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 ‘This man is not going to daunt me:’ Talking with Philip Roth’s biographer, Blake Bailey
Editor’s note: Two weeks after this interview with Blake Bailey was published, multiple women came forward to accuse him of sexual assault and other sexual misconduct. Details of the allegations may be found here. A masterful writer obsessively preoccupied with whether and how he’d be valued by history; a deeply sensitive charmer with a real…
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Opinion ‘We simply feel forgotten about:’ 9 Asian American Jews speak
The United States is in the middle of a devastating spike in hate crimes against Asian-Americans, with nearly 3,800 incidents of hate reported to the organization Stop AAPI Hate in the last year. (AAPI refers to Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.) Between broad under-reporting of hate crimes against Asian Americans and the lack of a…
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Culture Woody Allen’s extraordinary violence, laid bare
“Allen v. Farrow,” HBO Max’s new four-part documentary about Dylan Farrow’s allegations of sexual assault against her adopted father, Woody Allen, has an almost soothing domestic aesthetic, full of long shots of rustic Connecticut homesteads and rippling lakes. But the series, which investigates the deep and constant violence experienced by survivors of abuse, is anything…
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Culture The Forward was a socialist mainstay — until it endorsed FDR. What changed?
Editor’s note: This story was originally published in 2020 as the fifth installment of a special series exploring the Forward’s election coverage throughout its 123-year history. We’ve republished it for Presidents Day; find earlier installments of the newsletter here. “Nothing in this campaign happened to change my mind about there being no difference between the…
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Culture For Mozart’s 265th birthday, remembering his great Jewish collaborator
This story, initially published in October, 2018, has been republished in honor of Mozart’s 265th birthday on Jan. 27, 2021. The librettist Lorenzo da Ponte — an exiled Jewish-born Venetian who turned to the arts after proving too irreverent for the Church — had a lot in common with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The two shared…
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News Q & A: The Freedom Rider rabbi arrested on the same day as John Lewis
In 1961, the story of the Freedom Riders captured the American imagination: young, mostly white Northern students teaming up with Southern, mostly black civil-rights activists to stage acts of civil disobedience by simply riding together on segregated buses. Traveling through the South in Integrated groups, the activists faced violence and arrests, followed by weeks-long stays…
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Culture Will Jewish schools finally address their segregationist past?
Editor’s note: In observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the Forward is resurfacing some of our recent coverage related to the Black-Jewish experience and racial justice. This article originally appeared in July, 2020. In the two months since George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police, American Jewish day schools have begun to rethink how…
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Fast Forward Trump grants pardon to Jared Kushner’s father, Charles Kushner
President Trump has granted pardons to a group of high-profile allies including Charles Kushner, father of Trump’s son-in-law and senior advisor Jared Kushner. The elder Kushner pleaded guilty to 16 counts of tax evasion in 2004, as well as additional counts of lying to the Federal Election Commission and retaliating against a federal witness. He…
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