Opinion

• Opinion

  ‘Profiles of Our Fallen’: Readers Respond, With Gratitude and Prayer

  The Forward’s February 18 feature “Profiles of Our Fallen” looked at 37 American Jewish service members who lost their lives during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The feature generated an outpouring of responses from our readers. Here is a sampling. The Forward has performed a noble service by calling these men’s and women’s supreme…

  5 min read
• Letters

  Israeli Diplomacy’s Purim Shpiel

  I was shocked by your January 28 news article “Labor Unrest in Israel’s Foreign Service Is Felt in Capitals Around the Globe.” Israel’s chronically under-funded foreign service effectively on strike? Heads of state forced to cancel visits to Israel? Diplomatic missions not doing their work? Isn’t it still too early for your Purim issue? What…

  Feb 23, 2011 | < 1 min read
• Letters

  Not Every Change Stems From a ‘Crisis’

  The February 18 article “Liberal Denominations Face Crisis as Rabbis Rebel, Numbers Shrink” consolidates a series of parallel changes happening in the institutions of the Reconstructionist, Reform and Conservative movements into a narrow reading that suggests a uniform dynamic of crisis, discontent and disarray. We cannot speak for our Reform and Conservative colleagues. We can…

  Feb 23, 2011 | < 1 min read

Columnists View All

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

  

• Jay Michaelson I supported Israel’s actions in Gaza in October 2023 — not anymore

  

• Rob Eshman The staggering hypocrisy behind Trump’s deal to free the last living American hostage

  

• Nora Berman How the Oct. 7 aftermath splintered the New York Dyke March

  

• Dan Perry It looks like Israel totally underestimated Trump

  

• Emily Tamkin This week proved it: Trump’s approach to antisemitism at Columbia is horribly ineffective

  

The Latest

• Opinion

  Remembering a Personal and Political Tragedy

  For a list of events commemorating the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, click here. A century later, how do we remember the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire? Should the story be told largely through the heartbreaking testimony of descendants of the many victims, 146 in all, who burned or jumped to their deaths to escape a senseless…

  By Jane Eisner Feb 23, 2011 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  A Wisconsin Power Grab

  The assault on public-sector unions that began in Wisconsin and is spreading to other states prompts a key question: Should those who work in the private sector have a different set of rights and obligations than the teachers, sanitation workers, firefighters and office managers whose salaries are financed by taxpayers? “Government unions are not the…

  Feb 23, 2011 | 2 min read
• Opinion

  For Israel, a Lonely Day at Turtle Bay

  The way people carry on, you might think the United Nations Security Council was some sort of street gang waiting to beat us up on our way to school. Diplomats say that’s an unfair characterization; they speak of the council as though it were a gathering of tribal elders divining eternal truths. They’re both wrong….

  By J.J. Goldberg Feb 23, 2011 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  Incivility Toward Civil Servants

  A few weeks ago, I gave a talk about Jewish perspectives on workers and unions at a Connecticut synagogue. Afterward, a retiree thanked me for speaking positively about unions. “I worked in the public sector my whole career,” she said. “If it weren’t for my pension, I wouldn’t be able to survive right now.” In…

  By Jill Jacobs Feb 23, 2011 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  An Appeal to My Muslim Friends

  I need your help and your reassurance. This is, I know, a time of great uncertainty in large stretches of the Muslim world. The Middle East is in turmoil. Dictators have been toppled, others cling desperately to power, and demonstrators fill the streets and the squares of the Arab world to demand freedom. I am…

  By Eric Yoffie Feb 23, 2011 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  Revisiting Auschwitz

  On an average day in 2010, nearly 3,800 people visited Auschwitz, up from about 1,200 a day in the year 2000. Such numbers jar me, since my vivid recollection of my own life-changing visit, in 1973, is that in addition to the 42 folks I was traveling with, there were no more than a hundred…

  By Leonard Fein Feb 23, 2011 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  Conversion Showdown: Rav Ovadia vs. the Ashkenazim

  A nasty fight is heating up between Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the mentor of Shas, and the rabbinic leadership of the Ashkenazi Haredi world. The Ashkenazi rabbis have called for a mass demonstration against Ovadia this coming Wednesday, and tens of thousands are expected to attend. In retaliation, a kashrut crackdown has been ordered by Sephardi…

  By J.J. Goldberg Feb 20, 2011 | 2 min read
• Opinion

  Where Are the Egyptian Intellectuals?

  Yoram Kaniuk, one of Israel’s most prolific novelists a senior stateman of Israeli letters, writes in his Ynet column that artists, intellectuals and poets seem to be glaringly absent from the Arab democracy protests. This week an Egyptian writer was interviewed about the uprising. He was reserved, but he spoke. Up until Monday, throughout the…

  By J.J. Goldberg Feb 18, 2011 | < 1 min read