Talya Zax is the Forward’s opinion editor. Contact her at zax@forward.com or on Twitter, @TalyaZax.
Talya ZaxOpinion Editor
By Talya Zax
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Culture I was an outsider at Christmas — until I found ‘The Nutcracker’
Until I discovered “The Nutcracker,” December was the season of fruitlessly trying to explain Hanukkah to my mostly non-Jewish friends. I never wished to be anything but Jewish, but I secretly longed to experience the kind of Christmas cheer I read about in books. I wanted a big family gathering, with a tree and mistletoe…
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Culture For Joseph Epstein and The Wall Street Journal, the control is the point
You might have heard about a little Wall Street Journal op-ed that went viral this weekend for arguing that future First Lady Dr. Jill Biden should drop the title “Doctor” from her name. Many decried the column, by the Jewish essayist and former editor of The American Scholar Joseph Epstein, as sexist from its first…
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Culture Trump aspired to be a master propagandist. This week, he failed.
President Trump’s Twitter feed looks different these days. It’s not because Trump’s tweets, in the wake of his loss in the presidential race to former Vice President Joe Biden, are rife with disinformation about the integrity of the American electoral process. That was the case even long before election results began rolling in. It’s because…
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Culture When COVID hit, I went home to my parents. For Election Day, I came home to New York.
My roommate and I struck out early to vote Tuesday morning. Close to our polling place, a school in deep Brooklyn, we began to pass strangers wearing voting stickers. It wasn’t a very New York thing to do, but we waved at them, and they waved back. I couldn’t help it: despite the extenuating demands…
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Fast Forward Breaking: Fatality confirmed in shooting near Vienna synagogue
This is an evolving story and will be updated as we receive further news. A fatality has been confirmed in a shooting near Vienna, Austria’s Seitenstettengasse synagogue, the Jewish community’s main temple in the city. Vienna’s police force confirmed on Twitter that one person had been killed in the attack, and that the police had…
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Culture From 1897 to 2020: Vote with fury, and with hope
This is the sixth installment of a special series exploring the Forward’s election coverage throughout its 123-year history. Click here to sign up to receive it through our email newsletter, and find our earlier installments here. On Oct. 13, 1897, six months after the Forward was founded, the fledgling paper issued its first major opinion…
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News 4 years of President Trump: A Jewish report card
As President Trump makes his closing arguments for reelection, the staggering events of the last year loom large. The coronavirus pandemic has, to date, taken more than 230,000 American lives, and the country is mired in the most significant economic downturn since the Great Depression. And, though it now feels like ancient history, Trump in…
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Culture ‘Sister!’: From the tenements to city council, how the Forward pushed for the women’s vote
This is the fourth installment of a special series exploring The Forward’s election coverage throughout its 123-year history. Click here to sign up to receive it through our email newsletter, and find our earlier installments here. October, 1918: As the Spanish Flu pandemic ravaged the United States and the midterm elections approached, The Forward attempted…
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Fast Forward Why neo-Nazis marched in Ohio this weekend, and almost every weekend in the US
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Opinion The group behind Project 2025 has a plan to protect Jews. It will do the opposite.
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Opinion Just about every interpretation of Trump’s narrow election victory is wrong
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News Texas schools want to add Queen Esther to the curriculum. Here’s why Jews (and many Christians) are opposed.
In Case You Missed It
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Fast Forward Rep. Ritchie Torres, outspoken pro-Israel advocate, is dropping hints that he could run for NY governor
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Fast Forward Ursula Haverbeck, infamous German Holocaust denier known as ‘Nazi grandma,’ dies at 96
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Fast Forward A Jewish museum in Tulsa held a funeral for remains of Holocaust victims it kept for years
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Sports Texas A&M’s Sam Salz cherishes his first taste of DI college football — and the opportunity to inspire fellow Orthodox Jews
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