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 65 Years Ago, The USSR Murdered Its Greatest Jewish Poets. What’s Left Of Their Legacy?
For nearly four decades, no one knew exactly how many Soviet Jews were secretly executed by the Soviet Union in the basement of Moscow’s Lubyanka Prison on August 12, 1952. A 1970 New York Times report on the fate of Yiddish in the USSR claimed the victims numbered around 30. A 1972 volume commemorating the…
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The Schmooze A Broadway Extravaganza And More To Read, Watch And Do This Weekend
Welcome to your weekend! You may be tempted to spend it panicking over potential war with North Korea, but let’s face it: There’s not a ton you can do about that. Instead, enjoy summer before it turns into nuclear winter — gulp — with the Forward’s best weekend culture picks. 1) New York City Broadway…
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Music When Shostakovich Wrote ‘From Jewish Folk Poetry’ And Pissed Off Stalin
The 20th-century Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich might be best known for his conflicted but patriotic symphonies, his daring operas, including two takes on Nikolai Leskov’s novella “Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District,” or the extent to which, decades after his death on this day in 1975, no one can say authoritatively whether his music was…
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Culture How Does Robert Pinsky Pen A Protest Poem?
Former Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky’s poem “Exile and Lightning” made an impact when he read it at a PEN America Writers Resist event in January. In front of a crowd that included cultural figures like Masha Gessen, Art Spiegelman, and Amy Goodman, Pinsky issued a striking reflection on the contemporary urgency of historic thought. “Now,…
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The Schmooze Amy Schumer To Make Broadway Debut — In A Steve Martin Play
Controversial comic superstar Amy Schumer will, come November, make her first appearance on the Great White Way. Schumer, who rose to fame through her Comedy Central series “Inside Amy Schumer” and recently starred in the critical flop “Snatched” alongside Goldie Hawn, will be appearing in Steve Martin’s marital comedy “Meteor Shower,” The New York Times…
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Culture Does Stephen Miller Really Want To Take On Emma Lazarus?
Stephen Miller, the white nationalist aide to President Trump took on a somewhat strange new enemy yesterday: Emma Lazarus. Lazarus, a relative of the United States’s first Jewish settler, wrote the poem “The New Colossus” to raise funds for the base of the Statue of Liberty in 1883. That poem, most famous for the lines…
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Culture Judith Jones, Editor Who Discovered Anne Frank’s Diary, Dies At 93
Judith Jones, the renowned cookbook editor who, early in her career, led the charge for “The Diary of Anne Frank” to be published in English, died yesterday at age 93. Jones, born as Judith Bailey, came upon Frank’s manuscript in a pile of rejected submissions while working as an office assistant at Doubleday in Paris…
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Culture PETA Gave Isaac Bashevis Singer An Incredibly Bizarre Posthumous Award
PETA chose what some may consider a strange way to honor the legacy of both the famed Yiddish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer and the Warsaw Uprising, organizing a lunch, hosted by the Polish supermodel Joanna Krupa, at which they awarded Singer a posthumous PETA “Hero to Animals Award.” A PETA press release praised Singer for…
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