Opinion articles that represent the views of the Forward’s editors.
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Opinion Why All Jews Should Speak Out About Orthodox Ban on Women Rabbis
(UPDATED) When mainstream Orthodox rabbis repeated their absolute opposition to ordaining women, in a statement issued late on the afternoon of Friday, October 30, I found that my predictable feminist outrage was tempered by an unpredictable shrug. Really, why should I care about what the Rabbinical Council of America says, anyway? I am not an…
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Opinion The Wesleyan Debate on Free Speech — and What It Means for Israel
A debate over race and free speech is roiling my beloved alma mater, and in it I find unmistakable parallels to the fraught conversation about Israel that is the subject of so much Sturm und Drang — and so much communal spending — on college campuses across the country. The analogy isn’t exact. The harassment…
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Opinion When Prayer Becomes Provocation on the Temple Mount
To tell Jews that their connection to the Temple Mount is a fraudulent invention, to attempt to erase thousands of years of documented historical ties, to ignore that every Jew in prayer faces that hilltop in Jerusalem from wherever he or she is in the world, to pretend that Jews are just colonialist interlopers on…
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Opinion Why Was Israel Missing From the Democratic Debate?
They discussed gun control and ground troops; college debt, climate change and capitalism; what to do about Syria and how to counter Vladimir Putin. They treated the nation — those who were watching, anyhow — to a quick course in the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933. For two and a half hours on October 13, the…
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Opinion Why We Shouldn’t Accept Rabbis Who Marry Non-Jews
Does it make a difference to the larger Jewish community that the Reconstructionist movement has made the regrettable decision to admit and ordain intermarried rabbis? Its adherents are miniscule: Only about 1% of American Jews identify with the movement. Cross the continent and you’ll find slightly more than a hundred congregations. The Reconstructionist Rabbinical College…
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Opinion Why I Love Article VI — and You Should, Too
When Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson said a couple of weeks ago that he “would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation,” the media spotlight suddenly was trained on a single phrase in Article VI of the United States Constitution. I was thrilled! That brief statement toward the end of…
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Opinion Solve the Refugee Crisis at Its Source — in Syria
Now, the crisis cannot be ignored. Hundreds of thousands of refugees are pouring out of strife-torn countries, risking their lives in desperate sea crossings and overland treks, crowding train stations and jamming borders, for the uncertain promise of rescue. How could we not cry out, as human beings, as Americans, as Jews? Every nation’s true…
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Opinion The Problem With Jewish Pope Envy
Pope Francis is the pope a lot of American Jews wish they had if they had a pope. In the two and a half years since Jorge Mario Bergoglio became the 266th head of the Catholic Church, he has captured hearts and stirred longing well beyond his global flock of more than a billion Catholics….
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News That whites-only, no Jews allowed Arkansas community is legal, says state’s attorney general. How?
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Opinion As an Israeli political scientist, I resisted thinking this war was a genocide. Here’s what changed my mind
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News In a first, Orthodox rabbinical school ordains an out gay rabbi
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Fast Forward From Shabbat dinners to ‘Talmudic discourse’: Jewish women killed in NYC shooting leave legacies of faith and family
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Fast Forward What does the Star of David represent? A new ruling offers a legal answer
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BINTEL BRIEF I prepare bodies as part of my synagogue’s burial society, but I’m an anti-Zionist. Is that OK?
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Books Amid the terror of war in Ukraine, a stirring debut novel demonstrates the power of love and art
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Opinion Hamas should release all the hostages. But it’s foolish to think that would end the war
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