
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.
If, during the unusually warm New York City winter of 2015, you heard that a weather phenomenon called El Niño was partly to blame, you had Mark Cane to thank for that information. El Niño, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, consists of a series of climactic changes characterized by “a warming of…
The 2017 class of new members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences includes radio host Amy Goodman of “Democracy Now!,” Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, of New York University and Polin, the Museum of the History of Polish Jews, and Israeli novelist David Grossman, among many others. Goodman and Kirshenblatt-Gimblett were among the 188 newly-elected Fellows…
Israeli novelists David Grossman and Amos Oz have been shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize. Grossman, who made the list for “A Horse Walks Into a Bar,” and Oz, nominated for “Judas,” were previously announced as members of this year’s longlist. They are nominated alongside their translators: For Grossman, Jessica Cohen, and for…
Marcel Proust is famous for transforming an evocative sensory experience into literary brilliance: I am writing, of course, of the nibble of a madeleine that catalyzed his immortal stroll down memory lane in “Swann’s Way.” The author also, apparently, could turn an unwanted sensory intrusion into fairly amusing epistolary material. Among an astonishing collection of…
Yom HaShoah, or Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, will be observed on Monday the 24. In the United States, many Jewish institutions are holding commemorative events on Sunday the 23. In and around New York City, events include The Holocaust Memorial & Tolerance Center of Nassau County’s “Descent Into Darkness,” a conversation with two twins who…
On April 14, Saskatchewan experienced a Passover miracle. Heading out to check on their herd of cattle, ranchers Adrienne and Aaron Ivey saw something nearly as odd as locusts falling from the sky, and much more welcome: A beaver leading 150 of their heifers in a docile march across their property. Why was this beaver…
The sanctuary of the Great Synagogue in Lodz was probably not, in actuality, sour-apple green. Yet in a late 19th- or early 20th-century postcard showcasing the synagogue’s interior, colorized with an outré enthusiasm, a chandelier and sections of the bimah are the color of a doctor’s-office lollipop. That candy-tinted symbol of times past might, when…
If you are a Jew who either keeps kosher or feels vaguely guilty about not doing so, should you be worried that the world is running out of slimy sea creatures for you to sanctimoniously (and gratefully) refuse to eat? Not anymore: The world’s rarest treyf has been found. It’s appetizingly known as the giant…
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