’s death, there is scarce mention of Lewis’s frequent commentary on the Israel/Palestine conflict. It is as if all he wrote about – and this, all agree, he did brilliantly – was the law and the courts. But in fact his interest…
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Opinion Anthony Lewis’s Ideals — In Far-Off Zimbabwe
Anthony Lewis devoted his life to preserving the ideals of that exceptional and quintessential American liberty: the First Amendment. In 2009, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) honored Lewis with its annual Burton Benjamin Memorial Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of his contributions to press freedom (Lewis was a founding board member of CPJ). Lewis…
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Opinion The Empathy Rule
Forty-one minutes into his powerful speech in Jerusalem, President Obama went off script. This spontaneous moment wasn’t the one replayed endlessly on cable television, when he paused to describe meeting with Palestinian young people his daughters’ ages. No, this diversion was only four words, easy to miss, but significant. It was in the “peace is…
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Opinion For Poor Students, Barriers To Higher Education Are Many
The front-page story in The New York Times grabbed my attention. Citing the work of education researchers, the article said that the nation’s 238 most selective colleges are failing to attract talented low-income students. Even though these students have a better chance of graduating from selective schools than from the local community college, many don’t…
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Opinion Can Barack Obama Turn Israel Into a Blue State — With Benjamin Netanyahu’s Help?
Of all of the gestures performed during Barack Obama’s trip to Israel, that of the president of the United States bowing to the president of the State of Israel as the former accepted the Presidential Medal of Distinction was among the more extraordinary. But even before that, there was another moment of symbolism when the…
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Opinion Tantalizing Hints From Supremes on Gay Marriage
The arguments over Proposition 8 – the California ban on same-sex marriage – gave tantalizing hints about the thinking of Supreme Court justices hearing the case. After a lawyer in support of the ban, Charles Cooper, argued that procreation and child-rearing were fundamental to a state’s interest in marriage, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg brought up…
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Opinion Honoring the Many Liberations That Mark Passover
This is the season of our deliverance. I don’t think I’m going out on a limb saying so. It was in this season, tradition teaches, at the first full moon of spring around 3,500 years ago that our Hebrew ancestors staged recorded history’s first successful slave rebellion. We’ve marked the anniversary ever since by retelling…
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Opinion Defining Marriage for the 21st Century
As the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to hear arguments in two cases about same-sex marriage, there’s been speculation about whether the experiences of the justices themselves will bear upon their momentous task of defining marriage in the 21st century. We certainly hope so. Those experiences should inform the deliberation, for they illustrate how society’s concept…
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Opinion Obama Seder Reflects Common Bond With Jews
Just before the doors of the Old Family Dining Room swing open to welcome Elijah to the White House Seder, Dr. Eric Whitaker, a friend of President Obama, reads aloud the Emancipation Proclamation. Last week, as I researched the Obama Seder (the only Seder hosted by a sitting President), I was struck by several things,…
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Opinion A Useful Tension at the Heart of Judaism
A very senior professor from a very distinguished university sought me out recently, ostensibly to talk about international human rights. His specific interest, he said, was in the relative absence of Jews from the ongoing struggle to advance humanitarian concerns. But the issue that ended up taking most of our time was: Why Jewish? That…
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Opinion Anne Frank, Dr. King and the ADL’s Moving Video
What if Martin Luther King, Jr., Anne Frank, Matthew Shepard and Yitzhak Rabin were still alive today? A new video from the Anti-Defamation League depicts the contributions they could have made to society and asks viewers to envision a world without hate. Produced for the ADL’s 100th anniversary and set to John Lennon’s “Imagine,” the…
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