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 In An Era Of Faux News, Let’s Set The Record Straight On Vichy France
The State Versus The Jews By Laurent Joly Grasset, 368 pages, 20,90 € In 1994, the French historians Henry Rousso and Éric Conan published “Vichy, un Passé Qui ne Passe pas.” While titled “Vichy: The Ever-Present Past” in the excellent American translation, the phrase nevertheless has a slightly different resonance in the original French. The…
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Culture Sartre, The Kavanaugh Hearings And The Politics Of ‘Bad Faith’
Bad faith is very much in the news. As the media relentlessly remind us, Republicans are tirelessly accusing Democrats of bad faith, while Democrats relentlessly blast Republicans for the same sin. But Jean-Paul Sartre, the thinker who immortalized the phrase, would argue that what he called “mauvaise foi” is not only quite different, but it…
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Culture Should Harvey Weinstein Make Us Rethink Roman Polanski? The French Say ‘Non!’
Last Monday evening, two very different groups gathered at Paris’ famed Cinémathèque française. While smartly dressed film directors and actors quickly filed through the front doors, dozens of warmly dressed protestors — along with two largely undressed members of the militant feminist group Femen — milled outside. Many carried signs that riffed on the message,…
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Culture Harvey Weinstein Loses His Honor — Putin And Mussolini Get To Keep Theirs
For most Americans, the words “Hollywood” and “légion d’honneur” bring to mind “The Revenge of the Pink Panther.” Among the movie’s classic scenes is when Peter Sellers’s Inspector Clouseau is awarded the medal. By turns, Sellers punctures a drum when he draws his sword, flails at a pigeon perched on his kepi, and becomes entangled…
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Opinion There Are No Adults In The White House. Worse, There Are No Mensches
The meaning of the Yiddish word “mensch” can scarce be conveyed in English. Literally a man, mensch means so much more than that. But it means so much more than that. A mensch is a good man, someone who can be relied upon to do the right thing. A mensch has integrity. He (or she!)…
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Opinion Calling Las Vegas Shooter ‘Evil’ Lets Trump and Republicans Off The Hook
A week has now passed since Stephen Paddock murdered 58 men and women, and wounded nearly 500, at a country music concert in Las Vegas. Having searched Paddock’s home and computer, questioned his girl friend and family members, state and federal officials remain flummoxed over the killer’s motivation. Predictably, President Trump has answers where others…
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Opinion The Paradox Of Jared Kushner, A ‘Man Without Qualities’
Seventy-five years ago, Robert Musil died in Switzerland. The Austrian writer had taken refuge there in 1938 with his Jewish wife Martha, and as the war progressed, he spent his time trying to make ends meet and to complete his novel, “The Man Without Qualities.” Neither effort was successful: Musil’s life ended in poverty when…
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Opinion Harvey Is Biblical For Me And My Family — But Not For The Reason You Think
This morning I took a break from clearing my yard of the tree limbs and debris to google the name of the storm that caused the damage, along with the adjective “biblical”. The number of links that appeared—nearly seven million—rivaled the magnitude of the event. No doubt, many have nothing to do with the event…
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