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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News Raymond Aubrac, 97, Leader of Resistance
The last great résistant standing in France, Raymond Aubrac, died on April 10. He was 97. With his passing, France has lost a political and moral figure who helped redeem the nation’s past and stood witness to its present. At the same time, France’s Jews have lost one of their own who courageously, though not…
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Opinion Toulouse Tragedy Shows Rhetoric’s Danger
Now that France’s nightmare seems to be ending, its many interpretations have begun. As I write, a Frenchman of Algerian descent has claimed responsibility for the horrific murders of French soldiers and a teacher and children at a local Sephardic Jewish school. He identified himself as a member of Al Qaeda, reportedly traveled to Pakistan…
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Culture Tony Judt’s Corrosive Eloquence
Thinking the Twentieth Century By Tony Judt, with Timothy Snyder Penguin Press, 432 pages, $36 After a long and courageous struggle against the nerve cell disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Tony Judt died in August 2010, at the age of 62. The series of conversations that he had with historian Timothy Snyder during the final stretch…
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Opinion Le Pen’s Candidacy, Secured by French-Israeli
We all know politics makes for odd bedfellows. Just how odd, though, was revealed in this morning’s news. The presidential candidacy of Marine Le Pen, leader of the extreme right wing Front National, has just been made possible by a French Israeli citizen. In order to run for president in France, an individual must secure…
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Opinion Quashing France’s Israel Apartheid Week
This is the week that wasn’t — at least if you planned on attending the colloquium “New sociological, historical and legal approaches to the call for an international boycott: Is Israel an apartheid state?” Scheduled to take place on February 27 and 28 at the University of Paris VIII, the colloquium was quashed last week…
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Opinion French Jews Mostly Side With Sarkozy
Like the United States, France will choose a president this year. Little more than two months away from the elections, the conservative president, Nicolas Sarkozy, is running behind the Socialist candidate, François Hollande. Several other candidates are polling well: Marine Le Pen of the extreme right-wing Front National hovers at about 20%, followed by the…
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Opinion France: The Dumbest Right-Wing in the World
Charles de Gaulle famously observed that France had “la droite la plus bête au monde” [“the dumbest right-wing in the world”]. Events over the last couple of days reveal that the French Right continues to work hard for bragging rights to that dubious moniker. At the start of the week Christian Vanneste, a deputy of…
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Culture ‘Hugo’s French Connection
It’s déjà vu all over again at the Academy Awards: The nation that gave us motion pictures stands to sweep the Oscars, which will be broadcast February 26. Leading the new wave of French-made or French-inspired movies this year is, of course, Martin Scorsese’s “Hugo,” with 11 nominations. Through the use of new technologies like…
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Culture Why saying ‘L’shana Tova’ on Rosh Hashanah may not be the correct phrase
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Culture A Jewish prophet of the 1980s would be horrified to see that we didn’t heed his warnings
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Opinion With killing of Hezbollah’s chief, Israel occupies the inarguable moral high ground
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Opinion This is the most disorienting Rosh Hashanah in memory
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Culture He founded the Harlem Globetrotters and is the shortest man in the basketball hall of fame. A new book tells his story.
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