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
Allies Who Come With a Cost
If one peeks behind many American Jewish leaders, one will often find pro-Israel Christian evangelicals. Their support for Israel is not only ideologically and politically motivated, but is also driven by a fundamentalist vision of the messianic age. Jews and Israel play an important role in their particular brand of Christianity, known as premillennial dispensationalism,…
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Opinion American Jews Know Their Religion
Jews get a lot of bad press these days, so I’m happy to be able to offer some news that can only raise our esteem in the eyes of the American public — and more important, in our own eyes. As you may have heard, the prestigious Pew Research Center has just released a survey…
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Letters October 15, 2010
Arranged Marriages In the October 8 op-ed “Rabbi Searches Are Tough, but Are They Illegal?” Barak D. Richman is so correct in his analysis of the potential illegalities caused by the limitations set by rabbinical bodies involved in “monitoring” congregational searches. Having also been a member of a rabbinical search committee, I, too, ran into…
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Opinion Peace With Syria
Syria’s maybe yes, maybe no attitude toward peace with Israel is enough to give even experienced Middle East diplomats a case of whiplash. One day Syrian President Bashar Assad is hosting U.S. special envoy George Mitchell in Damascus and saluting America’s efforts to broker a peace treaty. Barely two days later, Assad is embracing Iranian…
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Opinion Chilling and Routine
The self-immolation of former CNN anchor Rick Sanchez, fired October 1 after delivering a lengthy anti-Semitic rant during a radio interview, offers a depressing reminder of how terribly routine the public maligning of Jews has become in 21st-century America. Perhaps it should not shock us that an educated individual in this day and age can…
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Opinion A Click and a Laugh — and a Death
To the young people in our community: I’m your rabbi. As such, I am occasionally asked to share a few words or thoughts when bad things happen to good people. In this case, I want to write some words directly to you about Tyler Clementi’s tragic suicide last week. If you haven’t read about it,…
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Opinion Why the Economy Is in the Toilet: Required Reading and Source Material
My latest Good Fences column looks at the gloomy state of the economy and argues that it’s a mistake to blame either President Obama or the recent President Bush. What we’re experiencing actually is the collapse of a snake-oil economic cult theory that’s had us in its thrall for the past 30 years or so,…
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Opinion Rabbi Searches Are Tough, but Are They Illegal?
As a member of my synagogue’s rabbi search committee, I was deeply troubled to learn of the rules imposed by the Rabbinical Assembly, the Conservative movement’s governing rabbinical body, on rabbinic searches. The RA requires synagogues to enroll exclusively in its search process, filters the selection of candidates the congregations may interview, and prohibits candidates…
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Opinion Of Recognition, and Reality
‘Just say it!” Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu recently exclaimed, calling on Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to recognize Israel as the homeland of the Jewish People. He was responding to a shrug from Abbas: “Israel can call itself the Zionist Jewish Empire.” With unfailing regularity, questions about recognition return to haunt and undermine Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking. The…
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Opinion David Grossman, a Man Who Owns Israel
In his remarkable recent New Yorker profile of the Israeli writer David Grossman, George Packer observes that the heroine of Grossman’s new novel “embraces the breadth of Israel’s tragedy, a country that can take nothing for granted, not even its own existence.” (The novel, “To the End of the Land,” is newly available in English.)…
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Opinion What J Street Can Learn From The Tea Party
In the space of a few days, J Street became much lonelier, abandoned by many of its admirers in the press, as it fended off criticism that its funding sources are mysterious, nefarious and downright dangerous. But the lobbying group that calls itself “the political home for pro-Israel, pro-peace Americans” is not alone. After all,…
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Culture ‘My mayor Muslim, my bagel Jewish’ — the Knicks chant capturing New York’s soul
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Opinion It’s time for Jews who love Israel to give up on Zionism
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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