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 ‘Hugo’s French Connection
It’s déjà vu all over again at the Academy Awards: The nation that gave us motion pictures stands to sweep the Oscars, which will be broadcast February 26. Leading the new wave of French-made or French-inspired movies this year is, of course, Martin Scorsese’s “Hugo,” with 11 nominations. Through the use of new technologies like…
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Opinion Holiday Proposal Sparks French Outrage
The political tempest spawned in France by Standard & Poor’s downgrade of the country’s credit rating has transfixed outside observers. They have thus paid little attention to a different storm now roiling the waters of French society: the question of whether or not French Jews can take the day off on Yom Kippur. In early…
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Culture Recalling Guns of August and Israel
Born 100 years ago on the Olympian heights of Manhattan’s Upper East Side, her uncle, Henry Morgenthau, served as Franklin Roosevelt’s secretary of the Treasury, while her father, Maurice Wertheim, a successful investment banker, was on the War Production Board. Barbara Tuchman’s professional destiny seemed tied even as a toddler to the event that launched…
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Opinion When History Is Closed for Debate
The spirit of the holiday season has just swept across the French National Assembly. On December 22, the nation’s representatives — or, more accurately, the handful in attendance — passed a bill that would criminalize the denial of the Turkish massacre of the Armenians in 1915. It was as much a gift to the government…
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Opinion Le Pen Gains Little Traction on U.S. Trip
She came, she saw, and she was ignored. Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s National Front has not conquered America as she reaches the end of her five-day official trip. In fact, she has scarcely raised a ripple on the surface of the American media. The New York Times has ignored Le Pen’s whirlwind…
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Culture Protestant French Village that Resisted Vichy
For most tourists, Le Chambon-sur-Lignon resembles hundreds of vacation resorts in the South of France. Three-star hotels and spas, pizzerias and sports facilities do a furious business during the summer months. They then doze during autumn before slipping into winter hibernation, when the glacial wind called the mistral strips the surrounding Cévennes mountains to an…
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Opinion The France That Hasn’t Shown Its Face to Dominique Strauss-Kahn
The case of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, former director of the IMF and leading Socialist politician now accused of sexual assault, has left the French public shocked and scandalized in many different ways. But curiously, there is one response that we have not seen: anti-Semitism. Curious, because France’s long history with its Jews has often been troubled…
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