Talya Zax is the Forward’s opinion editor. Contact her at [email protected] or on Twitter, @TalyaZax.
Talya ZaxOpinion Editor
By Talya Zax
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Culture Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Anti-Trump Comments Spark Backlash
President Obama has, in his last months in office, been making a habit of the mic drop. (See his speech at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and his recent Jimmy Fallon-aided slow jamming of the news.) Based on a recent New York Times interview, it seems Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is impressed by his style….
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Culture Cyber Warfare Is Real — Should We Blame the U.S. and Israel For Starting It?
In late 2009, something almost laughably scary started happening at the Natanz nuclear facility in Iran: centrifuges — slim cylinders containing powerful rotors used to enrich uranium — began exploding. It wasn’t clear why. Or how. The operating data for the impacted centrifuges gave the impression they were functioning at normal levels, and when technicians…
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Culture Agata Tuszyńska Knew She Was Jewish But Couldn’t Talk About It
A Family History of Fear By Agata Tuszyńska Translated by Charles Ruas Knopf, 400 pages, $27.95 ‘Truth is safer, always.” The Polish poet, biographer, and memoirist Agata Tuszyńska sat across from me in the living room of an expensively furnished apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, drinking black tea. It was a warm Monday morning,…
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Culture Meet Donald Trump’s Jewish Architect Who’s Now Helping Hillary Clinton
Between the lawsuit against Donald Trump’s eponymous “university,” reports that his performance as a real estate investor has been markedly subpar in comparison to that of his peers, and the bankruptcies declared by four of his hotels and casinos, the presidential candidate’s reputation as a businessman isn’t exactly intact. In a newly-released campaign video, Hillary…
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Art Can You Tell a Shakespeare Play By Its Poster?
Against a red background, a featureless white head, lacking its crown, opens to reveal a set of white steps descending into a black cavern. A man in profile, the barest combination of ivory skin and black robe, stares down into the almost pleading sockets of a skull in his hands. A shining, simple crown hovers…
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Culture Why Roberto Burle Marx’s Art Is Still Too Big For Museums
Walking into the Jewish Museum’s new exhibit on Roberto Burle Marx, the Brazilian landscape architect best known for his strikingly patterned seaside pavements on Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana Beach, the first thing you’ll notice is the tapestry. At 87 feet long, it occupies the back wall of the main exhibition. It’s long, lean, abstract —…
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Culture Meet the Man Who Taught Lin-Manuel Miranda All About Hamilton
In the opening song of “Hamilton,” the cast of early Americans that populates the musical repeatedly sings the title character’s name — Alexander Hamilton — their voices tinged with reverence. A similarly fascinated tone tends to emerge when people talk about Lin-Manuel Miranda, the 36-year-old composer, rapper, writer, and actor who created and stars in…
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Culture ‘Amadeus’ Playwright Peter Shaffer Was a Verbose Virtuoso
It was there on the dining room table, in my childhood home, the VHS of “Amadeus.” “The man,” the tag line began, followed by a tantalizing ellipses, “…the music…the madness…the murder…the motion picture.” Never before had the case of a film been so alluring, those taunting words presided over by a menacing figure in an…
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