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
The hardest job he ever had, Bob Saget used to tell me, was serving as emcee of our annual synagogue gala. He could never just say the first thing that would pop into his mind, he explained, because it would inevitably be a joke that was too risqué for a synagogue event. He constantly had…
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. This column should be about New Year’s resolutions, but I haven’t…
The past two years have been utterly exhausting. Between working from home, supervising children doing Zoom school, sitting through quarantines and more, COVID-19 has unquestionably upended our daily routines. And as the parent of a daughter who immigrated to Israel while the rest of her family remained in the United States, I had to contend…
A recent Heritage Foundation report claims that university Diversity, Equity and Inclusion offices are so suffused with antisemitism that they might even be responsible for increased campus violence against Jews. Although the study has received some favorable coverage, it was so poorly executed that it reveals nothing more than how easily data can be manipulated…
(JTA) — During my first month as an assistant district attorney in the Bronx, I spent most of my time engaged in an intensive orientation. As part of that training, a senior ADA taught us the art of an effective opening argument. Whether you are prosecuting a child rape case, robbery or homicide, your ability…
This essay was adapted from IT COULD HAPPEN HERE by Jonathan Greenblatt, published by Mariner Books. Copyright © 2022 by Jonathan Greenblatt. Reprinted courtesy of HarperCollinsPublishers. From that fateful day in July 2015 when Donald Trump announced his candidacy as he descended a gilded escalator, he contrived grim visions of criminals and terrorists storming across…
There is a joke that English antisemitism is: hating Jews more than is absolutely necessary. On Jan. 3, 2022, I resigned from the BBC, where I have been a freelance broadcaster for over 30 years. I appeared regularly on the BBC World Service and on BBC Radio’s Terry Wogan Show, in addition to countless other…
Whether we allow the genocide to continue is the moral test of our generation.
It should have been a relaxing summer lunch with my maternal first cousins and their spouses, but instead, my mind was racing. I needed to ask a question that had been on my mind for months and I could not wait any longer. Pushing aside my plate, I spoke. “I took an Ancestry DNA test…
As a 21-year-old heading off to social work school, I watched my Bubby Jenny die within six months of being put into a nursing home following a stroke. My mother and uncle, her brother, felt helpless and were shattered by both the experience and by their mother’s bitterness toward them at sending her away. There…
Progressive Jews face a conundrum with respect to university diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. They earnestly support campus initiatives to attract students and faculty from a variety of backgrounds, learn different perspectives, elevate outcomes for the disadvantaged and reduce hate and bias. But it is also becoming painfully clear that many Diversity, Equity and Inclusion…
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