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 Believe It or Not, What Happened in Paris Was Not About the Jews
Like so many others, I was glued to the Internet during the first hours of Friday night’s terrorist attacks. Like so many others, I was trying to contact friends in Paris. Like so many others, I was scrambling to follow the attacks as they unfolded, jabbing at the keyboard when my networks could not keep…
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Culture Remembering André Glucksmann, a Man of Courage and Conviction
After a long struggle with cancer, the French intellectual André Glucksmann died this week in Paris at the age of 78. With his death, a certain idea of France — that of a nation imbued by a republican spirit as generous as it is rigorous — grew a bit dimmer. Glucksmann spent his life à…
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Opinion Is a New Edition of ‘Mein Kampf’ Really Such a Bad Idea?
Last year, Ben Carson, the leading candidate for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, urged Americans to read “Mein Kampf.” Hitler’s classic, Carson explained, reveals the true nature of President Obama’s agenda. He neglected, however, to illustrate his point with the GOP’s favorite bogeyman, France. This is a country, after all, where only old or dubious…
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Culture Resisting the Familiar Narrative of Resistance in France
How could anyone govern a country, Charles de Gaulle once asked, that has 240 different kinds of cheese? Less well known is the question he posed as leader of the Free French during World War II: How can anyone liberate a country that has nearly the same number of resistance movements? Okay, he didn’t really…
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Opinion French Jews Need To Stand Up for Muslims Right Now
France discovered recently that Marine Le Pen, leader of the extreme right-wing Front National, has a kindred spirit. Her name is Nadine Morano. Like Le Pen, Morano is an immigrant-baiting and blunt-talking politician. A leading figure of the conservative Les Républicains, Morano is very close to the party’s leader, the once (and so he hopes)…
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Opinion Can Dominique Strauss-Kahn Reinvent Himself — as France’s Next President?
While there are no second acts in American lives, as F. Scott Fitzgerald famously claimed, there seems to be a French exception. Over the past several weeks, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the Jewish former French finance minister, former head of the International Monetary Fund, former front-runner for the French presidency, and former perp at Riker’s Island, has…
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Culture Where All the Reasons To Kill Are Absurd
By Kamel Daoud, translated from the French by John Cullen Other Press, 160 Pages, $14.95 Kamel Daoud kick-starts his novel with the line “Mama’s still alive today,” turning inside out the celebrated opening of Albert Camus’s “The Stranger”: “Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don’t know.” What would Camus say were he alive today,…
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Opinion Jean Zay, Resistance Fighter and Cannes Founder, Enters the Pantheon
One could hardly conceive of a greater contrast between the resorts and runways at Cannes and the sepulchers and silence at the Pantheon. The Mediterranean town is the capital of glitter and celebrity, while the Parisian monument is the twilit-resting place for those whose lives brought glory to the nation. This year, however, the red…
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