Robert Zaretsky

Robert Zaretsky is professor of history in the Honors College, University of Houston, and is a contributor to The Occupy Handbook, to be published next month by Little, Brown.

La Différence
While American Jews cultivate a hyphenated identity, French Jews like to make themselves wholly French. Do we still share a cultural language?
byRobert Zaretsky
Out of Tune
A Hamas official’s visit to Tunisia prompts an anti-Semitic demonstration—and soul-searching about the treatment of Jews in North Africa
byRobert Zaretsky
Dissolution
My life as an accidental Holocaust expert—and why I decided to quit
byRobert Zaretsky
Send the Marine: The Rise of France’s Far-Right Front National party
France’s far-right Front National party, under leader Marine Le Pen, is shedding its history of anti-Semitism and becoming popular with Jewish voters
byRobert Zaretsky
Camus the Jew
Albert Camus, who died an atheist at 46, had surprisingly deep ties to Judaism in his life, his political activity, and his philosophical thought
byRobert Zaretsky
Occupy Paris
The economic and social upheavals that rocked France and its Jewish prime minister 75 years ago bear an uncanny resemblance to Occupy Wall Street
byRobert Zaretsky
Mind Games
French Jews, confronting anti-Semitism in the wake of the Dreyfus Affair, created the figure of the intellectual. And now, arguing about Israel and Islam, they’re killing it.
byRobert Zaretsky
Disorderly Conduct
The writer and critic Bernard Lazare, Dreyfus’ earliest defender, wed Zionism and anarchism to become one of France’s most famous polemicists and a political clairvoyant
byRobert Zaretsky
Force of Life
As the great French intellectual Simone Weil understood, modern life is all about work and war. Memorial Day and Labor Day, then, are perfect opportunities to take stock of our modern condition.
byRobert Zaretsky