Benjamin Ivry is a frequent Forward contributor.
Benjamin Ivry
By Benjamin Ivry
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The Schmooze Henry Kissinger, Mozart and Second Drafts
In a memoir of his late parents Mr. and Mrs. William F. Buckley, “Losing Mum and Pup,” newly out in paperback from Twelve Publishers, Christopher Buckley quotes from the funeral oration given by Henry Kissinger at his father’s 2008 service at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. In it, Kissinger states that the elder Buckley “wrote as Mozart…
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The Schmooze The Overachieving Family Canetti
In some Jewish families, the least admirable member may be the one who wins a Nobel Prize. This is one conclusion to be drawn from the recent publication by Other Press of “Dearest Georg: Love, Literature, and Power in Dark Times; The Letters of Elias, Veza, and Georges Canetti, 1933-1948.” The Bulgarian-born Sephardic Jewish author…
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The Schmooze Adolf Busch: A Righteous Musician Among the Nations
Next month, Toccata Press publishes “Adolf Busch: The Life of an Honest Musician” by Tully Potter, and for once a biography’s title under-hypes its subject. Recent CD reprints from Music & Arts, along with exemplary EMI recordings of Bach, Beethoven, Schubert and Mendelssohn show the violinist and composer to be a great musician indeed. Busch’s…
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The Schmooze French Jewish Director Jean-Pierre Mocky Mocks On
The French Jewish film director Jean-Pierre Mocky exemplifies the bitterness at the heart of many highly original comedic talents. Delightful comic actors from Bourvil to Michel Serrault enjoyed long, if quirky, professional associations with Mocky, whose career as an actor and director has been as stormy as the best of his films. Born Jean-Paul Adam…
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The Schmooze Patrick Modiano: Writing and Rewriting Recent Jewish History
On June 9, French novelist Patrick Modiano will receive a prestigious literary prize from the Fondation Simone et Cino del Duca, previously given to Jean Anouilh, Jorge Luis Borges, and Milan Kundera. Modiano, born in 1945, is the son of Albert Modiano, an Italian Jew with roots in Salonica, who survived the war as a…
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The Schmooze Nikolaus Pevsner: The ‘Herr Professor-Doktor’ of British Architecture
Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, a German-born Jew, became one of the pillars of British academia as a highly respected architectural historian. After relocating to London in 1933, he was eventually knighted in recognition of his monumental 46-volume series of county-by-county guides, “The Buildings of England” (1951–74). So the announcement in a new biography by Stephen Games,…
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The Schmooze Naïm Kattan: an Iraqi Jewish Writer in Canada
An acclaimed master of the French Canadian literary scene, novelist and essayist Naïm Kattan also offers readers a unique Iraqi Jewish viewpoint. In English, Kattan is mostly known as the author of “Farewell, Babylon: Coming of Age in Jewish Baghdad,” a justly praised memoir from David R. Godine. Unfortunately, few of his dozens of other…
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Books South Carolina’s Franklin J. Moses: Scalawag, But No Paskudnyak?
A scalawag may be a nogoodnik or even a paskudnyak, but in the subtitle of Benjamin Ginsberg’s brisk, informed “Moses of South Carolina: A Jewish Scalawag during Radical Reconstruction” from Johns Hopkins University Press, “scalawag” has a more precise historical meaning. Applied after the Civil War to Southern whites who joined political forces with freed…
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