Benjamin Ivry is a frequent Forward contributor.
Benjamin Ivry
By Benjamin Ivry
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The Schmooze From the Tribe of Prophets: Swiss Jewish Philosopher Jeanne Hersch at 100
Although her centenary is not until July 13, the Swiss Jewish philosopher Jeanne Hersch (1910-2000) is already being remembered as a gimlet-eyed defender of freedom. Born in Geneva to a Polish Jewish statistics professor and his doctor wife, Hersch studied with the philosopher Karl Jaspers, whose career suffered in Germany after 1933 because his own…
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The Schmooze Nazis, Mendelssohns and Music: The Mendelssohn Mishpocha on Surviving Felix
“Mendelssohn, the Nazis and Me,” a recent DVD release from Kultur International Films, reproduces a 2009 BBC TV film by UK-born writer Sheila Hayman about her eminent ancestor, the composer Felix Mendelssohn. The multi-talented Hayman is author of previous light-hearted novels and documentary scripts about robots, abortions in China, car design and other eclectic subjects….
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Books The DisUnited States: Vladimir Pozner’s 1930s America
When times are tough for capitalists, Marxists love to gloat. That is the conclusion to be drawn from an account of Depression-era America, “Les États-Désunis” (“The DisUnited States”), newly reprinted by Lux Editions in Montreal. Its author, the prolific Russian Jewish writer Vladimir Salomonovitch Pozner (1905-1992), a friend of Isaac Babel who was long resident…
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The Schmooze Heard Fresh: Innovative Jazz Pianist Fred Hersch
The Cincinnati-born Jewish jazz pianist Fred Hersch, who will be giving a much-anticipated solo concert on March 31 at New York’s Weill Recital Hall, has been scaling barriers for decades. One of the few openly gay musicians in the surprisingly closeted and macho world of jazz, Hersch has also been HIV-positive since 1986, conquering many…
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The Schmooze Music and Philosophy at a Private Concert Hosted by George Soros
Philosophy is what matters most to George Soros, I learned the other day after an elegant party at Soros’s duplex Manhattan apartment (I was invited by a mutual friend) celebrating the latest recording of Bartók by Angela & Jennifer Chun, a Korean-born sister team of violinists. I shared a cab on the way home with…
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Culture Jules Feiffer: A Permanently Enraged Jewish Cartoonist
Backing Into Forward: A Memoir By Jules Feiffer Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 464 pages, $30 At 81, legendary Bronx-born cartoonist Jules Feiffer has accumulated a lifetime of slights, snubs and insults, and he expresses his anger about them all in his recently published autobiography, “Backing Into Forward: A Memoir.” Author of the noir play “Little Murders”…
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Books Yiddish on the Psychoanalyst’s Couch: USA vs. France
In the English-speaking world, psychoanalyzing Yiddish, and the way it is spoken, is often done with a dollop of humor, as in “Born To Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in All Its Moods” by Michael Wex, appreciatively reviewed by the Forward. French Jews, on the other hand tend to approach the subject comparatively soberly, as…
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Books The Susan Sontag of the Venetian Ghetto: Sarra Copia Sulam
According to Don Harrán, Sarra Copia Sulam was the first Italian Jewish woman to “excel” as a public literary figure, writing in various forms and leaving a “personal imprint on them.” She was a kind of Susan Sontag of the Venetian Ghetto. Sulam was also prominent because of her beauty and wealth (her husband was…
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