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
A few years ago, a guest speaker made antisemitic statements on a panel at Princeton University, where I lead the Center for Jewish Life — Hillel. Alarmed by his comments that Israelis “are biped bloodhounds drinking the blood of one million [Palestinian] children,” I met with an administrator to discuss its impact on Jewish students….
(JTA) — My entire adult life I have espoused and jettisoned multiple theologies and philosophies after subjecting them to the ultimate test: Would they survive Auschwitz? Sometimes yes, sometimes no, almost always with some kind of caveat. Now Auschwitz presents a new test much closer to home. This month, the subject of who betrayed Anne…
When my friends ask me what it’s like to be a cop, I typically give them the standard “living the dream” line that most of us use — for me, it truly is a dream job. When my Jewish friends ask, I reply with a more niche answer. I tell them to imagine posting a…
As told to Nora Berman; edited for length and clarity I find it offensive when people describe me as a Ukrainian Jew. I am Jewish, and I was born in Ukraine, yet I feel quite separate from the buildup of Russian troops on the eastern border and the threat of invasion. In Ukraine, I was…
Prior to heroically initiating the escape of three congregants and himself from the Jan. 15, 2022 hostage siege in Congregation Beth Israel synagogue in Colleyville, Texas, Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker, who had led the Reform temple for 15 years, was informed that his contract would not be renewed. In Oct. 2021, Rabbi Benjamin Goldschmidt, the assistant…
“Promise me you will help me die.” My father was 92 years old. He had congestive heart failure and COPD. He was living on oxygen and a dozen medications that had kept him alive since a debilitating stroke paralyzed him forty years ago. Last year, when his doctors told him that he was dying in…
This essay is adapted from the sermon that Rabbi Angela Buchdahl delivered Friday night at Central Synagogue in Manhattan. Buchdahl, Central’s senior rabbi, fielded two cellphone calls last Saturday from Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas, where a British gunman had taken a rabbi and three congregants hostage. The gunman, Malik Faisal Akram, asked the…
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 a special edition of our free printable magazine devoted to Colleyville. I’m going to my synagogue for Kabbalat Shabbat services tonight for the first…
Dear Jodi and the Forward Family: I am writing to express my disappointment in your story about Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker’s contract. In my opinion, it is a feeble attempt at a salacious and irrelevant angle to what was a moment of fright and ultimately, Jewish unity. Clergy people change jobs. Some often. They do so…
In the aftermath of the hostage situation at a synagogue in Texas, every Jewish institution in America, no matter the size, is once again reckoning with the overwhelming financial, material and spiritual costs of keeping our communities safe in a country where weapons of mass murder are available off the shelf at Walmart. I’m a…
In the days that followed the hostage crisis at the Beth Israel synagogue in Colleyville, TX, reports came out about how the hostage-taker repeatedly espoused antisemitic conspiracy theories, believing that Jews could exert their power and sway over the U.S. government to free an imprisoned Al Qaeda terrorist. These revelations are likely surprising to many,…
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