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
-
Opinion
A Personal Meditation on Meeting Lewis Black and Having an Inexplicable Out-of-Body Experience
I participated in a group blog called Rethinking Religion at Columbia University’s Institute for Religion, Culture & Public Life. They asked me to go and hear comedian Lewis Black get interviewed by the institute’s director, Mark Taylor, and then write a reaction. The interview took place at the Kraft Center for Jewish Life, which has…
-
Opinion ‘It’s a Go’
As a fuller picture emerges of the months and days leading up to the dramatic capture and killing of Osama bin Laden, Americans have been afforded a rare opportunity to see and judge presidential leadership in real time. And this peek into the Oval Office and Situation Room reveals that when Barack Obama faced his…
-
Opinion Israel 101
If you can believe the breathless e-mails and exhortations sent to some parents of Jewish college students, the nation’s campuses are swarming with anti-Zionists ready to persuade unsuspecting Jewish students to sign up for the local branch of Hamas. We exaggerate, but not by much. There is an assumption that many campuses are increasingly dangerous…
Columnists View All
The Latest
-
Letters Triangle Accolades
I want to commend you for your March 25 special section on the centennial of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. I will use it in my master’s-level class, “Social Welfare and the Jewish Community,” in the College of Social Work at the Ohio State University. The Forward took up the cause of the labor union…
-
Letters What About Silwan?
Regarding Israel Finkelstein’s May 6 article “In the Eye of Jerusalem’s Archaeological Storm,” I find it curious that he has written a lengthy article about the City of David’s “whirlwind of conflicting political agendas” without once referring to the planned eviction of over 1,500 Arab residents of Silwan, the demolition of their 88 homes, and…
-
Letters Independent Bookstores Are Still Alive
The article about the new owners of the Washington bookstore, Politics and Prose, includes an unfortunate line: “the age of independent bookstores seems to have closed” (“Coveted by Jewish Bidders, D.C. Bookstore Finds New Owners,” April 8). The vigor of Politics and Prose and its many prospective purchasers, as reported in your story, belies that…
-
Letters Getting it Backward on Hebron
I am writing concerning the April 1 opinion article “The ‘A-word’ in Hebron” by Letty Cottin Pogrebin. I was deeply offended by it. I think she has things backward. The separation is because Palestinians won’t let Jews live in Hebron without an Israeli military presence. And let’s remember that Hebron is holy to both Muslims…
-
Letters Open Versus Closed Societies
This is in reply to the comments of Iain Levine of Human Rights Watch in your March 30 article “HRW Founder Charts Another Way to Probe Human Rights.” There is no basis for his claim that I urge human rights organizations to refrain from investigating complaints of war crimes. When I chaired HRW, we pioneered…
-
Opinion Reform’s Distracting War Over Politics
The nomination of Rabbi Rick Jacobs as president of the Union for Reform Judaism has unintentionally started what could become a divisive and even destructive internal conflict within the Reform movement. Rabbi Jacobs’s association with what are perceived to be left-wing organizations have Reform Jews with conservative or even moderate political views on Israel fearing…
-
Opinion After Bin Laden, Unity Might Not Be Fleeting
The death of Osama Bin Laden has a lot of folks talking about a new feeling of national unity, a sense that we’ve suddenly been granted leave for the first time in a long time to feel like one nation instead of warring tribes. How long it will last is anybody’s guess. Nobody is taking…
-
Opinion A Spring Visit to Israel
A journalist friend tells me I am wrong to talk of “a Tel Aviv bubble,” a common expression that refers to the quite distinctive café society of Israel’s megalopolis and also implies, dismissively, that Tel Aviv separates itself from the Israeli hinterland, is more open, more casual, sexier, more — well, more Mediterranean. But my…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
News A pioneering Reform synagogue makes way for a booming Iranian Jewish community
- 2
News Hampshire College closure reverberates for alumni who treasured a Yiddishist hub
- 3
Opinion Who’s responsible for deadly antisemitism? Everyone will hate the answer
- 4
Opinion Epstein and Iran are an antisemitism mega-crisis. Here’s what Jewish organizations should do about it.
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward Steeped in history, Pensacola Jews celebrate the 150th anniversary of Florida’s oldest synagogue
-
Fast Forward Rahm Emanuel joins calls for end to US ‘financial aid’ to Israel
-
Fast Forward Michigan Democrats nominate Eli Savit, progressive Jewish prosecutor, for state attorney general
-
Fast Forward At soldiers’ graves, the rows keep growing: Israel’s Memorial Day is shaped by new loss
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
