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
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Opinion
Jews Need Count, Not Wishful Thinking
Optimism is a good thing. But there is a difference between optimism and wishful thinking. This fall would have seen the release of a new National Jewish Population Survey, the decennial project that was killed when the Jewish Federations of North America decided it wasn’t worth funding. Instead, based on scattered evidence, the American Jewish…
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Opinion Who Are American Jews?
As Jewish traditions go, conducting a decennial National Jewish Population Study under the auspices of the federation movement has a very short history, and it was broken when the Jewish Federations of North America decided not to support a 2010 study. For researchers, the absence of support for a study reflects the weakened state of…
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Opinion J Street Staffer Circulates Slam of ECI
Liberal Jews have taken turns over the past few weeks whacking at the Emergency Committee for Israel’s advertisement alleging anti-Semitism at the Occupy Wall Street protests. Eliot Spitzer called the ad “despicable” on Slate; Richard Cohen called it “reprehensible” in his Washington Post column; and J Street said it “slandered” Occupy Wall Street. A new…
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The Latest
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Opinion Another Goldstone Inaccuracy
With his New York Times op-ed today, Judge Richard Goldstone continues his long march towards insuring that his name no longer be synonymous with self-hating, Israel-bashing Jew. He has written to argue — from his vantage point of having been a judge in apartheid-era South Africa — that the attempt to label the situation in…
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Opinion American Food Policy Harms Neediest
Food plays a central and sensory role in our lives and serves as a map of our history. Meals, recipes and the acts of eating and drinking teach us about who we are, where we live and where we come from. But at a time of the year when apples and squash flood our tables…
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Opinion School Tuition Should Be Based on Income
Recently, my local Jewish newspaper published its perennial look at how day school tuition is rising faster than inflation. This year’s article featured our only local co-educational Jewish high school, which I attended years ago and to which, due to rising costs, I was unable to send my own children. The resulting polarization of the…
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Opinion It’s Inequality, Stupid
The report, requested several years ago and released October 25, has the imprimatur of the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office and the benefit of rigorous analysis of government data. So it must be taken seriously. The stark message: Income inequality has grown dramatically in the last three decades, spurred on by government policy that has allowed…
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Opinion Bibi Netanyahu: Islamic Scholar?
Like Vladimir Putin, who can just don a wetsuit and emerge from a deep sea dive holding two sixth-century artifacts, there is apparently nothing Benjamin Netanyahu can’t do. Just read the seventh paragraph of this New York Times story, about the opening of the Metropolitan Museum’s new Islamic art galleries. It mentions a visit that…
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Opinion When It Comes to Shalit, Let’s Be Quiet
It is a favorite barb against the Zionist left that from the comfort of their homes in New York or Cleveland, they presume to tell Israel what to do, how to behave. Never mind that no one (not even the president or the secretary of state, much less dovish Jews) can “tell” Israel what to…
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Opinion Israeli Brass Astir Amid Pressure for Iran Strike
“Have the prime minister and defense minister sealed a deal between them, one on one, to attack the nuclear reactors in Iran?” So asks Nahum Barnea, commonly described as Israel’s senior and most respected political journalist, in an article leading the top of the front page of today’s Yediot Ahronot. He writes that growing rumors…
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Opinion Pernicious Attempt To Brand Protest as Anti-Semitic
Is the Jewish congressional representative from heavily Jewish Long Island, Steve Israel, “standing with those calling for the killing of Jews”? Does the Jewish representative from heavily Jewish Florida, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, “agree with various calls for Jews to be ‘run out of the country’ and to oppose and ‘destroy’ the State of Israel”? Sean…
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Culture ‘My mayor Muslim, my bagel Jewish’ — the Knicks chant capturing New York’s soul
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Books In ‘Something We Said,’ Richard Pryor’s daughter finds words to discuss the unspeakable
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Opinion It’s time for Jews who love Israel to give up on Zionism
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Opinion Trump’s humiliation of Netanyahu marks a sea change in the US-Israel relationship
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Fast Forward After dozens of Jewish girls get lost in NY creek tunnel, antisemitic comments follow online
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Yiddish דער קאַמף צװישן טראַדיציע און רעװאָלוציע אין סאָװעטיש־ייִדישער קולטור The battle between tradition and revolution in Soviet-Yiddish culture
סאָװעטיש־ייִדיש איז געװען אַ ראַדיקאַלער עקספּערימענט, װאָס פֿאַרנעמט אַ װיכטיקן פּלאַץ אױף דער װעלטמאַפּע פֿון ייִדישער קולטור
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News A Jewish nonprofit was training men to prevent sexual abuse. Then the funding disappeared