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 Roz Chast Loves Everything About Manhattan — Even The Cockroaches
As Roz Chast informs readers in her new book, “Going Into Town: A Love Letter To New York,” from Bloomsbury USA, grilled cheese is a blissfully safe food to eat in the gustatory wilds of Manhattan. That, and eggs: “YOU CANNOT GO TOO WRONG,” she writes. The instruction’s uncontained maternal anxiety is charming; “Going Into…
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Culture A Gloria Steinem Biopic Is Coming, Thanks To Julie Taymor And Sarah Ruhl
Gloria Steinem, author and feminist activist, has done quite a bit for women. Now, a Jewish woman will bring her story to the big screen. Tony Award-winning director Julie Taymor, mastermind of the acclaimed Broadway adaptation of “The Lion King,” will direct an adaptation of Steinem’s 2015 memoir “My Life on the Road” for June…
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Culture In ‘The Treasurer,’ A Young Jewish Playwright Takes On A Foreign Concept: Hell
Some arrangements seem unchangeable: Life ends in death, children — however reluctantly — love their parents, Jews don’t believe in hell. Not so in Max Posner’s new play “The Treasurer,” which opened at Playwrights Horizons this week. The title refers to a character known as The Son, who takes charge of his mother’s finances after…
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Culture New York Values Run Amuck: Ex-Socialists Teach Dogs Commands In Yiddish
There are certain objects and behaviors that are unquestionable hallmarks of New York: bagels with smoked fish, ill-disguised fury at tourists who walk too slowly, humans dressed as Elmo accosting the unwitting in Times Square. But for those like Ted Cruz, who in a long-past era — could it be possible I’m remembering it with…
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Culture Adam Gopnik Takes On Two Great Taboos: Ambition, And Sex With His Wife
If you are a recent New York transplant who has found yourself possessed with longing for a time when the city must have felt more authentic, when you might have wandered the streets with great minds, shopped in distinctive stores, and felt exalted feelings, Adam Gopnik has a cure. Two words: Rodents and insects. “All…
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Culture How Modigliani’s Jewishness Informed His Art
In the first room of the Jewish Museum’s new exhibit “Modigliani Unmasked,” a case displays two issues of La Libre Parole, the early-20th century French anti-Semitic newspaper founded by Édouard Drumont. The covers of both feature caricatures of Jewish men, their features overblown and bulbous. Hung on a nearby wall is Modigliani’s 1908 painting “The…
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Culture What Jews Can Learn From ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’
When Margaret Atwood published “The Handmaid’s Tale” in 1984, the dystopian genre in literature was about to change. The books that had defined it, including Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” and George Orwell’s “1984,” had been preoccupied with the threat of socialist totalitarianism. Atwood wrote “The Handmaid’s Tale” in West Berlin, in the shadow of…
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Culture Paul Auster Snags Spot On Man Booker Prize Shortlist
Paul Auster’s novel “4 3 2 1” has earned a spot on the 2017 Man Booker Prize shortlist. It is one of six novels named to be a finalist for the prestigious literary prize. Also on the shortlist are Mohsin Hamid’s “Exit West,” Fiona Mozley’s “Elmet,” George Saunders’s “Lincoln in the Bardo,” Ali Smith’s “Autumn,”…
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