A professor at the University of Houston, Robert Zaretsky is also a culture columnist at the Forward.
Robert Zaretsky
By Robert Zaretsky
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Culture A 94-year-old Holocaust survivor makes her feature film debut – and a new star is born
It is rare, I think, to leap from making matzoh balls to making movies. But it is even rarer, I imagine, to land the leap with élan. Yet this is the accomplishment of “Trop d’amour,” a film by a young French actress and filmmaker, Frankie Wallach, starring her grandmother Julia Wallach, the maker of kneidlach…
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Culture Why just 850 books? Texas should investigate ‘Merchant of Venice’ and ‘Oliver Twist’ too
Dear Representative Matt Krause, As a fellow Texan, I am writing to thank you for the letter you sent to the Texas Education Authority, as well as several school districts, requiring them to reveal whether our children are a library card away from bringing home any of 850 books of dubious or dangerous content. Can…
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Culture In the face of the Houston Astros’ miraculous victory, Alex Bregman has become our most eloquent Jewish existential philosopher
If you are not from Beantown or Bayou City, you might be unaware of the climax to a remarkable drama that occurred when the Houston Astros defeated the Boston Red Sox in a marathon contest to win the American League Championship Series. After an initial Houston victory, Boston erupted with two wins that included not…
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Culture In 1961, a shameful moment when the horrors of WWII seemed to be returning
This past weekend, Paris marked the 60th anniversary of one of the darkest moments in its recent history — a terrible moment that reminds both French Muslims and French Jews of their fragile place in France. On the evening of October 17, 1961, more than 20,000 Algerian immigrants boarded suburban trains and buses to meet…
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Culture How to feel the staggering awesomeness of the Days of Awe (a little German philosophy can help)
A few years ago, a colleague asked me what makes the High Holidays so high. “Well,” I replied, “they are awesome days.” “Sounds like a slacker’s line in a Linklater film,” she laughed. “You know, D-A-Z-E of Awe.” I smiled, but uneasily. During the one Jewish holiday that, above all others, demands reverence, the joke…
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Culture What would Louis Brandeis do about Texas?
Nearly a century ago, the Supreme Court ruled that warrantless wiretapping, because a physical trespass did not occur, was not an unwarranted violation of an individual’s rights. The majority opinion, however, proved less influential than one of the dissenting ones. The framers of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, this associate justice affirmed, “sought to protect…
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Culture With its abortion bill and new gun laws, Texas is a blacklisted Jewish screenwriter’s Hollywood nightmare
A marshal learns that a group of murderous gunslingers, led by a killer he had sent to jail, is heading to his town. After waiting in vain for volunteers at his office, he strides to the saloon and even the church to ask for deputies. Met with scornful jibes at the first and mournful gazes…
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Culture The French Tucker Carlson is Jewish, xenophobic — and maybe a presidential candidate
France has lurched into its annual exodus known as la rentrée. It is the moment when the French, after a long summer at the shore or in the mountains, return to their offices and schools. Accompanying this vast population shift is la rentrée politique, when the nation’s politicians return to partisan sniping and intraparty squabbles,…
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