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 Man Who Made Those Viral Sweaters Has One For Every Jewish Holiday
Sam Barsky came to knitting by chance, perhaps a divine one: it was 1999, he’d recently dropped out of nursing school due to medical issues, and he was searching for a new purpose. He came across a yarn shop, fulfilled a longtime dream of taking an introductory knitting class, and, well, followed that thread. (Sorry.)…
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Fast Forward Hanover Museum To Return Watercolor to Holocaust Victim’s Heirs
Following a ruling by the German commission devoted to restitution of Nazi-looted art, Hanover’s Sprengel Museum will return a German Expressionist watercolor to the heirs of its former owner, Max Rüdenberg. As ArtForum reported, the painting — Karl Schmidt-Rottluff’s “Marsh Landscape with Red Windmill,” completed in 1922 — was donated to the museum by German…
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Culture ‘Night,’ Elie Wiesel’s Masterpiece, To Receive Star-Studded Live Reading
“If in my lifetime I was to write only one book, this would be the one,” Elie Wiesel wrote in a preface to his wife Marion’s 2012 translation of his Holocaust memoir “Night.” Now, six months after his death, New York’s Museum of Jewish Heritage and the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene will pay tribute to…
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Culture 17 Surefire Pop Culture Predictions for 2017
A review of our pop culture predictions for 2016 reveals that exactly one was right: Woody Allen did produce a movie that concerned, at least partially, a sexually insecure middle-aged white man. (Here’s looking at you, “Café Society.”) We are sadly still waiting for Seth Rogen to produce “Jack Black’s Mikveh Spectacular.” Seriously, Seth, you…
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Culture Meet the Jewish Woman Who Helped Lay the Groundwork for Planned Parenthood
Four years before women won the right to vote in the United States, Margaret Sanger — the future founder of Planned Parenthood — and her sister, Ethel Byrne, met a young Jewish immigrant named Fania Mindell. On October 16, 1919, the trio opened the country’s first birth control clinic, located in a tenement in Brownsville,…
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Culture Barbra Streisand in LA, and 5 More Things to Read, Watch, and Do This Weekend
2017 is fresh, new, and already bringing deaths of beloved public figures – rest in peace, John Berger – extreme political controversy, and simultaneously hilarious and disheartening memes. Never fear; it’s too early to call the year “2016, Part 2,” and there’s enough exciting art, theater, and literature appearing this weekend to cheer even the…
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The Schmooze 6 Things to Know About 20-Year-Old Golden Globe Nominee Hailee Steinfeld
We have a lot of questions about the 2017 Golden Globes, presented this coming Sunday. Will Natalie Portman win Best Actress in a Drama for her performance in “Jackie?” How will the ceremony honor stars lost this past year, from Gene Wilder to Carrie Fisher? And perhaps most excitingly, will Hailee Steinfeld win Best Actress…
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Culture ‘Hester Street,’ Film Based on Abraham Cahan Novel, Set for Theatrical Adaptation
Forward founding editor Abraham Cahan’s 1896 novel about the immigrant experience, “Yekl,” is set for a new adaptation. The book was brought into the late 20th century by the 1975 film “Hester Street,” which made a star out of Carol Kane; now, playwright Sharyn Rothstein will adapt that film for the stage. As The New…
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Culture How a son of Holocaust survivors joined a commune and helped to free ‘Hurricane’ Carter
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