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 A Harvard Magazine Made A Sex Joke About Anne Frank. It Wasn’t Just Offensive — It Was Boring.
You can see why the staff of the Harvard Lampoon found the idea funny. Photoshop Anne Frank’s head onto the body of a woman showing off a belly button piercing and surgically augmented breasts in a string bikini. Make sure a sufficient number of shirtless men in the background are staring appreciatively at her. And…
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Culture 7 New Books To Read This May
I once read an interview with a book critic who noted that if, as a professional critic, she read five books a week for 50 years, she would only have read 13,000 books by the end of her career. 13,000 isn’t small change. But seeing the number of new and upcoming books that cross my…
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The Schmooze Uh, Who Decided To Let Mel Gibson Star In A Movie Called ‘Rothchild’?
Reader, I have made some unfortunate decisions in my life. Last night I ate potato chips covered in cheese at 11 pm and called it “dinner.” In high school I wore knock-off Ugg boots with enormous bejeweled butterflies on the calves. Once — gulp — I even voluntarily listened to Spotify’s Hanukkah playlist, all the…
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Culture Q & A: Aaron Sorkin On What White Liberal Guys Want
What to do about Aaron Sorkin? The writer and director was once a voice of liberal America. We swooned over the grand ideals and political savvy of President Bartlett and his coterie of advisors on “The West Wing.” A 2012 clip from “The Newsroom” in which Jeff Daniels, as news anchor Will McAvoy, tears down…
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Theater Is Orpheus And Eurydice A Myth About Political Power? In ‘Hadestown,’ Absolutely.
Editor’s note: On April 30 ‘Hadestown’ was nominated for 14 Tony Awards, the highest number of any eligible Broadway show. Orpheus and Eurydice: You know the story. They fall in love, Eurydice dies, and Orpheus, a musician of astonishing talent, follows her to the underworld, hoping to rescue her. His music so moves Hades, god…
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Culture WATCH: On His 130th Birthday, Charlie Chaplin’s ‘The Immigrant’ Is Worth Another Look
Hopeful individuals and families cross an ocean, only to arrive in a strange country where, still culturally and financially at sea, they scrape by dint of their wiles and compassion for one another. Yes, Charlie Chaplin’s 1917 short film “The Immigrant” presents a romanticized caricature of the immigrant experience. Still, in a time when the…
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Culture Everyone Is Baffled By Batsheva
If you are a short person in New York you will experience certain uncomfortable things. Men reaching for the subway pole will put their elbows where your head ought to be. At events filled with tall women, you will feel like a child even as you mutter “I AM 26.” In your impractically tall-ceilinged apartment,…
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Culture Who To Read For Women’s History Month, Part Eight: Amy Levy
“This poem — surely a most remarkable one to be produced by a girl still at school — is distinguished, as nearly all Miss Levy’s work is, by the qualities of sincerity, directness, and melancholy.” That was Oscar Wilde on Amy Levy’s poem “Xantippe,” a 30-page imagined narration by Socrates’ wife. Levy originally published the…
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Yiddish ווידעאָ: יוטוב־פּערזענלעכקייט רעדט אויף ייִדיש וועגן אַ משפּחה־טראַגעדיעVIDEO: Youtube personality speaks in Yiddish about a tragedy in the family
מאַטי מענדלאָוויטשעס ברודער, וואָס האָט יאָרן לאַנג געליטן פֿון דעפּרעסיע, האָט הײַיאָר זיך גענומען דאָס לעבן. .
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