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
Bush Tax Cuts, Meet Rabbi Kalonymus
One of the major questions in this election cycle has been whether the tax cuts enacted by President George W. Bush in 2001 and 2003 will be extended. These tax cuts include some relief for middle-class tax payers, but they primarily benefit the wealthiest two percent of Americans — those earning more than $250,000 a…
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Opinion Making Meaning, Making Plans, Making Peace
Now that the noise, worry and effort of the most expensive, most negative election season in American history is past, we can return, presumably, to our lives. ‘Change’ has won the day, so how will our lives change over the next two years? Here’s what five Jewish writers have to say about what happened, with…
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Opinion Struggling Over Subsidies That Undo Modernity
When the president of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem orders all classes canceled so students can attend an anti-government protest rally, you have to figure something is up. And you would be right. On November 1, university President Menahem Ben Sasson did just that: He canceled all classes from 6:00 p.m. on so that everyone…
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Opinion Yes, The World Can Be With Us
On the same day the press first reported on the failed attempt to dispatch explosives to two Chicago synagogues, The New York Times carried a brief and disturbing [report][1] on an altercation between the popular Egyptian writer Alaa Al Aswany and the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information (IPCRI). Al Aswany, a voluble man in…
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Opinion 10 Republicans Who Are About To Be Congress’ Key Foreign Policy Players
There’s an interesting piece at ForeignPolicy.com listing 10 Republicans who can be expected to play a major role in helping or frustrating President Obama’s foreign policy and security goals over the next two years. It’s based on the assumption that the Republicans will take over the House of Representatives and their members will take over…
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Opinion What the Tea Party Wants. Also: Video Send-up on ‘Why I’m Voting Republican’
When the Tea Partiers say they want to “take our country back,” what is the prior state they want to restore it to? Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson wrote a smart piece today pointing out that their rhetoric is directed against Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and Woodrow Wilson’s Progressive reforms. It follows that they want…
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Opinion Opening Minds on Campus
We are a brother and sister of Pakistani descent who grew up in Arizona and are now enrolled at two of America’s finest universities. We are passionately interested in Jewish-Muslim dialogue because we believe the only way to decrease religious tensions is through engagement on a personal level. At college, we’ve found a lot of…
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Opinion Equal Time for Arab Voices
As the two-state solution in Palestine/Israel continues to dissolve, there is much consternation in the national media about what Jewish Americans think of current developments. Will their support of President Obama wane if he presses Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu too strongly on settlements? What will they demand regarding Iran? What do they make of J…
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Opinion The Good That Storytelling Does
When I was a teenager in the early 1990s, several young women at my Boston-area high school converted to Islam and began to wear the hijab, a trend that raised some eyebrows. Several months later, the school administration asked my mother, a Pakistani American, to offer her perspective of Islam. As my mother described her…
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Opinion The Rabin We Remember — and Forget
November 4 is his yahrzeit, counting by the secular calendar, as this secular Jew preferred: the 15th anniversary of the murder of Yitzhak Rabin. Those who remember his death that Saturday night, the 12th of Heshvan by the traditional calendar, can well recall the convulsive trauma that sent shockwaves around the globe. It was only…
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Opinion With the Elections, a New Reckoning
At last, this bizarre election season draws to a close. How it will end, no one can reliably say. We read of widespread anger, we know something of the widespread dislocation that is the continuing consequence of the Great Recession, we watch with concern the widespread emergence of a cohort of candidates who seem peculiarly…
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Culture ‘My mayor Muslim, my bagel Jewish’ — the Knicks chant capturing New York’s soul
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Opinion Cultural boycotts of Israel just reached peak absurdity
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Sports Memes, mashiach and ‘Torah-cyclopedias’ put a Jewish twist on the Knicks’ title chase
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Opinion It’s time for Jews who love Israel to give up on Zionism
In Case You Missed It
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Fast Forward The Knicks won on 6/13. Jewish fans think that’s more than a coincidence.
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Fast Forward Trump announces deal with Iran is ‘now complete’
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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