
Talya Zax is the Forward’s opinion editor. Contact her at [email protected] or on Twitter, @TalyaZax.
Talya Zax is the Forward’s opinion editor. Contact her at [email protected] or on Twitter, @TalyaZax.
As always, the world is in tumult, no one can be trusted, everything you believed is a lie and our last refuge is art. Or it soon will be, if another important source of honesty — a bummer, yes, but a bummer that matters — continues to be depleted. I speak, of course, about the…
Close to noon on April 6, 1903 — Easter Sunday — as families took in the newly pleasant weather in Kishinev, then part of Russia, a group of young boys started to hassle some of the Jews who had joined the Christian families in Chuflinskii Square. It happened every year. The period around Easter always…
Sylvia Bloom didn’t want many things, according to a recent report in The New York Times. Every now and then she craved good chocolate. After she retired at age 96, she hoped to find a lively bridge game. Professional and personal independence were always a priority. But it became apparent, after her 2016 death, that…
Somewhere, a giddy Wes Anderson is developing a film about an elderly novelist, one of the most lauded and prolific in the world, who spends his late years waiting eagerly for each October, feeling sure that this — this! — is the year he will be given his due, and awarded the world’s most prestigious…
We’ve had one day of spring, and now it is summertime! Congratulations to all; may you have blissful weekends at the beach, in the park, or, if you are a certain Forward writer, doing battle with the Rodent of Unusual Size that has found its way into your apartment’s walls. If you are happily rodent-free,…
On May 2, 1949, Arthur Miller, then 33, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Drama for “Death of a Salesman.” It was one of several remarkable moments in what was, for Miller, a remarkable year. “Death of a Salesman” swept up most of the season’s available theatrical awards, including the Tony Award for Best Author,…
The year of Leonard Bernstein’s centenary, already widely celebrated, just got even better: Jake Gyllenhaal, your Serious Jewish Actor crush, is going to play Bernstein in a forthcoming biopic. As Deadline reports, Gyllenhaal will produce and star in “The American,” which will begin filming this coming fall from a screenplay by Michael Mitnick, adapted from…
After a particularly boring season on Broadway, there are few surprises among this season’s nominees for the Tony Awards. “SpongeBob SquarePants” and “Mean Girls” predictably mopped up nominations, scoring 12 apiece in a season in which new musicals were scarce. Equally predictably, “Escape to Margaritaville,” the Jimmy Buffet musical, won no Tony love; somewhat more…
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