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
Hatikvah Redux and Carlebach Responds
When Neshama Carlebach recently recorded for us a slightly different, more inclusive version of Hatikvah (one first suggested by our language columnist, Philologos), the reaction from some was predictably pretty negative. As one commenter succinctly put it, “Israel is not a binational state. It is the national homeland of the Jewish people. I’d rather Israel…
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Opinion Fifty Years Since the ’60s
In 1960, Jews numbered roughly 3% of Americans. Of the six presidents that Students for a Democratic Society elected in its brief life of electing personages so designated, only two were Jewish. No precise figures exist for the whole membership, or, for that matter, other radical groups of the ensuing years, or, more particularly, the…
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Opinion If It’s Okay for Mofaz…
The dramatic announcement that Israel was going to have a new unity government instead of national elections scrambled the political calculus in the Knesset, left a shrunken opposition rudderless, and proved once again that Benjamin Netanyahu is one heck of a politician. It has also opened up opportunities for American Jewish dialogue on Israel. How…
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Opinion Vigilante Justice and the Jews
In early May, a circuit court judge in Baltimore found Eliyahu Werdesheim, a 24-year-old member of a local Shomrim anti-crime patrol, guilty of assaulting a teenager named Corey Ausby. According to prosecutors, in 2010 Werdesheim and his brother, Avi, set upon Ausby on a residential street in Northwest Baltimore and beat him with the butt…
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Opinion The Two-Minute Zionism Elevator Pitch
In their May 2 debate in New York, Daniel Gordis and Peter Beinhart enthusiastically agreed on one matter that has been omitted from all the coverage of the event I’ve seen. And yet I am exceedingly uncomfortable with their argument. Here, reluctantly but necessarily foreshortened, is the heart of their exchange: The question put to…
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Opinion Katzenberg’s $12 Million Party for Obama
President Obama raised a reported $12 million for his reelection campaign at a Hollywood fundraiser at George Clooney’s home co-hosted by top Obama donor Jeffrey Katzenbeg. The May 10 fundraiser came days after Obama announced his personal support of legal recognition for gay marriage. Though the president stopped well short of calling for federal legislation,…
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Opinion Victory!
The letter has been liberated. We’ve been waiting to write that for a long time, ever since our Paul Berger went on a national search for George Washington’s original, iconic 1790 letter to the Jews of Newport, Rhode Island, the one famously promising a new United States government that would give “to bigotry no sanction,…
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Letters Who Cares?
I rarely find myself disagreeing with Leonard Fein, but in his April 13 column, “American Jews Are Different, Not ‘Partial,’” his criticism of the Israeli writer A.B. Yehoshua’s distinction between “complete” and “partial” Jews (that is, between Israelis like Yehoshua and all American Jews) misses the point. Fein objects that Yehoshua “disrespects” Jews who do…
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Letters The Little Guy
I think most people respect the real job creators who deal with all the stress that goes into making pay roll each week. Yet it seems like the little guy has something to complain about in America today. Pay for top management has gone up many times the past decades, while pay for most people…
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Letters Getting a ‘Get’
Rachel Levmore’s May 11 op-ed, “Should the Government ‘Get’ Involved,” raises a multitude of questions. Let me address just two points. Levmore errs in stating that the proposed Maryland “barriers to remarriage” law would have protected Tamar Epstein from becoming an agunah. Epstein filed for the civil divorce and has done all she can to…
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Opinion Real Winner in Israel Deal? Not Bibi.
There are two ways to read the grand coalition deal that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cooked up with Kadima leader Shaul Mofaz on May 8. One is that the wily Netanyahu has once again outwitted his rivals, bought another year as grandmaster of Israeli politics, neutralized the plodding Mofaz and gained almost wall-to-wall backing…
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Holy Ground A Jewish farmer broke ground on a synagogue in an Illinois cornfield. His neighbors showed up to help.
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Opinion I discovered anti-Zionism at the University of Michigan. I’m glad it lives on there
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Opinion An alarming new battleground in campus fights over Israel
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Culture An Israeli genocide scholar looks to Israel’s history to understand ‘what went wrong’
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