In the Forward’s opinion section, you’ll find analysis and essays from diverse corners of the Jewish world.
To pitch an opinion piece, email our Opinion Editor, Talya Zax.
In the Forward’s opinion section, you’ll find analysis and essays from diverse corners of the Jewish world.
To pitch an opinion piece, email our Opinion Editor, Talya Zax.
Israel has become a defining fact of Jewish life for Zionist and anti-Zionist Jews alike
As the Olympics begin, what is at stake is not medals, but the world’s commitment to Never Again. It is hard to fathom that 77 years after the end of the Holocaust, a potentially genocidal state is hosting the Olympic Games. As the athletes parade into the Beijing stadium for the opening ceremonies, the Chinese…
To the editor: Like Nora Berman, I also felt that Whoopi Goldberg’s Holocaust remarks were a teachable moment — but I’m a teacher, so to me most moments are. Fifty-plus years as a Jewish educator have taught me that hardly anyone, including many Jews, really understands antisemitism. We have long denied that we are a…
As tensions between Russia and Ukraine continue to mount, a chorus of male voices from the Soviet Jewish Diaspora, and an older generation of Jewish Ukrainian leaders, are telling us what to think about it. It is common to see panels of Jewish life in Ukraine with no women represented, hosting Ukrainian leaders who have…
Before anything else, let me say that I have no intention of “canceling” Whoopi Goldberg. I think she adds an interesting perspective to ABC’s “The View.” That said, I definitely do not agree with everything she does or says, just as I don’t agree with most celebrities who opine on serious subjects in popular media….
Have you ever discovered an incident from your own family’s history in a famous work of art? I have. As a child, my mother would tell me stories about our family’s experiences during the Holocaust. Some of them had happened to her parents, Chaya and Mendel, who had fled to the Soviet Union after the…
Whoopi Goldberg’s comments about the Holocaust could not have been more wrong, but I’m glad that she said what she said. In a cringe-inducing segment on The View, Goldberg, during a discussion of the banning of the book “Maus” by a Tennessee school board, said that “the Holocaust wasn’t about race.” Goldberg later apologized, and…
The following is a poem by Professor Judea Pearl, originally published on the 10th anniversary of his son Daniel Pearl’s death. On February 1, 2002, the 38-year-old journalist was murdered by terrorists in Pakistan. The poem is reprinted here with permission. Come walk the road to lions’ den South of midnight, planet earth, Karachi, Pakistan….
Today marks the 20th anniversary of the death of Daniel Pearl, the American journalist who was kidnapped and then brutally murdered by terrorists in Pakistan on Feb. 1, 2002. Danny’s death affected me deeply — his abduction on the way to an arranged interview at a Karachi restaurant, the kidnappers’ note that read more like…
This is an adaptation of Looking Forward, a weekly email from our editor-in-chief sent on Friday afternoons. Sign up here to get the Forward’s free newsletters delivered to your inbox. Download and print our free magazine of stories to savor over Shabbat and Sunday. Back in September, my son handed me the envelope as soon…
In July of 2021, I found myself in a Manhattan clinic wearing an eye mask and headphones, about to receive my fifth of six injections of therapeutic ketamine. “What’s your intention for this session?” asked my therapist, poised with a notebook to record the answer. “I’d like to encounter my ancestors or my guides,” I…
Whether she wants the job or not, L.A. transplant Bari Weiss has become a go-to face of American Jewry. After her appearance last Friday on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher,” she faced a firestorm of criticism for her remarks about the COVID-19 pandemic. Some of it is from the cottage industry of Bari Weiss…
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