Benjamin Ivry is a frequent Forward contributor.
Benjamin Ivry
By Benjamin Ivry
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Life Shmatta and Schmaltz: Ilene Beckerman Hits Off-Broadway
Born in 1935, Ilene Beckerman, now a resident of Livingston, New Jersey, worked in the advertising industry, and published her first book at age 60, the bestselling “Love, Loss, and What I Wore” (Algonquin Books, 1995). Adorned with whimsical drawings of dresses worn by herself and family members over several decades, it displayed them as…
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Life Ann Landers, Onstage
A one-woman play, “The Lady With All The Answers,” honoring the late Jewish advice columnist Ann Landers has just opened at New York’s downtown Cherry Lane Theatre. This New York premiere of a play that has been touring regionally is an affectionate portrayal of what the British press refers to as an “Agony Aunt.” In…
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Culture Ferber and Kaufman: Jewish Playwrights, Family Creators
The 1920s Algonquin Round Table of New York wits seems to have left little behind of permanent value, apart from a load of tired put-downs and other wisecracks. Yet the works of two members, George S. Kaufman (1889-1961), from a Pittsburgh Jewish family, and his writing colleague Edna Ferber (1885 – 1968) born in Kalamazoo,…
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Books S. An-sky: More Than Just ‘The Dybbuk’
Photographing the Jewish Nation: Pictures from S. An-sky’s Ethnographic Expeditions Eugene M. Avrutin, ed. Brandeis University Press University Press of New England 2009; 228 pages $39.95 For frenziedly creative polymaths, the French may have Jean Cocteau, but the Jews have Belarus-born Shloyme Zanvl Rappoport, who wrote poems, fiction, ethnography and plays under the pen name…
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Life Samuel Ullman: Japan’s Favorite Jewish Poet
Although Japanese society has been afflicted by the phenomenon known as “antisemitism without Jews,” as detailed in David G. Goodman and Masanori Miyazawa’s thoughtful study, “Jews in the Japanese Mind: The History and Uses of a Cultural Stereotype” (Lexington, 2000), remarkable cases of philosemitism also exist. Of the latter, few are more surprising than the…
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Life Being Composer Emmerich Kálmán Means Never Saying You’re Sári.
The Hungarian Jewish composer of light music, Kálmán Imre (1882 –1953), better known by the Germanized version of his name, Emmerich Kálmán, continues to enjoy cult status in East and Central Europe. American audiences, though, might need reminding about Kálmán’s past glories like the Broadway hit “Sári” from 1914, which will be presented in concert…
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Life From Papa Haydn to Tateh Haydn?
Among the many commemorations of the 200th anniversary of the death of composer Joseph Haydn is a compelling new study from Cambridge University Press, “Haydn’s Jews: Representation and Reception on the Operatic Stage” by Caryl Clark, a University of Toronto musicologist. Ms. Clark points out that in Eisenstadt, Austria, the palace of the Eszterházy family,…
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Culture Loving and Loathing
A longtime secret treasure of American film criticism, Manny Farber is finally in the limelight, a year after his death of bone cancer at age 91. Farber is being honored with the publication of “Farber On Film: The Complete Film Writings of Manny Farber,” an 824-page tome from the Library of America, collecting many long-overlooked…
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