Benjamin Ivry is a frequent Forward contributor.
Benjamin Ivry
By Benjamin Ivry
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The Schmooze Rediscovering Free-spirited Photographers Lillian Bassman and Paul Himmel
At 92, Brooklyn-born Lillian Bassman and her husband Paul Himmel, who died last year at age 94, are enjoying remarkable, if belated, fame. “Lillian Bassman: Women,” a lavish new volume by Deborah Solomon, highlights Bassman’s elegantly abstract black-and-white fashion photographs from the 1940s through the 1960s for magazines like Harper’s Bazaar. Solomon also notes the…
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The Schmooze Pianist Maurizio Pollini: Perpetuating Kabbalah-based Inspiration?
An all-Chopin recital April 18 at Carnegie Hall by the Italian pianist Maurizio Pollini, who gives further performances of the same composer’s music on April 29 and May 9, contained spiritual, even mystical, depth. Chopin is not often considered the most metaphysical of composers; the Hungarian Jewish pianist András Schiff, himself a majestic Chopin interpreter,…
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The Schmooze 19th Century Jewish Soldiers Remembered
European publishers are reminding readers about Jewish soldiers who volunteered for battle. Paris’s Éditions Autrement recently published the memoir, “Jakob Meyer: Soldier for Napoleon, 1808-1813” (Jakob Meyer, Soldat de Napoléon) about a Göttingen resident who felt gratitude to Napoléon for founding the Kingdom of Westphalia in parts of present-day Germany, in which Jews gained residential…
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Culture Finding Rabbis and Wandering Jews
In the 19th century, realist authors like Emile Zola and Anatole France were widely worshipped, but literary Symbolism, with its rejection of everyday realism, and prizing of spirituality, also attracted many European Jewish writers. Particularly in France, there appeared a wave of Jewish Symbolists who had social and political activism that was allied with dreamlike…
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The Schmooze All His Races: Jewish Driving Superstar Sir Stirling Moss
Having recently, at the age of 80, survived a three-story fall down the lift shaft of his Mayfair home, Sir Stirling Moss will be around to publicize his new autobiography “All My Races.” The authorized biography of this legendary racing driver (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2002) explains how Moss was born in London in 1929 to…
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Books The Apotheosis of Treyf
Although indisputably treyf, ham is sometimes addressed humorously, as in spoofs from the satirical “Onion” or “A Jew Touches Ham,” a new micro-short film by Jewish comedian Aaron Glaser. Then there is “faux ham” proffered by PETA or an ostensibly kosher “Christmas Ham-flavored soda” manufactured in Seattle a few seasons back. Decades ago, scientists unsuccessfully…
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The Schmooze Printing Early Yiddish Books: Jean Baumgarten Explains it All
The fascination with the early years of Yiddish literature continues apace. Historian Jean Baumgarten of France’s CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research), author of an acclaimed Introduction to Old Yiddish Literature (Oxford University Press, 2005) has published a new study whose lengthy title — Le Peuple des livres: Les ouvrages populaires dans la société ashkénaze….
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The Schmooze Artur Schnabel: Great Pianist, Biting Wit
Artur Schnabel (1882 –1951) is universally recognized as the one of the finest 20th century musicians, expressing uncommon emotional depth and spirituality as a pianist. (One teacher famously told him: “You will never be a pianist. You are a musician.”) Born the son of a Jewish textile merchant in Lipnik, Moravia (then part of Austria),…
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