Opinion articles that represent the views of the Forward’s editors.
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Opinion Betraying Vatican II
When 2,200 bishops from around the world overwhelmingly adopted the reforms of the Second Vatican Council in October 1965, they transformed a relationship of animus and suspicion that had existed for centuries between the Roman Catholic Church and its Jewish forebears. Jews were no longer considered the killers of Jesus Christ. Catholics were no longer…
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Opinion The Mitchell Mission
Embarking on his mission as President Obama’s special Middle East peace negotiator, George Mitchell carries a burden of hopes and expectations almost too weighty for one pair of shoulders. For nearly a decade, politicians, diplomats and ordinary people around the world have watched in alarm as the Oslo peace process dissolved into relentless violence. Ever…
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Opinion ‘The Price and the Promise of Citizenship’
Well into his somber, stirring inaugural address, after pointedly repudiating the policies and behaviors of the past eight years, President Obama set out a new task for his fellow citizens — a return to America’s animating values of hard work, honesty, courage, fair play, tolerance and curiosity to anchor a time of renewed responsibility and…
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Opinion Agony and Urgency in Gaza
When Israel opened fire on Gaza December 27, its stated goals were limited ones: weakening the rejectionist Hamas, stopping the rocket fire on Israel’s south and checking the underground flow of new weapons into the coastal strip. Three weeks later, when the shooting stopped, none of those goals had been reached unequivocally. But something bigger…
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Opinion Hebrew School for All?
New York is about to witness a historic experiment in the nature of Jewish engagement in American society: the planned opening in August 2009 of the city’s first Hebrew-themed public school. The school, to be known as the Hebrew Language Academy, will be organized as a charter school, publicly funded but operated by a private…
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Opinion Numbering the Dead
On January 14, day 19 of the Gaza war, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon faced a press conference in Cairo and flatly declared it “intolerable that civilians bear the brunt of this conflict.” Writing the next morning in an Arabic-language British newspaper, Al-Quds Al-Arabi, Ban pressed the point. “Many have died and the civilians are…
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Opinion Grasping Gaza
When Israel first unleashed its bombs over Gaza on December 27, it was depicted around the world as a rogue state recklessly igniting an apocalypse. Televised images of warplanes and bloodied Palestinian children inflamed passions in foreign capitals and brought angry crowds into the streets of Europe and the Muslim world. Few beyond Israel’s strongest…
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Opinion Preserve, Protect, Defend
In his brilliant biography of the U.S. Constitution, Akhil Reed Amar notes that the document is a contract, a covenant between Americans and the government created to serve them. The Preamble’s lyrical framework bridges the personal (“We the People”) with the active promise (“do ordain and establish this Constitution”). And what the people had ordained…
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News Who was Horst Wessel, and why are people comparing Charlie Kirk to him?
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Culture Charlie Kirk kept a ‘Jewish Sabbath.’ What did he mean by that?
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Film & TV Robert Redford’s legacy is surprisingly Jewish
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Opinion The terrifying Nazi precedent for Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension — and the reasons to stay hopeful
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Fast Forward Freed hostage Edan Alexander says he’s returning to the IDF next month
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Yiddish World How a Yiddish acting troupe fooled the Tsarist government
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Fast Forward After years of war, world’s oldest synagogue paintings are revealed as intact in Damascus
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