Opinion articles that represent the views of the Forward’s editors.
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Opinion A Disgraceful Imprisonment in Iran
Sometimes life imitates art which imitates life. Such is the link between Maziar Bahari and Jason Rezaian. Life: Bahari is an Iranian-born journalist who was in Tehran reporting for Newsweek during the disputed 2009 Iranian national elections when he was charged with espionage, thrown in prison, tortured, denied counsel and visitation, held in solitary confinement…
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Opinion Why Paid Leave Makes Economic Sense
I remember the first time I was confronted with an employee’s request for maternity leave. I was in charge of the features department of The Philadelphia Inquirer, and a talented reporter told me she was pregnant and planned on taking leave for several months. On the outside, I expressed the appropriate joy and congratulations. On…
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Opinion Why Americans Are Fleeing Organized Religion — and What It Means for Jews
I recently attended a wedding where the bride and groom shared Chinese, American and Eastern European roots. Their parents were raised Catholic, Lutheran and Jewish. But the wedding itself, both ceremony and reception, were completely, utterly, 100% secular. God was not invited; no religious ritual made an appearance. Welcome to the new America. I thought…
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Opinion Sympathy for the Nazi?
From two very different places — a courtroom in the northern German city of Lunenberg and the pages of a best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning novel — comes a vexing question that has special relevance for contemporary Jews: Is there ever a time when we should sympathize with a Nazi? In Germany, Oskar Groening is being tried…
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Opinion Our Free Speech Moment
The Jewish community, here and in Israel, is having a First Amendment moment, struggling with what is acceptable speech and who are acceptable speakers. It’s not quite as bad as 1656, when the Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza was expelled from his community because of his then-radical views. But communal and governmental mechanisms are at work…
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Opinion Finding Your Way in the New Forward.com
However long awaited or welcome any new arrival is, human nature makes us greet it with anxiety. In his 1925 “Resistance to psychoanalysis,” Sigmund Freud points to the rituals developed by farmers to mark the coming of spring as an example of the wariness with which we greet even the most vital and life-affirming of…
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Opinion How To Make Kidney Donors Whole
The reason that Matt Swerdloff has only one kidney is a story that goes back a couple of years, when he visited a close friend in the hospital who had just donated one of his own organs. Why did you do this, Swerdloff asked his friend. To which his friend replied: Why don’t you? “I…
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Opinion A Forward for the Inquisitive Reader
As I cross the country to visit synagogues, universities and community centers, I am often approached by someone with a wistful smile and a similar story: “I remember when my grandfather would give me a nickel to run down to the corner store and buy the Jewish Forward.” How could I not be moved by…
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Fast Forward Why neo-Nazis marched in Ohio this weekend, and almost every weekend in the US
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Opinion The group behind Project 2025 has a plan to protect Jews. It will do the opposite.
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Opinion Just about every interpretation of Trump’s narrow election victory is wrong
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News Texas schools want to add Queen Esther to the curriculum. Here’s why Jews (and many Christians) are opposed.
In Case You Missed It
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Fast Forward Rep. Ritchie Torres, outspoken pro-Israel advocate, is dropping hints that he could run for NY governor
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Fast Forward Ursula Haverbeck, infamous German Holocaust denier known as ‘Nazi grandma,’ dies at 96
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Fast Forward A Jewish museum in Tulsa held a funeral for remains of Holocaust victims it kept for years
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Sports Texas A&M’s Sam Salz cherishes his first taste of DI college football — and the opportunity to inspire fellow Orthodox Jews
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