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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Letters
September 10, 2010
Kaifeng’s Jewish Renaissance Your August 20 article “Israel’s Keenest Yeshiva Students” focuses on the Kaifeng Jews studying for conversion in Israel. But the real news is that the Jewish descendants — or Jews, as they see themselves — are organizing again as a community in Kaifeng. There are at least two Jewish schools in Kaifeng,…
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Opinion Exiting Iraq
After President Obama finished his Oval Office address, declaring an end to the combat mission in Iraq, one of TV’s talking heads grumbled that what was wrong with the president was that he seemed to love the troops but hate the war. Actually, that strikes us as what is right about the current occupant of…
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Opinion Freedom From Facts
The Glenn Beck “Restoring Honor” rally is over, and both Abraham Lincoln, whom Beck sought to take hostage, and Martin Luther King Jr., whom Beck sought to emulate, remain intact. We will get to Beck in a moment. But let us get Sarah Palin, who was a featured speaker at the rally, out of the…
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Letters September 10, 2010
100 Years Ago in the Forward Tragedy struck in Brooklyn when a new mother threw her baby out of a fourth-floor window, killing the infant. Esther Jaffe of East New York was standing by the back window of the apartment that she shared with her husband and aunt, holding her 6-month-old baby. The aunt said…
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Opinion First They Came for the Sharia Court. Then They Came for the Bet Din
Andy Silow-Carroll, the inestimable editor of the New Jersey Jewish News, offers a devastating dissection of the Sharia-phobia, as he calls it, that is invading our public and, via a certain cable channel, our living rooms as well. The news lede for his column is a recent ruling by a New Jersey court, dismissing a…
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Opinion At Ground Zero, a Fight We’re All Losing
Let’s try this: Women wearing a hijab, the Muslim head covering, ought not be allowed to walk on the perimeter of Ground Zero, lest they offend the sensibilities of the survivors of 9/11. And are we not all, in some sense, survivors of 9/11? The deaths there were so random, so pointless in their non-specificity,…
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Opinion The Dirty Truth About Being a Tourist in Israel
They tell you that you have to come to Israel. They tell you it will change your life. They tell you that with every other country, you can come and go as you please, but Israel, you can never really leave, because Israel will never leave you. That’s true, because Israel has really bad lice….
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Opinion In Cuba, a Hostage to International Brinkmanship
Alan Gross, an American Jew and USAID contractor, has sat in a Cuban prison for nearly nine months. Jews, whose history is bound together by stories of exile and return, captivity and freedom, long for his release. Cubans, who have been weary bystanders for decades in the games of brinkmanship between their government and the…
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Opinion The Israeli Right’s ‘Post-Nationalism’ Excuse
George Will, the conservative Washington Post columnist, was in the Israeli prime minister’s office a few weeks ago and came away with a fascinating new take on Israel’s image troubles. Israel is hated in Europe, he wrote on August 12, quite obviously channeling the prime minister, because Europeans are tired after centuries of slaughtering each…
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Letters September 3, 2010
Post-‘Conservative’ Jews Need a New Name Changing the Conservative movement’s name to “Masorti” would be beneficial because it is Hebrew and could thus be comfortably used by Jews affiliated with the movement worldwide. At the same time, “Masorti” more than adequately describes the character and thrust of the movement, that is, to be traditional in…
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Opinion Rescind the Ban on Attending Interfaith Weddings
When I decided to become a rabbi in 1996, I visited the Jewish Theological Seminary, my future rabbinical school. Along with sitting in on some classes, I stayed in the apartment of four first-year rabbinical students. I still recall a discussion we had at the Shabbat dinner table. One of the rabbinical students raised the…
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