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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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…
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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….
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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,…
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Opinion The Labor Zionist Youth Leader Behind Israel’s Tent Protests
Calcalist, the Ynet-Yediot online business supplement, has an interesting interview with Pesach Hausfater, the Labor Zionist youth leader who’s described as the key organizational mind—some call him “the responsible adult in the room”—in the leadership of Israel’s current economic protest movement. His critique of Netanyahu’s economic policies is the most trenchant I’ve heard since the…
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Opinion David Grossman on the Tent Protests: ‘Window to a Different Future’
Israeli novelist David Grossman participated last week in the large demonstration in Tel Aviv that was a high point in the ongoing economic protests, and wrote a powerful, poignant and much-discussed account of the emotions it generated. It appeared August 5 on the front page of the Yediot Ahronot Friday supplement (here is the Hebrew…
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Opinion A Jewish Death at the End of the Soviet Union
On Friday, August 23, 1991, Rabbi Zinovy Kogan received a telephone call from Boris Yeltsin’s office. Yeltsin, president of the Russian Federation, the largest republic of the Soviet Union, had emerged as a leading political figure just a few days earlier, between August 19 and 21. During those momentous three days exactly 20 years ago,…
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Opinion Israel’s Inspiration
A current preoccupation of the American Jewish establishment is diagnosing why so many young Jews are alienated from the state of Israel. Theories abound, from Peter Beinart’s now famous essay on the disappearance of liberal Zionism, to the assertions that college campuses are rife with stealth anti-Israel manipulations. Millions of dollars are being spent for…
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Opinion BDS Movement’s Revealing Position on the September UN Vote
We recently ran a symposium on our op-ed pages gathering together various opinions on what will happen in September when the Palestinians ask the United Nations to recognize Palestine as a state. Even though there was quite a range of opinion — from condemnation to encouragement — I was surprised to find that the overall…
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Opinion Working Poet
There is a kind of poetic justice in the news that Philip Levine will be the next poet laureate of the United States. At a time when an economy driven by technological innovation rewards ever-younger thinkers and creators, Levine, at 83, is one of the oldest laureates. He hails from Detroit, that sunken city, and…
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Opinion Fight Over Jerusalem in the Pages of a Passport
Why is it, friends of Israel often ask, that the Jewish state is the only country in the world that’s not allowed to name its own capital city? King David chose Jerusalem as capital of the original Jewish state 3,000 years ago. And yet America refuses to place its embassy there, despite repeated acts by…
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Opinion Who Is Underneath the Tent?
The passing in the Israeli Knesset of the anti-boycott law on July 11 now seems like a long-lost memory, overshadowed by the tent city protests that started just a few days later and have led to hundreds of thousands taking to the streets. It is no coincidence, however, that just days after the law was…
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Fast Forward Unarmed man who tackled Bondi Beach Hanukkah attacker identified as Ahmed al-Ahmed
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Opinion I grew up believing Australia was the best place to be Jewish. This Hanukkah shooting forces a reckoning I do not want.
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Fast Forward Hanukkah shooting leaves at least 15 dead at Australia’s most popular beach
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Fast Forward Father and son suspects in Bondi Beach Hanukkah attack identified as Sajid and Naveed Akram by law enforcement
In Case You Missed It
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Yiddish רבנישע כּתבֿים ווײַזן אומגעריכטע פֿאַרבינדונגען צווישן ייִדיש און לאַדינאָRabbinical texts reveal surprising links between Yiddish and Ladino
לויט אַ נײַ בוך פֿאָרשונגען האָבן טראַדיציאָנאַליסטן אין ביידע עדות געהאַלטן, אַז ייִדן מוזן אָפּהיטן זייער גערעדט לשון
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Opinion Why Poland’s president canceled his menorah lighting — and how the West helped make that happen
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Fast Forward 4 House Democrats introduce bill that would enact progressive vision for fighting antisemitism
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Yiddish אַ ייִדיש־רעדנדיק קינד דאַרף אַ „שטעטל“׃ ווי עלטערן קומען זיי אַנטקעגןIt takes a village to raise a child in Yiddish: How parents are doing it
מחוץ די חסידישע קרײַזן האָבן געוויסע עלטערן געשאַפֿן זייערע אייגענע ייִדיש־סבֿיבֿות
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