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 Who To Read For Women’s History Month, Part Two: Nadezhda Mandelstam
When it came to Nadezhda Mandelstam, the scholar Clarence Brown might have put it best: She was a “vinegary, Brechtian, steel-hard woman of great intelligence, limitless courage, no illusions, permanent convictions and a wild sense of the absurdity of life.” Or perhaps it was the poet Seamus Heaney, who wrote of Mandelstam’s transformation into a…
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Culture Who To Read For Women’s History Month, Part One: Tillie Olsen
Tillie Olsen can be difficult to read. The content of what she wrote isn’t the issue; her subjects could be grim, yes, but in a way that demands rather than repels attention. But Olsen’s visceral prose — her willingness to adopt a character’s perspective so fully as to surrender lucidity — can be a barrier….
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Culture A Collegial Interrogation Of Debut Novelist Andrew Ridker
Andrew Ridker was writing about Jewish novelists before he became one. I know this because we were college classmates, and I read a fair portion of Andrew’s thesis on Philip Roth. Before the close reading of “American Pastoral,” I read some of Andrew’s early poetry — more on that, later — and at least one…
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Culture Q & A: How Benjamin Dreyer’s Style Guide Ended Up An Unlikely Bestseller
In the world of nonfiction, the past year has been one of headline-making bestsellers, many of them fueled by the allure of inside gossip on President Trump. See: Michael Wolff’s “Fire and Fury,” Bob Woodward’s “Fear,” James Comey’s “A Higher Loyalty” and Omarosa Newman’s “Unhinged.” All of which made the skyrocketing sales of a style…
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Culture Mapped In Recipes, A Savage Landscape Of Jewish Hunger
A few years after I learned to read, I encountered a formative image in one of Sydney Taylor’s “All of a Kind Family” books. I remember it with absolute clarity: A daughter admires her mother’s figure, unique among the Eastern European Jewish women of the Lower East Side. They tend, she thinks, to look like…
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Film & TV ‘Green Book’ Got Racism Wrong; This 1964 Film Got It Right
You may have heard that people are upset about “Green Book” winning the 2019 Oscar for Best Movie. Or you may have seen Spike Lee, whose “BlackKklansman” was also up for the award, drain a full glass of champagne rather than respond to a question about what he thought of the film’s victory. The “Green…
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Culture The Bitter Nostalgia Of Italian Jews, Captured By A Modernist Master
Italy: We long to be there. Red stone buildings and gelato; sun-struck days and soaring basilicas. “A Room With a View.” Katharine Hepburn in “Summertime.” Audrey Hepburn, liberated and love struck in “Roman Holiday.” One of the many fascinations of Giorgio Bassani’s “The Novel of Ferrara,” a compendium of six interlinked novels examining the lives…
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Culture Inside The Mind Of Arnold Schoenberg, The Genius Who Defined 20th Century Music
What happens in the mind of a genius? Mozart’s mind was puerile; if his extraordinary sophistication with music extended to other aspects of his psyche, he didn’t show it. Van Gogh was subject to psychotic episodes, a struggle that may have impacted his work, although we can only speculate. Bits of Einstein’s brain are preserved…
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