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
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Opinion Faded Hunk David Hasselhoff Leads Fight To Save Berlin Wall
My generation knows him as the hunk from Baywatch, while my children’s generation knows him as “The Hasselhoff” from The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie. Both generations in Germany, however, know him, as “The Hoff”: the pop singer who in 1989 belted out “Looking for Freedom” at the newly breached wall. It is in this latest role…
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Culture Sometimes Isaiah Berlin Felt Like a Fox, Sometimes He Felt Like a Hedgehog
‘The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” Rarely have so few words — a fragment of poetry from the sixth-century Greek poet Archilochus — come to mean so much. Sixty years ago, with the publication of his essay “The Hedgehog and the Fox,” Isaiah Berlin yoked these little critters to…
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Opinion Beauty and The Pig
Where is Roland Barthes now that we truly need him? Barthes was the French intellectual who founded the discipline of cultural criticism, insisting everything, from the epic to pedestrian, signifies something. Flags and photos, cars and commercials, pop stars and plastic: Barthes trawled the sea of signification for the flotsam of mass culture. He would…
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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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Yiddish דאָקטוירים פֿון אַן אַנדער שניטDoctors of a different sort
די ווילנער דאָקטוירים יעקבֿ וויגאָדסקי און צמח שאַבאַד זענען אויך געווען געזעלשאַפֿטלעכע טוער.
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Yiddish ווידעאָ: ווען ייִדיש האָט געקלונגען אין די גאַסן פֿון מעקסיקע VIDEO: When Yiddish rang throughout the streets of Mexico
יעקבֿ פֿינקלמאַן באַשרײַבט אויך זײַן לאַנגיאָריקן פֿאַך — ווי ער האָט צוגעשטעלט וויסן אין טעלעקאָמוניקאַציע איבער דער וועלט
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Opinion Want to understand what’s wrong with the ‘pro-Palestine’ movement? This Palestinian can help
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Fast Forward Boulder firebombing suspect’s family can be deported, court says
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