Benjamin Ivry is a frequent Forward contributor.
Benjamin Ivry
By Benjamin Ivry
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The Schmooze Wait ‘Till the Sun Shines, Nelly Sachs
Anyone traveling through Germany this month has until June 27 to see a landmark exhibit at the Jewish Museum Berlin, “Flight and Metamorphosis: Nelly Sachs, Writer, Berlin/Stockholm.” The exhibit, which opened March 25, pays homage to Nelly Sachs, the only German-language poet ever given the Nobel Prize. In 1966, Sachs shared the Nobel with Israeli…
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The Schmooze German Jewish Athletes Belatedly Recognized
As summer approaches, sports fans may worry about the progress of the Mets’ rookie first baseman Isaac Benjamin “Ike” Davis, of Lithuanian Jewish ancestry, and use Sandy Koufax’s recent White House visit to remind everyone that the “only Jewish left-hander not named Sandy Koufax to toss two no-hitters” was Ken Holtzman. The overpowering passion for…
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The Schmooze The Assaf Kehati Trio Jazzes Up The Beehive and The Blue Note
Music lovers preoccupied with the question of “whither Jewish jazz?” will want to attend the June 19 performance by the Assaf Kehati Trio at Boston’s The Beehive, in anticipation of their scheduled sets at New York’s The Blue Note on August 1. The trio consists of guitarist Assaf Kehati, an Israeli-born resident of Boston, veteran…
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The Schmooze Paul Celan’s Lover Emerges From the Shadows
The Suhrkamp Verlag series of the great Romanian-born Jewish poet Paul Celan’s letters has received worldwide attention. Among the avid readers was an 81-year-old Austrian-born historian of anthropology, Britta Rupp-Eisenreich, long resident in France, where she publishes on ethnology and related subjects. Eisenreich recently decided to speak up about her own secret nine-year love affair,…
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The Schmooze Whatever Happened to Jack Hamesh?
A new literary mystery has emerged with the publication by Suhrkamp Verlag in Germany of 11 love letters, dated 1946-47, by Jack Hamesh, a young Viennese Jewish émigré, to the noted Austrian poet Ingeborg Bachmann, who was then 18. Hamesh, born c. 1920, had fled Vienna in 1938 on one of the Kindertransport to England,…
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The Schmooze The Witty Inclemency of Clement Freud
When Sir Clement Freud died last spring in London, the U.K. media’s outpouring of affection surprised some readers. A grandson of Sigmund Freud who was no longer on speaking terms with his brother, the painter Lucian Freud, Sir Clement was a journalist, bon vivant, television personality, and onetime Member of Parliament, but none of his…
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The Schmooze Bloomsday Celebrations Worldwide
June 16th is Bloomsday, the day on which all the activities of Leopold Bloom, protagonist of James Joyce’s novel “Ulysses,” occur. Bloom, as Joyce fanatics will tell you, is the son of Rudolf Virág, a Hungarian Jew from Szombathely who changed his name to Rudolph Bloom upon immigrating to Ireland. Joyce based his portrait in…
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The Schmooze Are You Thrizzled?
If you liked Eli Valley’s Bucky Shvitz, you may soon be asking yourself: “Am I thrizzled?” Among the many innovative cartoonists published by the Seattle-based Fantagraphics Books, Michael Kupperman is surely one of the most original. Kupperman popped up a decade ago as the writer and illustrator of the offbeat “Snake ‘n’ Bacon’s Cartoon Cabaret”…
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