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 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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Opinion 42 French Muslims Condemn Terrorist Attacks — Except When Victims Are Jewish?
Over the past two years, the debate among French Muslims over Islam’s place in France — who it represents, what it stands for, why a small minority murder in its name and how to stop them — has intensified with each new terrorist attack on French soil. Following last week’s appalling events in St Etienne…
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Culture Reconstructing a Child’s Life During the Holocaust
A History of the Grandparents I Never Had By Ivan Jablonka Stanford University Press, 352 pages, $30 Perhaps no moment in modern history has been written about as much as the Shoah. Historians and memoirists, in particular, have striven to re-create or retell this event. While the two genres are distinct, the dividing line between…
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Opinion Meet the French Jews Who Love Marine Le Pen and Her Far Right Party
Samuel Johnson’s riff on female preachers and walking dogs — “It is not done well, but you are surprised to find it done at all” — comes to mind with the news from France of the creation of the UPFJ, a bland acronym that stands for the Union des Patriotes Francais Juifs, or the Union…
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News Scoop: Heritage Foundation plans to ‘identify and target’ Wikipedia editors
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Music For Bob Dylan’s biographer, ‘A Complete Unknown’ is a dream come true — even if it’s mostly fiction
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Culture In Peter Yarrow’s legacy, an uneasy blend of Jewish values and personal transgressions
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News ‘Do you have the Torahs?’ Synagogue races LA wildfire to rescue its past and future
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Fast Forward Israel’s judicial overhaul is back. So are the protests.
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Opinion After 15 months of war, Israelis are all scaffolding, helping hold each other up
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Fast Forward Their Pacific Palisades synagogue is standing, but all three rabbis lost their homes
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Fast Forward House votes to sanction International Criminal Court leaders over Israel charges
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