Opinion

• Opinion

  LGBT Activists Should Know Friends From Foes

  Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities in the Muslim world face lethal homophobia. Yet too many LGBT progressives in the West — Jews and non-Jews alike — focus their ire on Israel, branding it a pariah state and placing themselves on the wrong side of history. Israel is the only — with a capital “O”…

  By Benjamin Weinthal and Stuart Appelbaum

  3 min read
• Opinion

  We Have a Problem, but Rick Jacobs Isn’t It

  Thirty-four years ago, when Menachem Begin first led the Likud to power in Israel, it was Rabbi Alexander Schindler, the leader of Reform Judaism, who reached out to embrace him. In doing so, Schindler averted a crisis in relations between America’s liberal-leaning Jewish community and an Israel where the right was newly ascendant. This would…

  By J.J. Goldberg Mar 30, 2011 | 4 min read
• Letters

  A Welcome Silence

  In contrast to many other Jewish publications, the Forward highlighted the struggle for public workers’ rights and dignity in Wisconsin. Your front-page article noted that 16 rabbis have publicly supported the unions (“In Madison, Only Some Jewish Voices Are Heard,” March 18). The Shabbat service conducted for 150 participants by four rabbis in the State…

  Mar 30, 2011 | < 1 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

• Letters

  The Holocaust’s Untold Chapter

  The revelations about sexual violence against women during the Holocaust presented by scholars Sonja Hedgepeth and Rochelle Saidel are most important (“Struggling To Be Heard,” March 25). It is understandable that stories like this are often never broached. How can a person overcome such personal shame to disclose such things to one’s own children? For…

  Mar 30, 2011 | < 1 min read
• Letters

  An Inapt, and Dangerous, Analogy

  Letty Cottin Pogrebin is entitled to her criticism of Israel and her horror at the conditions in Hebron (“The ‘A-Word’ in Hebron,” April 1). She is not entitled, however, to historically inaccurate analogies that severely damage the reputation of the state both of us love. Apartheid was a legal form of racial segregation enacted by…

  Mar 30, 2011 | < 1 min read
• Opinion

  Wacky Laws: No Food Stamps for Strikers, No ‘Streams’ in Judaism

  The liberal blogosphere is all worked up about a budget bill proposed by the Study Group, made up of conservative Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives, that appears to deny food stamps to any family with a single adult member who goes on strike. The draconian measure was first brought to light by ThinkProgress.com…

  By J.J. Goldberg Mar 28, 2011 | 2 min read
• Opinion

  The War on Dignified Retirements

  It’s a remarkable coincidence that the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire follows so closely on the heels of the great Wisconsin labor awakening. Like the yearly coincidence of Purim and St. Patrick’s Day, with their overlapping themes of national redemption and drunken revelry, the Wisconsin-Triangle convergence raises a host of fundamental questions about…

  By J.J. Goldberg Mar 23, 2011 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  Growing Disenchantment on a Global Scale

  What do North Korea, Iran, Pakistan and Israel have in common? In December and January, the BBC commissioned a poll of more than 28,000 people in 27 countries around the world. The key question was “Please tell me if you think each of the following countries is having a mainly positive or mainly negative influence…

  By Leonard Fein Mar 23, 2011 | 3 min read
• Letters

  A Fire Remembered, From Generation to Generation

  So much has been written about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, which remains as frightening today as it was 100 years ago. We’re especially struck by these memories in light of the Wisconsin government’s decision to act against its public-sector unions. This brings to mind the choice posed in Jane Eisner’s thoughtful March 4 article…

  Mar 23, 2011 | 2 min read
• Opinion

  Terror in Jerusalem

  It had been more than three years since the last terrorist bombing targeting civilians in Israel — until a blast caused by an explosive pipe placed next to a telephone pole near the bus station in central Jerusalem on March 23 ended that period of relative quiet. Suddenly, the familiar images appeared across our screens,…

  Mar 23, 2011 | 2 min read
• Letters

  Thanks for the Veto, Not for the Reasoning

  J.J. Goldberg contends that the American attempt to avoid casting a veto against an anti-Israel resolution in the United Nations Security Council was not a case of anti-Israel bias; rather, “American officials worried that a veto would give fuel to radicals” (“For Israel, a Lonely Day at Turtle Bay,” March 4). This has been a…

  Mar 23, 2011 | < 1 min read