Benjamin Ivry is a frequent Forward contributor.
Benjamin Ivry
By Benjamin Ivry
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The Schmooze Hanna Maron: Mother Courage of the Israeli Stage
The widely reported demise of the last Ziegfeld girl, Doris Eaton Travis, sent entertainment historians rushing to the dwindling list of surviving silent film actors, of whom the late Ms. Travis was one. Another name on that list ranks as a survivor on more than one account: the beloved Israeli actress Hanna Maron. Born Hanna…
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The Schmooze From Feet to Flowers: The Artistic Trajectory of Jonathan Singer
How did a nice Jewish podiatrist from Bayonne, New Jersey become an internationally famous glamor photographer of flowers? That question may be mulled over by visitors to the exhibit of photos by Jonathan Singer, which opened May 14 and runs until June 4 at the Legends Gallery in Chatham, New Jersey. Last year Abbeville Press…
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The Schmooze The Joys of Pan-Mizrahi Music
Whatever naysayers may claim, Middle Eastern people (and others) delight in Middle Eastern-sounding music. This is one thesis behind a sympathetic new study from Wayne State University Press, “Mediterranean Israeli Music and the Politics of the Aesthetic” by Amy Horowitz. From the 1950s to the 1990s, Horowitz explains, North African and Middle Eastern immigrants to…
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The Schmooze Old Jewish Divas and Some Casting Advice for Dustin Hoffman
Yesterday’s announcement that 43 years after playing a quintessentially confused Jewish college graduate, Dustin Hoffman plans to make his directorial debut, may raise some eyebrows. Hoffman has chosen to adapt “Quartet,” a 1999 play by Cape Town-born Jewish playwright Ronald Harwood (né Horwitz). In the bittersweet “Quartet,” ancient opera singers in a retirement home lip…
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The Schmooze Uncarnal Love: Fictionalizing French Socialist Léon Blum
Ilan Greilsammer, who teaches political science and French culture at Bar-Ilan University, is the author of a 1996 biography from Les Éditions Flammarion of the French Jewish Socialist leader Léon Blum, as well as a 1998 “New History of Israel” (Gallimard). After editing Blum’s “Letters from Buchenwald” (2003; also from Gallimard), Greilsammer has just published…
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The Schmooze Chopin and Jewish Pianists: Then and Now
A revelatory May 7 Chopin recital by the noted pianist Edward Auer at New York’s Kosciuszko Foundation coincides with historic CD reissues from Sony Masterworks of Arthur Rubinstein and Vladimir Horowitz. Rivals in death as they were in life, Rubinstein (1887–1982) and Horowitz (1903 –1989) offer utterly different definitions of what it means to be…
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The Schmooze Happy Birthday Frank Kameny: A Gay Rights Pioneer Reaches 85
Things are not always easy for a nice Jewish boy from Queens who happens to be 50 years ahead of his time. On May 21, Franklin Kameny will be 85 years old. As “Leaders from the 1960s: A Biographical Sourcebook of American Activism” (Greenwood Press) explains, in 1957 Kameny, a World War II combat veteran…
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The Schmooze Adad Hannah: Questioning Photography, Video and Painting
Art lovers eager to rethink the inherent truth in the media of photography and video have until May 30 to catch “Adad Hannah: Masterpieces in Motion” at Connecticut’s Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum. Born in New York in 1971, Hannah was raised in Israel, London, and Vancouver. Based in Montreal for several years, Hannah has created…
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