Benjamin Ivry is a frequent Forward contributor.
Benjamin Ivry
By Benjamin Ivry
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Culture Camondo Splendor
The fate of the Camondo family illustrates just how perilous it can be to be generous to the people of France. An exemplary exhibit, The Splendour of the House of Camondo: From Constantinople to Paris, 1806–1845, which opened November 6, 2009, at Paris’s Musée d’art et d’histoire du Judaïsme (Museum of Jewish Art and History)…
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Culture Paul Celan’s Letters
Biographers have a vested interest in hyping their subjects, but when Paul Celan’s biographer, John Felstiner, calls the latter “Europe’s most compelling postwar poet,” surely few can argue. Like most books on the Romanian Celan, Festiner’s “Paul Celan: Poet, Survivor, Jew” (Yale University Press, 2001) underlines how his wartime experience in a forced-labor camp (while…
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The Schmooze Masterworks and Kitsch: Russian Jewish Artists Ill-Served in San Diego
Discerning lovers of Jewish art have until January 17, 2010 to see the exhibit “American Artists from the Russian Empire” which opened in October at the San Diego Museum of Art. They will need to be discerning, because although the exhibit features major works of interest by Ben Shahn, Louise Nevelson and Mark Rothko, greeting–card…
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Culture Engraved on the Unconscious: French Historian Élisabeth Roudinesco on Antisemitism
On a subject where hysteria often seems to reign, a brilliant, well thought-out and balanced new book like “Return to the Jewish Question” (Retour sur la question juive) by the French historian and psychoanalyst Élisabeth Roudinesco is a treasure which urgently deserves translation into English. Now 65, Roudinesco, niece of the noted French Jewish feminist…
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Culture Defying Threats and Madoff, the AICF Marches On
Visitors to the America-Israel Cultural Foundation website see bad news and good in anticipation of this year’s gala fundraiser January 10th at Carnegie Hall. The bad news, announced in a banner: “Unfortunately, the bulk of AICF’s endowments were invested with Bernard L. Madoff Securities.” The good news, AICF is one of the few charities to…
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Culture The Midas Touch of Hungarian-Jewish architect Ernö Goldfinger
Long derided as a creator of “Brutalist” architecture, the Budapest-born Ernö Goldfinger in 1902 has more recently won respect and even admiration, as two London local councils opted in November 2009 to preserve the low-lying buildings which he designed near his landmark high-rise social housing Trellick Tower itself now a “listed building” of special significance….
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Life Duff Goldman: Ace or Not, a Jewish Baker of Cakes
Devotees of the mouth-watering recipes for rugelach, babka, and kichel in “The Jewish Holiday Baker” (Schocken, 1997) by the eminent Joan Nathan may be reluctant to associate Jewish tradition with the toy-like, fondant-covered cake-objects produced mainly to amuse the eye by Duff Goldman’s Baltimore-based Charm City Cakes, the home of a Food Network series “Ace…
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Life Gershwinning on All Fronts: An American Jewish Lyricist in Excelsis
The distressing news about a battle over royalties between George and Ira Gershwin’s heirs coincides with a no less unexpected report that Beach Boy Brian Wilson has been allowed by the Gershwin Estate to complete songs left unfinished by George when he died of a brain tumor at age 38 in 1937. Ira, who survived…
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