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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Culture Was Adolf Hitler Leader or Follower?
Hitler: A Biography By Ian Kershaw W.W. Norton, 1,030 pages, $25.95 Hitler’s Hangman: The Life of Heydrich By Robert Gerwarth Yale University Press, 336 pages, $35 Heinrich Himmler: A Life By Peter Longerich Oxford University Press, 1,072 pages, $34.95 Those who can, make history; those who can’t, write history; those who can’t write history write…
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News Raymond Aubrac, 97, Leader of Resistance
The last great résistant standing in France, Raymond Aubrac, died on April 10. He was 97. With his passing, France has lost a political and moral figure who helped redeem the nation’s past and stood witness to its present. At the same time, France’s Jews have lost one of their own who courageously, though not…
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Opinion Toulouse Tragedy Shows Rhetoric’s Danger
Now that France’s nightmare seems to be ending, its many interpretations have begun. As I write, a Frenchman of Algerian descent has claimed responsibility for the horrific murders of French soldiers and a teacher and children at a local Sephardic Jewish school. He identified himself as a member of Al Qaeda, reportedly traveled to Pakistan…
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Culture Tony Judt’s Corrosive Eloquence
Thinking the Twentieth Century By Tony Judt, with Timothy Snyder Penguin Press, 432 pages, $36 After a long and courageous struggle against the nerve cell disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Tony Judt died in August 2010, at the age of 62. The series of conversations that he had with historian Timothy Snyder during the final stretch…
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Opinion Le Pen’s Candidacy, Secured by French-Israeli
We all know politics makes for odd bedfellows. Just how odd, though, was revealed in this morning’s news. The presidential candidacy of Marine Le Pen, leader of the extreme right wing Front National, has just been made possible by a French Israeli citizen. In order to run for president in France, an individual must secure…
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Opinion Quashing France’s Israel Apartheid Week
This is the week that wasn’t — at least if you planned on attending the colloquium “New sociological, historical and legal approaches to the call for an international boycott: Is Israel an apartheid state?” Scheduled to take place on February 27 and 28 at the University of Paris VIII, the colloquium was quashed last week…
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Opinion French Jews Mostly Side With Sarkozy
Like the United States, France will choose a president this year. Little more than two months away from the elections, the conservative president, Nicolas Sarkozy, is running behind the Socialist candidate, François Hollande. Several other candidates are polling well: Marine Le Pen of the extreme right-wing Front National hovers at about 20%, followed by the…
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Opinion France: The Dumbest Right-Wing in the World
Charles de Gaulle famously observed that France had “la droite la plus bête au monde” [“the dumbest right-wing in the world”]. Events over the last couple of days reveal that the French Right continues to work hard for bragging rights to that dubious moniker. At the start of the week Christian Vanneste, a deputy of…
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Opinion The Gaza hostage crisis could forever change how American Jews relate to Israel — but it’s not too late to fix that
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Yiddish ווידעאָ: היסטאָריקערין וויווי לאַקס באַשרײַבט געשיכטע פֿון לאָנדאָנער ייִדישער פּרעסעVIDEO: Historian Vivi Laks tells history of the London Yiddish Press
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