Benjamin Ivry is a frequent Forward contributor.
Benjamin Ivry
By Benjamin Ivry
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The Schmooze Jews and Bulls: A French Philosopher Defends the Corrida
When Jews try to fight bulls, the results can end in tears, but the simple desire to watch bullfights has a more ambiguous outcome, as proven by the latest book by the French Jewish philosopher Francis Wolff. An author of academic works on Aristotle and Socrates who teaches in Paris, Wolff should not be confused…
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The Schmooze Remembering Czernowitz
The far-flung commemorations of the centenary of the 1908 Yiddish language conference in Czernowitz, including a conference in December, 2009 at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, continue to have repercussions today. The recent essay collection from Lexington Books, “Czernowitz at 100: The First Yiddish Language Conference in Historical Perspective” edited by Joshua Fogel and Kalman…
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The Schmooze Barak Marshall’s Dynamic Dance Mongering
Dance talent is not often inherited through the generations, as we have seen with the regularly slated reconstructions of works by ballet master Michel Fokine, when recreated by his French granddaughter Isabelle. One happy exception to this rule is Los Angeles-born choreographer Barak Marshall, son of the acclaimed Yemenite Israeli dancer, choreographer and musician Margalit…
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The Schmooze Sylvain Lévi: A Man Not For All Seasons?
Some heroes of Jewish history are better known for their deeds than for their personalities, like Sylvain Lévi, president of the Alliance israélite universelle until his death in 1935. A great expert on Eastern religion, literature and history, who co-authored a dictionary of Buddhism and taught Sanskrit at the Sorbonne, Lévi has been little remembered…
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The Schmooze Robert Badinter, Defender of Life and Liberty
Few CD companies might be expected to issue a four disc set of 30-year-old political speeches, but this is just what the enterprising small label Frémeaux & Associés has done with Robert Badinter’s 1981 French National Assembly oratory. Badinter, who appeared in the 2007 documentary “Being Jewish in France,” was Justice Minister in 1981, when…
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The Schmooze Are Jewish Film Festivals in Trouble?
As reported earlier this year, Berlin’s Jewish Film Festival, Germany’s only such gathering, may be shutting its doors due to funding cuts from the local government. Is Jewish culture now so well-loved and understood in Berlin that such a festival is no longer needed? On the contrary, the London-born Berlin festival director Nicola Galliner told…
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Culture A Perennial Wunderkind
Despite his mastery of the weary insomniac tone, Harold Bloom, who turns 80 on July 11, has enjoyed, and continues to enjoy, youthful intellectual vigor as master of the intellectual zetz (wallop, in Bloom’s native Yiddish). Born in the East Bronx to an Odessa-born garment worker and a housewife who emigrated from near Brest-Litovsk, Bloom…
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The Schmooze Boris Cyrulnik and the Art of Creative Disobedience
Born in 1937, the French neuropsychiatrist Boris Cyrulnik has long been a media darling for his insights into such varied subjects as workplace violence, the wonders of nature, and scientific/technological progress in general. Although Cyrulnik’s public advice is sometimes leavened with lighthearted whimsy, his utterly serious understanding of the importance of psychological resilience, or surviving…
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