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
Treating a Terrorist as a Hero
On March 11, 1978, a gang of seaborne Palestinian terrorists landed near a nature reserve on the coast north of Tel Aviv. There was only one person who had the misfortune to be on the beach that afternoon, a young American photographer named Gail Rubin. Gail, a native New Yorker who happened to be the…
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Opinion Kosher ‘Ethical Guidelines’ Sidestepped Ethics
Over the past four years, the reputation of the kosher food industry — and indeed of Orthodoxy itself — has been badly tarnished by revelations about mistreatment of workers and animals and violations of law at the Agriprocessors kosher meat plant in Postville, Iowa. The Agriprocessors scandal demanded a decisive communal effort to reassert the…
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Opinion A Confrontation That Was Inevitable
No, it wasn’t embarrassment that caused a blowup in U.S.-Israel relations when Vice President Joe Biden came to Jerusalem. Nor was it a weakening of America’s bond with Israel. It wasn’t timing, either — at least not the timing of Israel’s announcement of new housing plans in East Jerusalem moments after the vice president arrived….
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Opinion Drawing a Line in the Bay
The Jewish Community Federation in San Francisco is stepping bravely into the fraught debate over the limits of public discourse about Israel. By issuing detailed guidelines for the kinds of Israel-related programming it will fund — and not fund — the JCF is searching for a balance between supporting full and free expression and adherence…
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Opinion No Longer in Ruins
There is plenty to criticize when considering the Israeli government’s recent actions and statements on the future of Jerusalem, but that should not diminish its achievement in restoring the ancient Hurva Synagogue in the heart of the Old City’s Jewish Quarter. For years, all that remained of the synagogue was a stunning reconstruction of its…
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Opinion General Grant, the $50 Bill and the Jewish Question
Republican Representative Patrick McHenry of North Carolina has stirred up a bit of a storm lately with his proposal that Ulysses S. Grant’s face be removed from the $50 bill and replaced with Ronald Reagan’s. Leave aside the obvious implications of a Southern Republican maneuvering to demote the president best remembered for defeating the Confederacy….
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Opinion Purim in East Jerusalem: How Can We Sing Baruch Goldstein’s Song in Sheikh Jarrah?
Israel’s environmental protection minister, Likudnik Gilad Erdan, went hiking on Friday in Nahal Kaneh, a wadi in the northern West Bank, near Nablus. He was accompanied by several hundred settlers, according to Maariv’s nrg.co.il Web site. The wadi was the scene of fighting several years ago between local Palestinians and the nearby settlement of Karnei…
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Opinion Knesset to Biden: For Smooth Relations, Free Pollard
With impeccable timing, a broadly representative group of Israeli Knesset members sent a joint letter to Vice President Joe Biden on Wednesday and asked him to work to free confessed spy Jonathan Pollard from federal prison in honor of the Passover holiday and “as an expression of the good relations and friendship between our two…
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Opinion Pesach on My Mind
A friend, knowing how dense my Haggadah is — much of the traditional text, my own interpolations, sundry gems from here and there — asks whether by now I can’t just take for granted that the people at my Seder table know what needs to be known about slavery, about memory, about elements large and…
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Opinion We Can’t Afford to Give Up on the United Nations
For many Americans, and most Israelis, the words “United Nations” conjure up an image of an albatross at best, and a vulture at worst. Anti-Israel agendas, advanced by Islamic nations, routinely dominate the General Assembly and the U.N. human rights entities. Without the American veto, Israel would long ago have been the target of hostile…
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Opinion Non-Zero Sum: Helping Others And Ourselves
Should Jews first take care of our own, or first serve the needs of society as a whole? In the course of a meandering and much-discussed article in the latest issue of Commentary magazine, historian Jack Wertheimer of the Jewish Theological Seminary castigates the Jewish social justice world for prioritizing support for non-Jews over the…
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Fast Forward Jewish groups defend European media monitors banned for what State Dept. calls ‘censorship’
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Yiddish יהודה גור-אריה און שירי שפּירא געווינען רובינליכט־פּריז פֿאַר ליטעראַטורYehuda Gur-Arye and Shiri Shapira win Rubinlicht Prize for Literature
די רובינליכט־פֿונדאַציע טיילט צו יערלעכע פּרעמיעס פֿאַר ליטעראַרישער און קולטורעלער טעטיקייט אויף ייִדיש און לטובֿת ייִדיש.
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Yiddish אַ בריוועלע דער מאַמען (אַ דערציילונג) A letter to my mother (story)
בעת אַ ייִדישער סאָלדאַט ליגט אין אַ סאָוועטישן מיליטערישן שפּיטאָל פֿאַרמעסט זיך זײַן מאַמע קעגן דעם ייִדישן הויפּט־דאָקטער
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