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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Film & TV Jeff Goldblum, A Flirt And A Half, Is A Philip Roth Fan
A confession: I, due to an unexplained resistance to seeing the “Jurassic Park” movies, was until this year unaware of the existence of Jeff Goldblum. This was a mistake. Jeff Goldblum, I have learned, is the closest thing Hollywood has to a human sunbeam — see “Thor: Ragnarok,” in which he plays a dictator with…
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Music What It’s Like To Play The First Cantor In Opera History
Jews have always had a complicated relationship with opera. Ostracized in European society, Jewish composers and librettists had few chances to make professional headway; perhaps the most successful of them, Mozart collaborator Lorenzo da Ponte, converted to Christianity. The most influential late-Romantic opera composer, Richard Wagner, was a notorious anti-Semite. And prior to the mid-19th…
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The Schmooze Movie News: ‘Hereditary,’ Luchino Visconti, ‘Wonder Woman’ Sequel Spoilers
Do you like movies? You’re in the right place. Read on for the best, worst and weirdest of this week’s movie news, from new details about Gal Gadot’s second feature turn as Wonder Woman to Tiffany Haddish’s latest celebrity exploits. 1) Luchino Visconti receives a pleasantly untimely retrospective Visconti, an idiosyncratic, larger-than-life filmmaker who escaped…
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The Schmooze Memories Of Leonard Bernstein, ‘Eating Animals’ And More To Read, Watch And Do This Weekend
Dear reader, there has been quite a lot of news this week, and much of it is bad. Escape the ever-present menace of doom and disaster, and do something fun with your weekend. Read on for our recommendations for the best weekend events in New York City, Washington D.C., Chicago and Los Angeles. 1) Read…
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Culture At Historic Synagogue, A Hopeful Meditation On Loss Takes Flight
The aluminum chairs — off-kilter and whimsically rugged, as if Chagall had ventured into furniture-making — soar above the women’s balcony, held aloft by two golden birds. Sunlight, softened through stained glass, bounces off the pair’s upturned legs. The sculpture, by Kiki Smith, a renowned sculptor and printmaker, is called “Homecoming.” It’s easy to think,…
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Culture Lev Dodin, One Of Russia’s Great Directors, Confronts A Loveless World
I have been thinking, recently, about the prevalence of female suicide in literature. It started when I saw Simon Stone’s update of Federico García Lorca’s play “Yerma,” in which the unnamed main character kills herself, driven mad by her inability to conceive a child. I was troubled by the choice; in the original “Yerma,” the…
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The Schmooze Movie News: Woody Allen Tactless On #MeToo, Why Jews Didn’t Play Jews During Hollywood’s Golden Age
Greetings, movie fans! Last week saw the Forward’s culture desk unusually understaffed, and therefore, a melancholic lack of movie news. This week, to make up for the omission, we have two weeks’s worth of movie news to summarize: The good, the bad, the very strange and more. Read on. 1) Alison Klayman spoke about her…
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The Schmooze ‘Sex And The City’ At 20, Seymour Hersh’s ‘Reporter’ And More To Read, Watch And Do This Weekend
Ah, the first week of June: Roses are out, yet New Yorkers inexplicably still need to wear jackets to leave their apartments; the Tony Awards are nearly upon us; the NBA Finals are disappointingly turning into the rout we all miserably anticipated; summer, it appears, is only half-enthusiastic about making an appearance in 2018. Tough…
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