Benjamin Ivry is a frequent Forward contributor.
Benjamin Ivry
By Benjamin Ivry
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The Schmooze Elliott Erwitt: An American Jewish Photographer’s Fierce Wit
Photography lovers who will be in Italy should try to see “Elliott Erwitt’s Rome,” an exhibit which opened in November 13, 2009 and remains on view until January 31. An accompanying volume published by teNeues sheds light on Erwitt. Born in Paris in 1928 to a Russian-Jewish family which moved to Milan but fled Mussolini…
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The Schmooze Admiring Blum: A Great French Jewish Statesman Celebrated on Film
For visitors to the New York Jewish Film Festival, a must-see on January 18-20 is a new hour-length documentary, “Leon Blum: For All Mankind” about the French socialist politician. Written by Blum’s grandson Antoine Malamoud and directed by University of Alabama Professor Jean Bodon, the film offers a mere sketch of an eventful life, and…
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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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