Benjamin Ivry is a frequent Forward contributor.
Benjamin Ivry
By Benjamin Ivry
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Life Kohelet à la française: French poet Charles Juliet Meditates on “Ecclesiastes”
Apart from historically being a nation of skeptics, France has been hampered in its literary appreciation of the Old Testament by the problem of translation. After a solid start in 1902 with the “Rabbinate Bible” overseen by then-Chief rabbi of France Zadoc Kahn with the assistance of such eminent 19th century scholars as Mayer Lambert…
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Culture Dizengoff and the City
An urbanist discourse is alive and well in Israel, as evidenced by the cultural critic Tamar Berger, who studies Israeli — especially Tel Aviv — space in her acclaimed book “Dionysus at Dizengoff Center” (1998), newly translated into French as “Place Dizengoff” by Actes Sud Publishers by the remarkable Turkish-born writer Rosie Pinhas-Delpuech and long…
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Life Zamenhof Days: December 15 and the Polish Jewish inventor of Esperanto
What are you doing on Zamenhof Day? To the uninitiated, that means December 15, the birthday of Ludwik Łazarz Zamenhof (born Eliezer Samenhof in 1859) a Polish Jewish ophthalmologist and inventor of Esperanto, the most popular constructed language ever. Although opinions differ widely on how many people actually speak it today Wikipedia quotes the Universal…
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Culture ‘Alas, Poor Andrzej’: The Strange Case of Tchaikowsky’s Skull
The admission by London’s Royal Shakespeare Company that, despite previous disavowals, a production of “Hamlet” featured not only Dr Who actor David Tennant, but also a real human skull onstage — as Hamlet’s deceased friend the jester Yorick — brings the donor of that skull back into the limelight. The Polish-Jewish pianist Andrzej Czajkowski (who…
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Life Frummer Crows: Jewish Birdlover Esther Woolfson
Admirers of Israeli novelist Meir Shalev’s “A Pigeon and a Boy,” a tragic romance of two pigeon handlers, will recall the human drama inherent in birds. Even so, the degree to which the Glasgow-born Jewish writer Esther Woolfson is devoted to Corvidae, the bird family which includes crows, ravens, rooks, et al. may surprise some…
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Life Patricia Highsmith: Antisemitic Stranger on a Train
Texas-born Patricia Highsmith has long attracted readers with her cunning grasp of criminal psychology in such suspenseful novels as “Strangers on a Train” (1950) and a series starring the villainous Tom Ripley, now perhaps best known for the Anthony Minghella film “The Talented Mr Ripley” with Matt Damon as the title Tom. But the full…
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Life François Mitterand Took Hitler to Bed
François Mitterrand, who served as the President of France from 1981 to 1995, has long been known to have had an ambiguous relationship with the Nazis. As a mid-level civil servant in the wartime Vichy government, Mitterrand supported the Nazi puppet Marshal Pétain until 1943 and was duly awarded the “Ordre de la francisque gallique…
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Life From Emma Lazarus to Anne Frank: Jewish Folk Artist Malcah Zeldis
The Jewish folk artist and illustrator Malcah Zeldis (born Mildred Brightman to a Bronx Jewish family in 1931) is being honored with an exhibit which opened October 20 and runs until October 18, 2010 at the American Folk Art Museum’s Lincoln Square Branch in New York. The Bronx-born Zeldis went to live on an Israeli…
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