Talya Zax is the Forward’s opinion editor. Contact her at zax@forward.com or on Twitter, @TalyaZax.
Talya ZaxOpinion Editor
By Talya Zax
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Culture The extraordinary artistic devotion of Ida Haendel
She was never quite as famous as the men: Itzhak Perlman, Joshua Bell, Jascha Heifetz. But if you heard Ida Haendel play violin once, you knew her tone anywhere: the shuddery, overwhelming pointedness she gave to any piece of music. Her music was beautiful, and unsparing. If you didn’t want to weep, you were better…
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Culture The JCC theater camp director who changed my life
There I was: 10 years old, tiny, squeaky, with a mediocre haircut and crooked teeth, delivering a Shakespearean monologue on the big stage at the Denver, Colorado JCC. I was playing Nick Bottom in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” It was a big character, and a big challenge for me, congenitally shy as I was. But…
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Culture Milton Glaser loved New York — and was its greatest observer
If you’ve ever lived in New York City — or set foot in it, or talked to someone about it, or watched one of the approximately three billion films about it — you know it has a complicated relationship with its past. On the one hand, there’s a sort of maniacal drive to the future…
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Culture Amid battle over St. Louis’s name, Archdiocese defends saint who persecuted Jews, Muslims
Weeks after activists in St. Louis, Missouri began calling for the city to tear down the most notable statue of its namesake — and rename itself — the local Archdiocese has come out in defense of the embattled 13th-century saint. King Louis IX, the only French king ever to be canonized, routinely persecuted French Jews…
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Culture St. Louis was named after an anti-Semitic crusader. Should its name be changed?
Some time after King Louis IX returned to France from his first Crusade in 1254, an anonymous French Jew wrote a letter to the king, who would become the only French monarch to ever be canonized in the Catholic Church. The letter, which was never sent, outlined the painful impact of a series of official…
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Culture Can Jewish schools meet the challenge of Black Lives Matter?
Editor’s note: In observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the Forward is resurfacing some of our recent coverage related to the Black-Jewish experience and racial justice. Barthelemy Atsin had his first encounter with the police when he was 13 years old: They pulled over as he walked down a street with friends, and subjected…
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Culture Abolishing the police is a radical idea — that’s been around for over a century
In 1905, Pennsylvania did something unprecedented: It founded America’s first state police force. The new institution, which was more highly militarized than previous law enforcement systems, was created for one reason: The state government wanted a more organized and efficient way to break strikes. The new force approached that mission with zeal — and violence….
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Culture Trump’s church photo has no American precedent. Does it have one in fascism?
It was the photo op that transfixed the nation. Early Monday evening, President Trump, accompanied by a small cadre of staff and press, marched from the White House through Lafayette Square to St. John’s Episcopal church, where every president since James Madison has attended services. He had just given a speech threatening to use the…
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