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
Hiring Rights and Wrongs
Back in 2008, then-candidate Barack Obama warmly endorsed his predecessor’s faith-based initiative, allowing churches and other religious groups to compete for federal grants to deliver social services, but with one major caveat. President Bush allowed those faith groups to discriminate in hiring. Candidate Obama pledged to end the practice. “If you get a federal grant,…
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Opinion Denial at the Western Wall
Really? What did Al-Mutawakel Taha, the Palestinian Authority’s deputy minister of information, think he would accomplish by issuing a “scientific” report claiming that the Western Wall wasn’t actually a Jewish historic site? Taha told the Forward’s Nathan Jeffay that the report was intended to educate the Jewish people. Thanks, but we don’t need this sort…
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Opinion Wikileaks Back Israel’s Iran Claims. Sunni Arabs Share the Fear. So Why Don’t They Work Together? Well…
A news analysis by Yaakov Katz in today’s Jerusalem Post makes the very sensible point that the Wikileaks super-dump evidently vindicates Israel’s arguments that the Iranian nuclear project is everybody’s problem, not just Israel’s. Progressives and isolationists have been claiming more or less since the Iraq invasion in 2003 that the constant brouhaha over an…
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Opinion Songs of Thanksgiving With Psalms 92 & 136, Groucho, Noshville Katz & Lots More!
Yes, it’s time for another holiday concert, this time in celebration of Thanksgiving. I offer the two classic American Thanksgiving songs, “We Gather Together” and “Over the River and Through the Woods.” Also, the two familiar Hebrew classic (to my mind) songs of thanksgiving, “Tov LeHodot” from Psalm 92 and “Hodu Lashem” from Psalm 136….
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Letters The Investigative Project on Terrorism Responds
Your Nov. 18 article, “Terror Expert Emerson Feels His Own Heat Over Finances,” continues to repeat the mistakes made last month by the Tennessean concerning the Investigative Project on Terrorism Foundation’s structure and finances. It perpetuates the fiction that Steve Emerson is somehow collecting more than $3 million for his private purposes and doing nothing…
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Opinion Shouting To Be Heard
Some inside the Jewish world have asked why a group of 14 young activists affiliated with Jewish Voice for Peace chose to disrupt Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to the General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America in New Orleans. Five of these young Jews stood up during Netanyahu’s G.A. address to…
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Opinion The Wrong People Shouting
When I was a teenager, the late Phil Ochs was a folk-singing hero of mine. In his classic song, “Love Me, I’m a Liberal,” he skewered armchair liberals who talked a good game, but wouldn’t go as far as their more radical comrades. This attitude, of course, appealed to many in my generation as we…
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Opinion The Sudan Precedent
From Iraq to Lebanon, from the Palestinian Authority to Yemen, Arab states are increasingly fragmenting along regional, sectarian and ethnic lines. But only one Arab state is on the verge of formally dismantling itself: Sudan. The population of southern Sudan votes January 9 on a proposal to secede from the Arab-dominated north and become an…
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Opinion Missing Half of the Potentially Best Ideas
The e-mails flowed in — from Dan, Albert, David and Moshe. From Paul, Eric and Yoav. And from Benjamin, Rafael and Ethan. They all wanted a spot here, on the Forward’s opinion pages. While it’s not a new trend for opinion editors to hear far more from the Mitchells and Jasons than from the occasional…
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Opinion Shouting ‘Fire’
J Street often likes to portray itself as the innocent victim of Jewish communal persecution. But this should not camouflage its self-serving role in kicking up the media circus that erupted recently when its president was barred from speaking at a suburban Boston synagogue. The incident began when the leadership of Temple Beth Avodah in…
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Opinion Is Glenn Beck After the Wrong Billionaire?
If you’ve kept up with the outraged tsunamentary (“tsunami of commentary” — I made that up) following Glenn Beck’s televised sliming of billionaire currency trader George Soros, you might suppose there’s nothing left worth saying about it. But you would suppose wrong. There’s much more to say. Beck, the top-rated bloviator at top-rated Fox News,…
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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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