Benjamin Ivry is a frequent Forward contributor.
Benjamin Ivry
By Benjamin Ivry
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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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News A Romanian Jewish Writer Rediscovered
The mission of any historical museum is to recuperate what might be lost or forgotten by posterity, and Paris?s Shoah Memorial, which bills itself as a ?research, information, and awareness-raising center,? succeeds brilliantly with a new exhibit about Romanian-French poet, critic and filmmaker Benjamin Fondane. An eponymous exhibit about Fondane, Benjamin Fondane, which opened on…
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Culture Greek Jews Remembered: Resilient, Passionate, Variegated
The history of Greek Jews is dizzyingly complex. Comprising both the Greek-speaking Romaniotes and the exiled Sephardim of Thessaloniki, some of whom spoke Ladino, the differing cultures are expertly distinguished in K. E. Fleming’s “Greece: A Jewish History” (Princeton University Press) of which a paperback edition is due this spring, and Steven Bowman’s new “The…
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Culture A Painter of Rabbinic Primal Screams: Boston Expressionist Hyman Bloom
Art lovers have until January 24 to catch a compelling exhibit at the Yeshiva University Museum, “Hyman Bloom: A Spiritual Embrace.” Originating at Massachusetts’s Danforth Museum of Art the show focuses on Bloom, one of the key Boston Expressionists examined in “Boston Modern: Figurative Expressionism as Alternative Modernism” by Judith Bookbinder (University of New Hampshire…
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