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
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. And click here for a PDF of stories to savor over Shabbat and Sunday that you can download and print. They met in pre-war Eastern…
In late April, the Israeli government ordered the deportation of dozens of members of the African Hebrew Israelite community within 60 days, a decision alarming to anyone concerned with democracy and civil rights in Israel. This community of around 2,000 first came to Israel in the 1960s. We have each met and become dear friends…
Shortly after becoming Prime Minister for the first time in 1996, in a special address to the US Congress, Benjamin Netanyahu said, “there can be no greater tribute to America’s long-standing economic aid to Israel than for us to be able to say: We are going to achieve economic independence. We are going to do…
Over the weekend, as it became clear that Naftali Bennett would move to establish a unity government, ending Benjamin Netanyahu’s 12 year reign, a disturbing image popped up in a WhatsApp group of Likud activists: a black-and-white photo of Bennett in a keffiyeh— a traditionally Arab headscarf— with the words “The Liar” and “Elections Now”…
(JTA) — “Rabbi Adar, is it dangerous to wear my Jewish star?” In 12 years of teaching “Introduction to the Jewish Experience” through HaMaqom|The Place in the San Francisco Bay Area, no student ever asked me that question in those words. This year three students have asked it of me. The first student who asked…
Just days after the rocket launchers have cooled in Israel and Gaza, news broke that after 12 years, the Netanyahu era is just about finished, in the most improbable of ways. The new government, which while not a done deal seems to be more likely than not, seems like it was created via a game…
You don’t have to love Naftali Bennett or Yair Lapid to be happy about their agreement Wednesday to form a new Israeli government that ends the reign of Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister. You don’t have to agree with them about any key issue facing the Jewish state. You don’t have to trust them…
Barring any unusual surprises, of which we have already had a great many, Israel will soon have a new government that few could have imagined a few weeks ago. The proposed coalition between Yair Lapid, a centrist, and Naftali Bennett, a man of the hard right, who will share the premiership through a rotation agreement,…
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. And click here for a PDF of stories to savor over Shabbat and Sunday that you can download and print. One friend called because her…
In today’s political environment, where everyone is either a Nazi or communist — and, as ever, the Jews are unhappily stuck in the middle — it was almost bound to happen. Like so many discarded blue face masks spread across the asphalt of a shopping center parking lot, the gauntlet was thrown down on May…
At the end of each round of violence between Israel and Gaza, both Israel and Hamas always insist that they have won. This time around, Israeli politicians have ample footage of Gazan towers and neighborhoods they bombed “back to stone age.” Hamas likewise has footage of its rockets reaching Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem, forcing Israelis into…
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