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
Editor’s note: The letter below comments on the original headline of Jodi Rudoren’s Nov. 19 “Looking Forward” column. That headline was changed shortly after publication, unrelated to this letter. To the editor: It is not easy being part of a religious minority in the United States, a country with European settler colonial origins and a…
Reform synagogues across the nation are struggling to make sense of the damning report released earlier this month showing nearly unfettered patterns of unwanted sexual contact between male faculty and female students at Hebrew Union College over five decades. Released on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the report, conducted by an independent law firm, showed that…
Reports about Jewish life on campus often focus either on our laudable collective successes or on experiences of antisemitism. After a decade of working on college campuses with leading Hillel foundations, I believe a lot of good things are happening on campus for Jewish students and that these positives outweigh the challenges. But if you…
Israel is often reminded by its critics that its status quo is unsustainable. Like a procrastinator in shul at the end of Yom Kippur, time is running out for it to do the right thing: to withdraw from the territories, midwife a Palestinian state, dissolve itself into nonbeing. To figure out the problem of its…
This week, families across the country will gather for Thanksgiving feasts, followed by Hanukkah three days later. Harvest feasts are traditional for the Native peoples of this continent, but do Thanksgiving and Hanukkah merit a week and a half of celebration? A deeper look at each holiday demands greater introspection. Thanksgiving is positioned in the…
In a memorable moment of my journalistic career, I was thrown off the Mayflower II. More precisely, I was led off — as opposed to being forced to walk the plank — the replica ship in Plymouth Harbor by one of its crew member actors, who overheard me asking tourists about atrocities the Pilgrims committed…
Editor’s note: This chronicle of the best work of the great comic writer and actor Harold Ramis was originally published on Feb. 25, 2014, after Ramis’s death at age 69. We’ve republished it in honor of what would have been the actor’s 77th birthday; he was born on Nov. 21, 1944. Harold Ramis, the comedy…
The case was decided once the weapons charge was tossed
Waves of agony repeatedly knocked the breath out of me, as pressure built behind my eyes, producing visual auras that blurred my sight and made me nauseous. The pain was so unique, so all-encompassing, that I lost all rational capabilities, screaming and kicking as if possessed. My first such debilitating experience occurred when I was…
Having read the recent report detailing the presence of gender bias, sexual harassment, discrimination and bullying on the four campuses of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, I am genuinely brokenhearted that the seminary with which I have been so closely associated for more than five decades has failed so abysmally to listen to its…
Do you know who little Keira Kagan was? I want to tell you about her. Keira had blonde-brown hair, cute little glasses and a beautiful smile. Her mother described her as “smart and spunky,” someone who “loved to get dressed up to get into her princess dress and be fancy.” She lived in Toronto and…
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