A professor at the University of Houston and the Women’s Institute of Houston, Robert Zaretsky is also a culture columnist at the Forward.
Robert Zaretsky
By Robert Zaretsky
-
Culture For Jews, Texas is beginning to look more like France (that’s not a good thing)
This week marked the start of spring semester at my place of work, the University of Houston. In one of my classes, devoted to the French Enlightenment, I launched into my rather tired explanation why it was important to understand this era. I told my students that so much that our world has since witnessed…
-
Culture In Paul Rudd’s extreme disappointment, a universal philosophy for 2022
The most recent episode of “Saturday Night Live” revealed that Paul Rudd is not just the sexiest man alive in America in 2021, but also the savviest. Rudd was to be inducted into the “5-Timers Club” — those happy few who have hosted “SNL” five times. But with the Omicron variant sweeping across New York…
-
Culture In a notorious French internment camp, harrowing reminders of the consequences of extremism
“When the artist finds himself,” Max Ernst famously remarked, “he is lost.” That he had never found himself, Ernst added, was “his only lasting achievement.” And yet, Ernst had indeed once found himself in, well, surreal circumstances. In 1939, the 50-year old German painter who had lived in Paris since the early 1920s was caught…
-
Culture How a right-wing Jewish presidential candidate is channeling de Gaulle, X-Men and ‘The King’s Speech’
After months of hedging, Éric Zemmour finally crossed the Rubicon yesterday. In a video released on YouTube, the racist and reactionary pundit declared his candidacy in next year’s French presidential election. Upon parsing the video’s words and images, a chorus of commentators have noted the many cues Zemmour took from Charles de Gaulle’s historic appeal…
-
Culture What Hannah Arendt is telling us about Kyle Rittenhouse and Kenosha
In her account of the trial of Adolf Eichmann, the SS officer who oversaw the transportation of European Jews to Nazi death camps during World War II, Hannah Arendt noted a divergence between the goals of the prosecution and judges. The former, conceived by Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and carried out by the chief prosecutor…
-
Culture In the rise and fall of a Jewish politician named Mandel, a cautionary tale for Josh Mandel
Though he was Jewish, he won fame as an archly conservative nationalist; while he graduated from a state, not an elite university, he believed he was destined for high political office; though his fellow party members disliked him, they also acknowledged his determination; caught more than once in telling lies, he confused his brashness with…
-
Culture The Jewish character on ‘Succession’ is reading Dostoevsky — what should we read into that?
Never place a loaded pistol onstage in the first act of a play, if it is not going to go off in a later act, Anton Chekhov famously declared. But what about placing a loaded book in a character’s hand in a television series if it is not going to go off by season’s end?…
-
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…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
Fast Forward Unarmed man who tackled Bondi Beach Hanukkah attacker identified as Ahmed al-Ahmed
- 2
Fast Forward First Puka Nacua, now Mookie Betts: Why do sports stars keep getting antisemitic around a Jewish streamer?
- 3
Fast Forward After MIT professor’s killing, Jewish influencers spread unverified antisemitism claim
- 4
Opinion I grew up believing Australia was the best place to be Jewish. This Hanukkah shooting forces a reckoning I do not want.
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward ‘The most Australian name’: Matilda, the youngest victim of the Bondi Beach attack, embodies a nation’s grief
-
Fast Forward A Wider Bridge, a pro-Israel advocate in LGBTQ spaces, is shutting down
-
Yiddish פֿאַר וואָס הערט מען ניט וועגן דעם גלעצנדיקן וווּקס פֿון דער ישׂראל־בערזע? Why aren’t we hearing about the dramatic growth of the Israeli stock market?
וואָלט דער אָפּרוף געווען אַנדערש, ווען דער ציל פֿון די טעראָריסטן וואָלט ניט געווען ייִדן, נאָר אַן אַנדער גרופּע?
-
Fast Forward Federal attorneys leave Trump’s University of California antisemitism investigation en masse, alleging ‘sham’ process
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
