Benjamin Ivry is a frequent Forward contributor.
Benjamin Ivry
By Benjamin Ivry
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The Schmooze Mordecai Richler: Canada’s Firebrand in Fiction
The Canadian Jewish novelist and gadfly Mordecai Richler, who died in 2001, was renowned internationally for books such as “The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz,” “The Street,” “Solomon Gursky Was Here,” and an anthology, “Writers On World War II,” all available from Penguin Canada. Yet Richler’s fiercely outspoken personality seems to fascinate posterity as much as…
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The Schmooze When Saul Became Paul
Saul of Tarsus, a first century Pharisee, supposedly came to believe in Jesus while traveling to Damascus. Changing his name to Paul, he expressed “unparalleled animosity and hostility to Judaism,” according to the 1906 Jewish Encyclopaedia, which scorns him, like many other sources, as an apostate. Yet today, Rabbi Nancy Fuchs-Kreimer of Pennsylvania’s Reconstructionist Rabbinical…
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The Schmooze Stefan Zweig: Literary Saint or Suicidal Schmendrik?
Almost 70 years after committing suicide in Brazil in 1942, the Austrian Jewish writer Stefan Zweig still divides readers. Laurence Mintz, in a preface to the reprint of Zweig’s “Balzac, Dickens, Dostoevsky: Master Builders of the Spirit” from Transaction Publishers, points to how Zweig’s suicide, in safety and comfort, seemed a cop-out to many émigré…
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The Schmooze Zita Carno: Defender of Free Jazz, Modern Music and Baseball
This August in Atlanta, when the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) convenes, one of the attendees will be one of America’s most accomplished, if under-celebrated, Jewish musicians. For many years, the pianist Zita Carno (originally Carnovsky) has delighted music lovers with heartfelt and elegant performances of demanding modern music, first in New York, then…
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The Schmooze Reconciling Enemies: Jazz Sax and Flute Player Lew Tabackin
Veteran sax and flute player Lew Tabackin, a product of South Philadelphia, is one of the “Jazz Jews” discussed in Mike Gerber’s new book of that name. Tabackin performs in a quartet with his wife, the noted pianist Toshiko Akiyoshi, and will appear from June 29 to July 3 at Birdland. Though Tabackin did not…
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The Schmooze Where Is the Next Great Child Composer?
Asked to name a Jewish child prodigy composer, most people would think of Felix Mendelssohn or perhaps even Felix’s sister Fanny. Yet a fascinating study from Scarecrow Press, “Child Composers and Their Works: A Historical Survey” by Manchester University musicologist Barry Cooper, argues that we should also think of the Swiss Jewish composer Ernest Bloch…
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The Schmooze Gustav Metzger: Staving Off Humanity’s Self-Destruction
The doughty old UK counter-culture artist and agitator Gustav Metzger is more active than ever. Last year’s exhibit, “Gustav Metzger: Decades 1959–2009,” at London’s Serpentine Gallery recently traveled to west-central France, where it was seen from March 10 to June 15 at Rochechouart’s Musée départemental d’art contemporain. Its next scheduled stop is in northern Italy,…
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The Schmooze Old Jews Not Telling Jokes
After the website and DVD “Old Jews Telling Jokes,” it can be a relief to find Jewish elders who are not trying to be adorable or cutesy. The publisher S. Fischer Verlag in Frankfurt, Germany has reprinted 1989’s “Jüdische Portraits” (“Jewish Portraits”), 80 interviews and accompanying photographs by Herlinde Koelbl, to go along with an…
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