Opinion

• Opinion

  Al Sharpton Winks at Rabbi Heschel

  In what is the closest he will probably ever come to an apology, Al Sharpton (onetime firebrand turned soon-to-be MSNBC host) writes in today’s Daily News about his conduct during the Crown Heights riots that “our language and tone sometimes exacerbated tensions and played to the extremists rather than raising the issue of the value…

  By Gal Beckerman

  2 min read
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  Opinion

  Rich Jews for Tax Hikes

  Warren Buffett is one interesting character. Ranked second on the Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans, Buffett has boldly entered the political fray by asking, nay demanding, that Congress raise taxes for him and his mega-rich friends to help close the federal budget deficit. At a mere 17.4%, Buffett’s tax rate last year was…

  Aug 19, 2011 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  The Forward Saw a ‘Pogrom’ in Crown Heights

  ‘Jewish homes were being attacked, windows broken. Jewish residents were cowering in the safest rooms of their homes. Sympathetic gentiles in the area were sneaking word to some of their Jewish neighbors to keep their lights turned off. Marauding bands of outside agitators were roaming around, blaming Jews. This was taking place not in, say,…

  By Seth Lipsky Aug 19, 2011 | 4 min read

Columnists View All

• Jodi Rudoren This is my last column as editor of the Forward

  

• Jay Michaelson American Jews were played — now what?

  

• Rob Eshman Americans keep getting killed in the West Bank. Here’s how the US could fight that awful trend

  

• Nora Berman First Camp Auschwitz, now Alligator Alcatraz — why the right is obsessed with commodifying brutality

  

• Dan Perry What exactly is going on between Israel and Syria — and is the prospect of peace dead?

  

• Emily Tamkin Zohran Mamdani’s victory proves it: The ‘gotcha’ mode of fighting antisemitism has to go

  

The Latest

• Opinion

  20 Years After the Riots

  How We Kept the Peace It has now been 20 years since the devastating events of August 19, 1991. It was on that day that a car in the motorcade of the grand rebbe of the Lubavitch Hasidic community fatally struck 7-year-old Gavin Cato and critically injured his cousin, Angela Cato. Later that evening, a…

  By Richard Green Aug 19, 2011 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  Crown Heights Was Ticking Time Bomb

  The first time I visited Crown Heights was in the autumn of 1977. Although I was born in the Bronx and grew up just outside New York City, Brooklyn was another world altogether, a place where my grandparents were buried. Still, I hadn’t anticipated how otherworldly the neighborhood would feel until I climbed out of…

  By Jane Eisner Aug 18, 2011 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  The Cossacks Are on the Rise Again. For Real.

  Time magazine has one of the scariest news reports I’ve read in a while. It seems the Cossacks are on the rise again. No, not figuratively — literally. The fanatically religious pan-Slavic paramilitary tribe that terrorized your great-grandmother’s great-grandmother in the old country is recruiting, operating youth training camps, running for office (successfully) in Russia…

  By J.J. Goldberg Aug 18, 2011 | 2 min read
• Opinion

  When Israel Takes a Good, Hard Look at Itself

  Two new and quite spectacular websites have become available in the last several weeks. Both offer a mine of information on Israel’s social and economic condition, and anyone who wants to be an informed lover of Zion (rather than merely a starry-eyed cheerleader) would do well to spend some time with both. The first, and…

  By Leonard Fein Aug 17, 2011 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  Joining the Tribe Late in Life: The Ever-Widening Circle of Celebrity Jews

  Every time another celebrity is surprised with the news that they’re Jewish — Madeleine Albright, Senator George Allen, playwright Tom Stoppard, John Kerry (on his father’s side) — the same series of perplexed shrugs ripple through the media. Did they really never know? What made the Jewish parent turn away? Anyway, what’s the difference? Are…

  By J.J. Goldberg Aug 17, 2011 | 3 min read
• Letters

  Guarding the Collection

  Thanks to the Forward’s August 12 article, “How B’nai B’rith’s Museum Went From Must-See Site to Oblivion,” readers were reminded about B’nai B’rith’s extraordinary collection of Judaica, which formed the core of the B’nai B’rith Klutznick National Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C. It is true that the majority of the magnificent collection is currently in…

  Aug 17, 2011 | 2 min read
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  Opinion

  Leadership Helped Bring Crown Heights Back From Brink

  August marks the 20th anniversary of the worst anti-Semitic attack in American history: a three-day nightmare that historians and journalists call the “Crown Heights riots” and that many members of the Jewish community have called a “pogrom.” The truth is, we’ve learned a lot from bitter experience. The incident began with a tragic car accident….

  By Shea Hecht Aug 17, 2011 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  Jews Have Little to Fear From Black Anti-Semitism

  Early in the 1990s — so many years ago that it’s nowhere to be found online — I was on a panel about black anti-Semitism at New York’s 92nd Street Y, where the historian of slavery Eugene Genovese observed that if a black demagogue called Italian Americans “racists,” they’d come after him with baseball bats,…

  By Jim Sleeper Aug 16, 2011 | 4 min read