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
Making Israel Work
Part two of a series on poverty in Israel; to read part one, click here. Ephraim Guttman illustrates both the face of poverty in Israel and a solution. Dressed in the uniform of the ultra-Orthodox — the requisite black suit and white shirt, which makes no concession to the scorching summer heat — he does…
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Opinion Israeli Police Ban Leftist Protests, Fearing Violence; O.K. Rightist Protests Despite Violence
Police in metropolitan Tel Aviv are refusing to authorize a planned protest march in the largely Orthodox city of Bnei Brak by a secularist group called Forum for Equality of Burden, which advocates ending the automatic draft exemption for Haredi yeshiva students. Ynet reports that the forum announced plans to march through downtown Bnei Brak…
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Opinion You’ll Never Guess What the Laws of War Say About Attacking a Neutral Vessel on the High Seas
I don’t know about you, but I find on occasion that there’s nothing more relaxing than to curl up with some good reading material. Well, the other day I was getting cozy with my favorite Geneva Conventions on the laws of war, and to my surprise I came across an annex to the conventions detailing…
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Opinion Our Charmless Politics
What to make of the political realm? We have a president of dazzling intellect, endowed with spectacular oratorical gifts, who improbably cannot find a voice to talk with the American people. Once, while Bill Clinton was still president, I heard him ruminate before an audience for 20 minutes or so, working out a connection between…
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Opinion Gay Marriage and ‘Religious Freedom’
The historic decision striking down California’s Proposition 8 affirms what many of us in the movement for GLBT equality have known all along: The fight over gay marriage is really a battle about whether we want religion to dictate our laws. Take away all the pseudo-sociology, the unsubstantiated (and demonstrably false) claims about how children…
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Opinion Trotsky’s Jewish Question
Seventy years ago, on August 20, 1940, Leon Trotsky — the arch-heretic of international communism and symbol (for his admirers) of Bolshevik revolutionary purity — was struck down in Mexico City by a Stalinist assassin’s axe. Trotsky, an architect of the 1917 October Revolution and, subsequently, the creator of the Red Army, which he led…
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Opinion One Solution: Two States
The steady march of settlements, the rightward shift in Israeli politics, the growing sense that a conflict-ending peace agreement is impossible — all these things are feeding some pundits’ impulse to declare the death of the two-state solution as a means of ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But what are the alternatives? Some support a “one-state”…
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Opinion A Moderate Found Lacking
The heated debate over the proposed $100 million Islamic cultural center and mosque only two blocks from Ground Zero has thus far focused mostly on the appropriateness of building a mosque at that particular location. Although grappling with the philosophical and political dimensions of the location’s suitability is important, an even more critical question is…
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Opinion Statement of Muslim American Imams and Community Leaders on Holocaust Denial
Last week, the Forward reported on a recent trip by eight prominent American Muslim religious and community leaders to Nazi concentration camps in Germany and Poland (“At the Death Camps, Muslim Leaders Grapple With Jews’ Pain,” August 20). The trip was led by Rabbi Jack Bemporad of the Center for Interreligious Understanding and Marshall Breger…
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Opinion The Struggle Over Israel’s Military Strategy
It’s probably the most riveting front-page drama in Israel today. Its outcome will decisively affect regional developments, including the Iranian nuclear crisis, for years. And you probably haven’t heard a word about it, alert reader though you are. The world press has barely mentioned it. I refer to the race to succeed Israel’s military chief…
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Opinion A Threat From Within
Part one of a series on poverty in Israel; to read part two, click here. In May, when Israel was invited to join the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a 31-nation club of the world’s most elite, developed economies, Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz called it “a badge of honor.” Indeed, it is. Acceptance means…
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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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News ‘Spatial restructuring’ razes hundreds of residences in West Bank refugee camps
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Culture Whether it’s viral dot cakes or Love Shack Fancy skirts, Chloe Hechter wants you to know that ‘Jewish-American Princesses did it first’
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Opinion The Iran war ended terribly for the US, and even worse for Israel
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Film & TV In ‘Disclosure Day,’ Steven Spielberg finds himself at odds with Jewish thought about aliens