Opinion articles that represent the views of the Forward’s editors.
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Opinion Dancing With Scrolls
This week, the month-long Jewish High Holy Day season comes to a climactic close with the festival of Simchat Torah, the “Rejoicing in the Law,” the celebration of the yearly Jewish cycle of public Bible reading. And the timing could not be better. The past few weeks have seen a dramatic rush of challenges to…
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Opinion The Bum’s Rush
If Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s fire-breathing buffoon of a president, had any doubts about the contempt and loathing he inspires in America and the West, his reception in New York this week should have cleared things up for him. Should have — but probably did not. No, Ahmadinejad probably left New York more confirmed than ever…
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Opinion Syrian Airspace
Only time will tell whether the alleged Israeli air attack on Syria two weeks ago was reckless bravado, a cynical blow to peace or a bold strike that makes the Middle East and all of us a bit safer. From the available evidence, though, the smart money is on bold and safer. It’s true that…
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Opinion Atonement and Food Stamps
The Talmud teaches us that we must not judge our fellows until we have come to stand in their place. That’s an important lesson to remember whenever we participate in the primal human ritual of repentance and forgiveness. We are obligated to atone and to ask forgiveness for the wrongs we have done to others….
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Opinion Delivering a Deal
It’s hard to imagine a less likely pair of statesmen to carry off a sensitive, historic peace negotiation than Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas, respective leaders of Israel and the Palestinian Authority. For months, skeptical observers on both sides have watched with mixed bemusement and contempt as the two men, both weak leaders with little…
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Opinion The New Chancellor
With the installation this week of Arnold Eisen as its seventh chancellor, the 120-year-old Jewish Theological Seminary of America is poised at an unusual moment in the life of a historic institution. The seminary is being offered a rare opportunity to re-imagine itself and the larger Conservative Jewish movement that it leads — and in…
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Opinion Darkness in Summertime
These are the last days of summer, when the weather starts to change, the kids return to school and life settles back into its workaday routine. During these days, Jewish tradition commands us to stop, breathe deep and take a long look at where we have been and where we are headed. Where have we…
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Opinion Of Genocide and Morality
History usually passes from one era to another in a slow, glacial process, too gradual to be discernible until the change is complete. There are times, though, when the change happens in an instant, like a flash of lightning splitting a summer night. Such was the birth of the atomic age at Hiroshima and Nagasaki,…
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Opinion The Gaza hostage crisis could forever change how American Jews relate to Israel — but it’s not too late to fix that
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Yiddish ווידעאָ: היסטאָריקערין וויווי לאַקס באַשרײַבט געשיכטע פֿון לאָנדאָנער ייִדישער פּרעסעVIDEO: Historian Vivi Laks tells history of the London Yiddish Press
שבֿע צוקער פֿירט דעם שמועס מיט וויווי לאַקס און ביידע לייענען פֿאָר עטלעכע פֿעליעטאָנען פֿון יענע צײַטן.
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Yiddish World Puppet Monty Pickle is guest on the Forward’s ‘Yiddish Word of the Day’
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Culture We tried to fix Hallmark’s Hanukkah problem. Here’s the movie we made instead
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