Opinion articles that represent the views of the Forward’s editors.
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Opinion An Ill-Timed Move
What were they thinking? The Palestinians, we mean. While there may be heart-thrumming symbolic value to achieving full membership in the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization as they did October 31, it comes at great cost to all concerned, including the very people the agency aims to help. UNESCO is probably best known…
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Opinion It’s Inequality, Stupid
The report, requested several years ago and released October 25, has the imprimatur of the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office and the benefit of rigorous analysis of government data. So it must be taken seriously. The stark message: Income inequality has grown dramatically in the last three decades, spurred on by government policy that has allowed…
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Opinion A Woman’s Place
Not on the buses in Jerusalem or Brooklyn, not on the streets on Sukkot, and now not on the billboards, a contributor complained to the Forward’s blog, The Sisterhood. “Where,” she asked, “is it okay to be a woman?’ Before trying to answer the question, we’ll explain the references. In recent weeks, we’ve learned that…
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Opinion $31.50 a Week
The last time that Steve Gutow, president of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, tried to live on an average budget of food stamps for a week, it was 2007, and the allotment was $21. He ate a great deal of lentils, rice, onions, eggs — not such a hardship, since he’s a vegetarian —…
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Opinion Learning From J14
Is Occupy Wall Street an outgrowth of the J14 protests, the social justice movement begun in Tel Aviv on July 14 that drew nearly half a million Israelis to the streets? The tents, the youthful organizers, the anarchic hodgepodge of themes and complaints certainly make it easy to draw the analogy. In fact, we wish…
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Opinion Why ‘Occupy Judaism’ Is Turning Point
Charles Finney was America’s best-known preacher in the 1830s when he invented the altar call. At the end of a revival meeting, he’d invite worshippers stirred by the gospel to come before an altar placed in front of the hall and publicly swear their commitment to Jesus Christ. Finney did this to showcase — critics…
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Opinion Everyone’s Son
One versus 1,027. As of this writing, those are the cold, hard numbers of the proposed exchange: one Gilad Shalit for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners. This lopsided equation is, in a raw sense, a point of tribal pride. See how much a Jewish life is worth. See how far the State of Israel will go to…
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Opinion When Home Is a Blessing
When I grew up, Sukkot felt like an after-thought following the intensity and purpose of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. No one in my Reform community in a lower-middle-class suburb of New York City ever built a sukkah; instead, we decorated the one at the synagogue — stringing together dried cranberries and making endless links…
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