Talya Zax is the Forward’s opinion editor. Contact her at [email protected] or on Twitter, @TalyaZax.
Talya ZaxOpinion Editor
By Talya Zax
-
Culture Plays By Tom Stoppard, Mark Medoff Join Broadway 17-18 Season
The 2017-2018 Broadway season isn’t exactly lacking Jewish representation: “Prince of Broadway” and “The Band’s Visit” will anchor the fall’s offerings, and directors like Julie Taymor, Jerry Zaks, and Rebecca Taichman will be helming shows across the Great White Way. Yet there’s always room for more: Playwrights Tom Stoppard and Mark Medoff will both have…
-
Culture Remembering Arlene Gottfried, Chronicler Of New York’s Humanity
Arlene Gottfried called her grandma bubbie and sang in a gospel choir. The Brooklyn-born photographer, who passed away on Tuesday August 8 at age 66, was a New Yorker to the core. She spent her childhood in Coney Island, then Crown Heights; in the 1990s, she moved to the Lower East Side, where the life…
-
Culture Ben Platt Is Leaving ‘Dear Evan Hansen.’ Here Are Some Of His Remarkable Performances.
In the title role of “Dear Evan Hansen,” Ben Platt has won a series of theatrical accolades, including the 2017 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical, that have made him a household name. Now, the 23-year-old actor is planning his next steps. Platt took to Twitter today to confirm that his last performance…
-
Culture Can Louis Kahn’s Quintessentially American Music Boat Be Saved?
“How important is your thumb on your right hand?” Richard Saul Wurman asked, before he answered his own question: “It’s not as important as your whole arm, or your lungs.” “Lou’s reputation as a great architect will live without this boat. But it’s really nice that it is recognized.” Wurman, an author, architect and founder…
-
Culture 65 Years Ago, The USSR Murdered Its Greatest Jewish Poets. What’s Left Of Their Legacy?
For nearly four decades, no one knew exactly how many Soviet Jews were secretly executed by the Soviet Union in the basement of Moscow’s Lubyanka Prison on August 12, 1952. A 1970 New York Times report on the fate of Yiddish in the USSR claimed the victims numbered around 30. A 1972 volume commemorating the…
-
The Schmooze A Broadway Extravaganza And More To Read, Watch And Do This Weekend
Welcome to your weekend! You may be tempted to spend it panicking over potential war with North Korea, but let’s face it: There’s not a ton you can do about that. Instead, enjoy summer before it turns into nuclear winter — gulp — with the Forward’s best weekend culture picks. 1) New York City Broadway…
-
Music When Shostakovich Wrote ‘From Jewish Folk Poetry’ And Pissed Off Stalin
The 20th-century Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich might be best known for his conflicted but patriotic symphonies, his daring operas, including two takes on Nikolai Leskov’s novella “Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District,” or the extent to which, decades after his death on this day in 1975, no one can say authoritatively whether his music was…
-
Culture How Does Robert Pinsky Pen A Protest Poem?
Former Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky’s poem “Exile and Lightning” made an impact when he read it at a PEN America Writers Resist event in January. In front of a crowd that included cultural figures like Masha Gessen, Art Spiegelman, and Amy Goodman, Pinsky issued a striking reflection on the contemporary urgency of historic thought. “Now,…
Explore
Most Popular
In Case You Missed It
-
Sports ‘All my homies hate paintball Nazis’: Antisemitism scandal tears through paintball community
-
Fast Forward Man burns library books on Jewish history, including Anne Frank’s diary, in Jewish suburb of Cleveland
-
Culture The towering Jewish critic who taught me to grok art and hate Picasso
-
Fast Forward Judge cites Betar US in releasing Massachusetts student from immigration detention
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
