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.
Opinion
President Obama’s critics like to acknowledge that official visits to foreign countries are more about style than substance, but when it comes to Israel, that’s a disingenuous feint. As Mitt Romney, presidential candidate, takes his campaign to Israel, conservative pundits see an opportunity to point out that Barack Obama hasn’t been there since moving into…
Mindy Meyer may be the Diva of the District, but the wannabe state senator from Brooklyn has a little homework to do if she hopes to make it big in politics. The 22-year-old Brooklyn law student looked a bit like a deer in the headlights when a local TV anchor asked her to identify some…
As the mother of two grade-school boys in a Conservative day school, I read the Jewish Community Study of New York: 2011, a comprehensive survey of the world’s largest and most diverse Jewish community outside Israel, with great interest. It has clearly raised some significant issues and pointed out real challenges facing the Conservative movement….
Those who are dedicated to maintaining Jerusalem as a pluralistic capital of all of Israel won a small but important victory in July: The Ministry of Transportation ordered Cnaan, the agency that handles advertising on Egged buses, to include images of women. The ruling was in response to a petition by Yerushalmim, a group that…
A few months ago I sent an email to my editor, pitching a story on Yiddish Farm. (That piece is in this week’s paper, and online here.) I didn’t have to make a hard sell. An organic farm, run by 20-something-year-olds, where everyone speaks Yiddish? The piece practically writes itself. Indeed, Yiddish Farm is one…
Mindy Meyer is a 22-year-old Orthodox law student who went to Prospect Park Yeshiva in Brooklyn, wears knee-length skirts — and is running for New York state Senate. Her website, pink and flashy, incorporates glitter and leopard print. Campaign slogan? “I’m Senator and I know it.” “I’m trying to appeal to the younger population,” explains…
By the time we read Anna Breslaw’s assertion in a recent article in Tablet magazine that “there is no ‘banality’ of evil” we have already suffered paragraphs of banal prose about evil. The author — a grandchild of Holocaust survivors — led a recent story about a television program by declaring that Shoah survivors are…
Where are the women? It?s a question the Forward has asked repeatedly for several years now, as we?ve documented the paucity of women leaders in Jewish communal life and sought to ignite a community conversation about how to better include half the population. It seems that the issue is not ours alone ? the British…
Considerable attention has been focused these last several weeks on the report of Israel’s Levy Commission. No great surprise: The three-person commission, appointed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to render an advisory opinion regarding Jewish settlement in the West Bank, determined that there is no barrier to such settlement and, indeed, that the legality of…
In my most recent weekly column I quoted at some length from Uzi Arad, professor of strategic affairs at Israel’s Interdisciplinary Center, who served until a year ago as chairman of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s National Security Council. Arad is one of Israel’s most influential strategic thinkers, a former Mossad director of research, founder of…
The fighting in Syria, now officially designated by the Red Cross as a “civil war,” could end up differently than most people expect, with dangerous consequences. Survival of the Assad regime is increasingly in doubt as rebels close in on Damascus and senior officers either defect or are assassinated. On the other hand, out-and-out victory…
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