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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Culture The U.S. has called for a ‘humanitarian pause’ in the war against Hamas — what, if anything, does that mean?
The word 'pause' has a different connotation than 'cease-fire' and its definition is elusive
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Culture For Israel, a predicament that would be familiar to the authors of Greek tragedy
As with Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, Israel confronts a story where no happy ending is possible
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Culture Why so many people call the Oct. 7 massacre a ‘pogrom’ — and what they miss when they do so
Yosef Yerushalmi would have had a lot to say about our tendency to fit new horrors into old patterns
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Culture In Galveston, Texas, a refuge for Jews escaping pogroms — and perhaps a lesson for today’s ‘migrant crisis’
For Jewish immigrants, Galveston was once 'the Ellis Island of the West'
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Culture In a France riven by terrorism, why history (and one particular Jewish historian) still matters
Marc Bloch would have understood the irony of the threats issued at the school bearing his name
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Culture As in 1940 France, Israel’s fortified border protected only a false sense of security
As Hamas terrorists crossed the divide, they recalled the time Germany breached the Maginot Line
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Opinion How Netanyahu exploited the politics of fear in a country that now fears for its survival
The catastrophic events have befallen an Israel that was divided, distracted and demoralized
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Culture Why there’s nothing normal about Israel normalizing relations with Saudi Arabia
As Hans Morgenthau and Hannah Arendt would remind us, choosing the lesser of two evils still means choosing evil
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