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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Opinion What the Surfside tragedy teaches us about ‘critical maintenance’
While driving my daughter to her viola lesson this week, we heard a radio story about the condominium collapse in Surfside, Fla. — an event as absurd as it is agonizing. As one resident in the neighboring tower put it, these things are not supposed to happen in this country. As a structural engineer being…
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Culture Behind a viral slap, a disturbing antisemitic history
It was the face slap that launched a thousand video clips. During a visit last week to the southeastern French town of Tain-l’Hermitage, President Emmanuel Macron waded into a bain de foule or a “crowd bath” — the tradition of politicians walking the streets, greeting voters and shaking their hands. Rather than taking Macron’s hand,…
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Culture Why the new Israeli coalition seems like something out of an ‘Avengers’ movie
“Unusual,” “unprecedented” and “unlikely” are the commonly used adjectives to describe the uncommon coalition preparing to govern Israel. And their usage is perfectly understandable: If the current coalition survives the internal and external pressures it faces and takes office on June 14, it will truly be all of those un-words. Not only does the coalition…
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Culture Joe Manchin’s filibuster-sized Talmudic trolley problem — and ours
Last week, the GOP may have filibustered the future of American democracy. Senate Republicans used this parliamentary tactic to prevent the creation of an independent commission to investigate the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection. When the vote fell short of 60 — the threshold needed to pass the measure — the Democratic senator from West Virginia,…
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Culture For Albert Camus, events in Gaza would have seemed all too familiar
The situation was impossibly precarious and a solution seemed practically impossible. Two communities, one composed of indigenous Arabs and the other of mostly European immigrants, laid claim to the same swathe of arid hinterland and Mediterranean coastline. Fragile coexistence had given way to fratricidal conflict; one side mobilized technological advantages and the other employed terrorist…
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Culture How Simone Weil taught us to confront a world poisoned with lies
In 1943, a staff member of the Free French completed yet another policy paper for her superiors. She was under no illusion that her reports were read, much less understood, by the leader of the Free French, Charles de Gaulle. Perhaps she had learned of his response— Mais, elle est folle! —upon reading her proposal…
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Culture Why Disraeli is the mensch England could use right now
Will the British prime minister who has been described as “an adventurer addicted to romance and careless about facts” please stand up? The same prime minister who had first made his reputation as a writer before becoming a politician, spices his parliamentary parlays with Latin phrases, and whose reputation as a chancer — a charlatan,…
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Opinion It may not seem like it, but justice was done in the Sarah Halimi case
What happened in Paris on April 4, 2017 was unspeakable. Kobili Traoré, an immigrant from Mali, burst into the apartment of his neighbor, Sarah Halimi, a 65-year-old retired doctor. Shouting antisemitic invective, Traoré battered Halimi and then threw her to her death from the window of her third-story apartment, exclaiming “Allahu akhbar” and that he…
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Yiddish די הגדה ווי אַ לעבעדיקער דענקמאָל פֿון אַשכּנזישער פּאָעזיעThe Haggadah as a living monument to Ashkenazi poetry
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