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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Opinion
The Limits of Clarity, and Benefits of Ambiguity
It has been nearly two years since the Obama administration set out to revive the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, yet virtually no progress has been made. One thing, however, that the process has not lacked is clarity. Americans, Israelis and Palestinians have been very clear in articulating their demands. Yet this very clarity has often turned…
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Opinion More Jews Mean a More Liberal Community
Well, the news is out. If you haven’t heard yet, you’ll want to be sitting down for this. A brand-new Jewish population study has just come out, courtesy of Brandeis University. Who couldn’t use another Jewish population study? And get this: The study concludes, as the Forward reported last week, that there are more Jews…
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Opinion Gaza Doctor’s Story: A Painful Legacy Of Occupation
The public pain suffered by Izzeldin Abuelaish, the Gaza doctor who lost three of his daughters and a niece when their house was bombed by the Israel Defense Forces in the closing days of Operation Cast Lead two years ago, is by now well known, his horrifying cries — broadcast live on Israeli television —…
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Opinion Theater of the Absurd
Act I: In September, some dozens of prominent Israeli rabbis signed a religious opinion calling on Jews not to rent or sell real estate to Arabs. Among the signers, many were municipal chief rabbis, meaning they are state employees. Their stated rationale? According to Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, of the Beit El settlement, “We don’t need…
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Opinion Rebellion in Shas: The Party’s Left Wing Rises from Slumber
Shas, the Sephardic Orthodox Israeli political party founded by Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, is experiencing what looks increasingly like an internal power struggle. The rebels represent something that most people didn’t even know existed: the party’s progressive wing. Shas was launched in 1984 by Yosef and his protégé, Aryeh Deri. The platform included strict Orthodoxy coupled…
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Opinion 2010 in Verse
What a year this was, this twenty-ten! Wikileaks, iPads, a Beck named Glenn, Tea Parties and miners in Chile, A campaign that was strange and silly. For Jews in the news it was a year Of achievement and reason to cheer. The Russians emerged, with Sergey Brin, Sharansky and Misha Galperin. Eric Cantor, second in…
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Opinion Schools and Chicken Coops Aren’t Security Threats
Fawzi Yusef, a farmer in the West Bank village of Yanun, has been unable to reach his olive groves near the Itamar settlement for more than 10 years due to a “military closure.” He might have taken hope from a 2006 decision by Israel’s High Court of Justice. The court ruled that the Israel Defense…
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Opinion A Field That No Longer Fits in One Room
Seriously, how much do you know about sea narratives by Hasidim and their opponents? Were you not listening that day? Surreptitiously texting? Did you perhaps grow up in Syracuse, which is not near the sea and which has had more than 70 inches of snow already this season? That, dear friend, is no excuse: Just…
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Opinion ‘American Concern’ Enabled Exodus
When questioned about his truly shocking statement that if Soviet Jews were put into gas chambers, it would not be “an American concern,” Henry Kissinger has since responded that this quote “must be viewed in the context of the time,” namely the early-1970s debates over how to help Jews escape the Soviet Union. During the…
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Opinion The Mystery of the Dueling New Year’s Days
The new year traditionally finds us looking inward, asking ourselves the thorny questions we’ve managed to avoid all year. Why am I here? What’s it all about? Where are we headed? What date did I put on the rent check? And, of course, the big one: I did what last night? None of these, though,…
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Opinion 2010: What Came, What Went, What’s Next
Helen’s Hate By Irin Carmon It took seven decades for Helen Thomas to establish her reputation as an icon among journalists, a role model for women and a hero of the left, and minutes on an Internet video to undo it. For dismissively eliding the Holocaust and historic expulsions of Jews and wishing away Zionism,…
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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 Cultural boycotts of Israel just reached peak absurdity
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Fast Forward Jane Yolen, children’s book author whose ‘The Devil’s Arithmetic’ became a Holocaust classic, dies at 87
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Fast Forward Hebrew Union College claims Ohio’s charity-law suit violates its First Amendment rights
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Fast Forward 6 months after her father was killed at Bondi Beach, Sheina Gutnick has become a leading antisemitism advocate in Australia
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Fast Forward 13,000 Jews were driven out of Poland in 1968. Now, some are returning to tell their story.