This is the Forward’s coverage of former U.S. president Barack Obama and his relationship to the Jewish community.
Barack Obama
The Latest
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The Schmooze Rabbi Funnye’s Sukkot Plans
While President Barack Obama spent Labor Day weekend at Camp David, his wife Michelle’s cousin, Rabbi Capers Funnye, is heading out for a very different kind of camp experience over Sukkot. While Obama and his diplomatic team will work (thanklessly in some quarters) through a historically intractable conflict to spread a sukkah of peace over…
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Opinion Scary Sunday: Gingrich Says Obama’s Actions Are Shaped by a ‘Kenyan’ Mindset
It doesn’t get much slimier than this: Former House speaker Newt Gingrich, the GOP’s resident senior statesman, told the National Review Online late Saturday that President Obama’s actions might be “beyond our comprehension” — unless “you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior.” To be fair, Gingrich phrased it as a hypothetical — “what if” Obama is incomprehensible…
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News Jews and the Enthusiasm Gap
The buzzword is enthusiasm this midterm election season. In the Wall Street Journal in early August, Robert Reich wrote about “The Obama Agenda and the Enthusiasm Gap.” By month’s end, the New York Times editorialized about “The Wrong Kind of Enthusiasm.” Across the political spectrum – and borne out in primary turnout numbers this summer…
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News Embryonic Stem Cell Ruling Fallout
An article in today’s Forward explains why Jewish groups are up in arms about a judge’s injunction to federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. The judge’s ruling interpreted the Dickey-Wicker amendment—a law that prohibits federal funding of research that harms or destroys human embryos—to include all research involving embryonic stem cells, which are obtained…
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The Schmooze Nice Jewish Girls Gone Gaga
When Nice Jewish Girls Gone Bad first hit the road seven years ago, Susannah Perlman and her troop of comediennes shocked audiences, some into laughter and others into walking out of the theater. The burlesque-inspired show came complete with Star of David pasties, bat mitzvah gags, and the age old question: “What’s in the gefilte…
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Opinion Will Israel Attack Iran? Should It? Does Goldberg (the Other One) Give Both Sides Their Due?
The Atlantic has posted a compelling article by Jeffrey Goldberg, who for the record is not me, on the prospects of an Israeli military strike against Iran. It’s based on extensive on- and off-the-record interviews with Israeli political and military leaders, Obama administration officials and Arab diplomats. He puts the likelihood of an Israeli strike…
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The Schmooze Citing Shabbat, Orthodox Union Leader Declines Obama’s Ramadan Invite
In the tradition of Hank Greenberg and Sandy Koufax, Nathan Diament, the director of the Orthodox Union’s Institute for Public Affairs, will be sitting out an important event due to religious observance. Only this time, it’s not a baseball game, it’s a Ramadan feast — at the White House. Last year, Diament joined Israeli ambassador…
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The Schmooze Clinton Wedding: WikiLeaks at the Wedding
The Forward has learned that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is not in Melbourne, Australia, as has been widely reported. According to documents that Assange accidentally leaked to his own website, Assange has set up shop in Rhinecliff, NY, where he and anonymous volunteers are amassing top-secret information about Chelsea Clinton’s wedding to Marc Mezvinsky. The…
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Film & TV ‘Bojack Horseman’ creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg on his new, ‘unapologetically Jewish’ family affair
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News ADL chief attacks Zohran Mamdani, but gets his facts wrong
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News Meet the Jewish senator emerging as Chuck Schumer’s heir apparent
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Culture The Kennedy Center canceled its ‘woke’ programming — so why is this Jewish musical OK?
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