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 A Tale of Two Jewish Conservatives
Earlier this month, Eric Cantor brought the Republican Party to a turning point and failed to turn. In the days leading up to an address he delivered at the American Enterprise Institute, many in the news media predicted a game changer: “GOP Leader Aims To Change Party’s Message,” The Wall Street Journal heralded, while Politico…
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Opinion Take This Out of Context, Morsi
A delegation of American senators met earlier this month in Cairo with a spokesperson for Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, according to the New York Times. The spokesperson clarified press accounts of Mr. Morsi’s recent description of Jews as “bloodsuckers,” “pigs” and “dogs.” The remarks, he explained, were “taken out of context.” The senators left the…
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Opinion Lance Armstrong and the Meaning of Chutzpah
Two confessions: I am neither a speaker of Yiddish nor a fan of professional cycling. But as we hover in the halftime break of Lance Armstrong’s interview with Oprah Winfrey, I can’t help but wonder if the televised confession has implications for the meaning of chutzpah. Most of us are familiar with Leo Rosten’s classic…
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Opinion French Jews Picked as Most Loved — and Hated — Figures
The results are in from France’s annual flurry of end of the year polls to determine who is in and who is out, embraced or disgraced by the public. According to the newspaper Le Parisien, the nation’s most admired public figure is the singer and songwriter Jean-Jacques Goldman. More or less at the same time,…
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Culture The Depardieu Affair
One hundred and fifteen years ago, Cyrano de Bergerac leapt into history. Following the opening performance of Edmond Rostand’s play on December 28, 1897, a dazzled audience obliged the cast to make forty curtain calls. The following night, government officials came to the theater and awarded Rostand with the Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur. A…
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Opinion France’s Rising Star Takes on Extremists
The French media are feasting on this week’s revelation that the fading star Gérard Depardieu, who brought to the screen such icons of French patriotism as Astérix and Cyrano de Bergerac, is settling in Belgium. The move, it appears, is dictated less by the scenery (there is none) than the lower tax bracket, an issue…
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Opinion Behind the French ‘Oui’ for Abbas
The announcement, made by Laurent Fabius, France’s foreign minister, that his government will support the Palestinian Authority’s bid for “non-member observer status” at the United Nations next week is hardly news, but nevertheless newsworthy. The news, of course, has been in the offing for quite some time. France’s Socialist Party, which has historically enjoyed closer…
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Culture Uncertain Future for Jews in French Provinces
An Uncertain Future: Voices of a French Jewish Community, 1940-2012 By Robert I. Weiner and Richard E. Sharpless University of Toronto Press, 344 pages, $29.95 Much rarer than Dijon’s mustard and wine is the small and, until recently, vibrant Jewish community that called this small French city home. But as its title warns, “An Uncertain…
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Yiddish איך פֿאָר קיין צורוגאַ, יאַפּאַן, וווּ מײַן טאַטע האָט זיך געראַטעוועט פֿון די נאַציסI travel to Tsuruga, Japan, where my father was saved from the Nazis
אַן אָרטיקער מוזיי גיט איבער רירנדיקע זכרונות פֿון יענע יאָרן מצד די ייִדישע פּליטים און יאַפּאַנישע אײַנוווינער
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