A professor at the University of Houston, Robert Zaretsky is also a culture columnist at the Forward.
Robert Zaretsky
By Robert Zaretsky
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Opinion Every Single Frenchman Can Don a Kippah and It Still Won’t Help French Jews
To be or not to be…willing to wear a kippah in public? That is the question the French Jewish community, with Hamlet-like intensity and introspection, has been debating over the last few weeks. Even France’s non-Jews are making their opinions known, most notably by donning kippot in symbolic gestures of “solidarity.” It is, inevitably, a…
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Culture New French History Offers a Ray of Hope for Jewish-Muslim Relations
The Burdens of Brotherhood: Jews and Muslims From North Africa to France By Ethan B. Katz Harvard University Press 480 pages, $35 In August 1961, two Algerian Jews, Simon Zouaghi and Martin Benisti, disembarked in Marseilles. The two men — one a butcher, the other a cook — had uprooted themselves and their loved ones…
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Opinion Are French Jews Falling for Marine Le Pen’s Xenophobic Siren Song?
In France, we have just been reminded that historical time is now divided by an avant, before, and après, after, November 13. The results are in from the first round of regional elections, and they are striking. Marine Le Pen’s xenophobic and authoritarian Front National political party has made big gains, finishing first in six…
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Opinion Believe It or Not, What Happened in Paris Was Not About the Jews
Like so many others, I was glued to the Internet during the first hours of Friday night’s terrorist attacks. Like so many others, I was trying to contact friends in Paris. Like so many others, I was scrambling to follow the attacks as they unfolded, jabbing at the keyboard when my networks could not keep…
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Culture Remembering André Glucksmann, a Man of Courage and Conviction
After a long struggle with cancer, the French intellectual André Glucksmann died this week in Paris at the age of 78. With his death, a certain idea of France — that of a nation imbued by a republican spirit as generous as it is rigorous — grew a bit dimmer. Glucksmann spent his life à…
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Opinion Is a New Edition of ‘Mein Kampf’ Really Such a Bad Idea?
Last year, Ben Carson, the leading candidate for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, urged Americans to read “Mein Kampf.” Hitler’s classic, Carson explained, reveals the true nature of President Obama’s agenda. He neglected, however, to illustrate his point with the GOP’s favorite bogeyman, France. This is a country, after all, where only old or dubious…
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Culture Resisting the Familiar Narrative of Resistance in France
How could anyone govern a country, Charles de Gaulle once asked, that has 240 different kinds of cheese? Less well known is the question he posed as leader of the Free French during World War II: How can anyone liberate a country that has nearly the same number of resistance movements? Okay, he didn’t really…
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Opinion French Jews Need To Stand Up for Muslims Right Now
France discovered recently that Marine Le Pen, leader of the extreme right-wing Front National, has a kindred spirit. Her name is Nadine Morano. Like Le Pen, Morano is an immigrant-baiting and blunt-talking politician. A leading figure of the conservative Les Républicains, Morano is very close to the party’s leader, the once (and so he hopes)…
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Fast Forward Why neo-Nazis marched in Ohio this weekend, and almost every weekend in the US
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Opinion The group behind Project 2025 has a plan to protect Jews. It will do the opposite.
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Opinion Just about every interpretation of Trump’s narrow election victory is wrong
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News Texas schools want to add Queen Esther to the curriculum. Here’s why Jews (and many Christians) are opposed.
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Fast Forward Rep. Ritchie Torres, outspoken pro-Israel advocate, is dropping hints that he could run for NY governor
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Fast Forward Ursula Haverbeck, infamous German Holocaust denier known as ‘Nazi grandma,’ dies at 96
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Fast Forward A Jewish museum in Tulsa held a funeral for remains of Holocaust victims it kept for years
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Sports Texas A&M’s Sam Salz cherishes his first taste of DI college football — and the opportunity to inspire fellow Orthodox Jews
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