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.
Opinion
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Opinion
Sticking It to Hamas, on Twitter
There’s nothing funny about war. So it’s unsurprising that a trending Twitter hashtag #HamasBumperStickers is being met with equal parts horror and glee. “What’s the martyr with you?”, “I don’t break for Jews,” and “My other car is also a mass of blackened, twisted metal” are just a few of the Tweets cascading out today…
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Opinion What’s the Gaza ‘Game Over’ Strategy?
Since Israel launched Operation Pillar of Defense on Wednesday, fighting around the Israel-Gaza border has been intense. The death toll stands at three on the Israeli side and 13 on the Palestinian side. A few minutes a rocket wounded ago three Israeli soldiers. In the last 24 hours, 138 rockets from Gaza has struck Israel…
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Opinion An ‘Imperfect Jew’ and LGBT Leader
When the International Lesbian and Gay Human Rights Commission was founded in 1990, sodomy laws were prevalent. Amnesty International’s platform didn’t include LGBT rights. The United States wouldn’t grant asylum to refugees on the basis of sexual orientation. The world’s changed since then, and so has IGLHRC. Since earning consultative status at the United Nations…
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Opinion Imagine an Israeli Arab Alfred Dreyfus
Once again, France is having an affair with the affair — the Dreyfus Affair. On November 4, Le Monde published a controversial essay by Israeli sociologist Eva Illouz, titled “Israel: Justice or Tribalism,” in which she views contemporary Israel through the prism of this 19th-century event. Israel, she concludes, lacks the political and legal ingredients…
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Opinion Scarlet ‘A’ Is for ‘Anti-Semitism’
Like Hester Prynne, the heroine of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1850 novel “The Scarlet Letter” about the rigid and harsh religiosity of 17th century Puritans, many contemporary Jewish intellectuals are marked with the infamous letter ‘A’ (not for adultery as in the novel, but for anti-Semitism). Peter Beinart, Noam Chomsky, Judith Butler, Avi Shlaim, Shlomo Sand and…
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Opinion How To Fix the Vote
The difficulty that some voters had to endure simply to cast a ballot in the November 6 election is a stunning testament to their civic dedication and a disgrace to our system. In hotly-contested swing states like Florida and Virginia, people waited on line for as much as nine hours to vote. Nine hours! Americans…
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Opinion A Call for Jewish Tolerance
Calling on the federation system to join synagogues in a fight against religious discrimination in Israel, Reform leader Rabbi Rick Jacobs aimed to engage the broader Jewish community in the struggle for equality of non-Orthodox Jewish denominations in Israel. Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, described Israel as “the only democracy that legally…
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Opinion What Connects Us To One Another?
I have been thinking about the Jews — not as voters, mind you, but as a people. And the obvious question that arises is what makes of this mixed multitude a whole, a people. What is it that connects us to one another? The traditional answers of organized American Jewry are barely adequate today, and…
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Opinion $64 Million Question on Iran
It was hardly surprising that Israeli diplomat Barukh Binah refused several times to discuss the nitty-gritty of plans to confront Iran over its nuclear program at a public forum at the Jewish Federations of North America’s General Assembly. Neither was the lack of optimism voiced by any of the three panelists that increased sanctions against…
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Opinion No (GOP) Sex on Tisha B’Av
With President Barack Obama’s reelection only a few days in the rear view mirror, the topic of the Jewish role in American politics is still brewing — and we learned some tantalizing details about Mitt Romney’s summer trip to Israel. Democratic and Republican operatives sparred over the importance of the Jewish vote in the just-completed…
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Opinion Finding Meaning of Jewish Law in Sandy Shelter
There were fallen trees everywhere. Twisted electricity pylons and crushed white picket fences littered the dark roadside as our Red Cross vehicle made its way to Locust Valley High School, in Long Island’s Nassau County. The roads were a labyrinth of dead-ends as a result of fallen debris and wrecked cars. Yet this was the…
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Opinion Zohran Mamdani’s victory proves it: The ‘gotcha’ mode of fighting antisemitism has to go
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Opinion Mamdani’s victory is an opportunity for Jews to relearn the art of disagreement
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Opinion Can we say Donald Trump’s Middle East nuclear strategy is dangerous — if it isn’t even a strategy?
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Opinion ‘Israel is seen as violent’ — and Israeli chefs, once global culinary icons, are feeling the heat
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Culture As Mel Brooks turns 99, his wisdom matters more than ever
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