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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News Sestak (Catholic) Offers Obama (Protestant) A Jewish Embrace
Joe Sestak, the Democratic candidate for Pennsylvania’s Senate seat, wasn’t President Obama’s first choice for the job. The White House and Democratic leadership backed Arlen Specter for another term, in appreciation of his decision last year to cross party lines and join the Democratic side. But things didn’t work out that way. Sestak went on…
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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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