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 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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Opinion Holiday Proposal Sparks French Outrage
The political tempest spawned in France by Standard & Poor’s downgrade of the country’s credit rating has transfixed outside observers. They have thus paid little attention to a different storm now roiling the waters of French society: the question of whether or not French Jews can take the day off on Yom Kippur. In early…
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Culture Recalling Guns of August and Israel
Born 100 years ago on the Olympian heights of Manhattan’s Upper East Side, her uncle, Henry Morgenthau, served as Franklin Roosevelt’s secretary of the Treasury, while her father, Maurice Wertheim, a successful investment banker, was on the War Production Board. Barbara Tuchman’s professional destiny seemed tied even as a toddler to the event that launched…
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Opinion When History Is Closed for Debate
The spirit of the holiday season has just swept across the French National Assembly. On December 22, the nation’s representatives — or, more accurately, the handful in attendance — passed a bill that would criminalize the denial of the Turkish massacre of the Armenians in 1915. It was as much a gift to the government…
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