
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.
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…
If you ask any given member of the self-declared resistance to President Trump what they dislike about his policies, they’ll likely respond along ideological lines, protesting his administration’s attitude to immigrants, Muslims, or the environment – to name just a few of-the-moment issues. Sarah Zapolsky, a researcher and social science analyst who works in the…
Zach Galifianakis, a comic who has mastered the art of making things so unfunny as to be hilarious, hosts a notoriously awkward online talk show called “Between Two Ferns.” In it, he seats himself and a guest – past participants have included Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Justin Bieber – between two leafy specimens, and…
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