Benjamin Ivry is a frequent Forward contributor.
Benjamin Ivry
By Benjamin Ivry
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Culture Shalom Birdie: Charles Strouse’s Jewish Leitmotifs
The contributions of Jewish songwriters to Broadway musicals may seem overfamiliar, in part due to such distinguished examinations as Allen Forte’s “Listening to Classic American Popular Songs” (Yale University Press, 2001), itself something of a classic. Poet and editor David Lehman has just entered this crowded field with a highly personal new book, “A Fine…
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Culture Fannie Bloomfield Zeisler and Dreyfus Collateral
The collateral damage of the Dreyfus Affair was far-reaching. The new release from Appian CDs of the complete recordings of elegant British pianist Harold Bauer recalls the most dramatic passage from Bauer’s memoirs, about how the famed Jewish American pianist Fannie Bloomfield Zeisler (1863-1927; born to an Orthodox family in Bielitz, Austrian Silesia), caused a…
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Music Jazz and a Schmear: Jewish Pianist Roberta Piket Shines.
Jazz fans have long noted the talented Brooklyn-born pianist/composer Roberta Piket, who, mentored by a fellow Brooklynite, eminent pianist Richard Aron “Richie” Beirach, performs with sophisticated emotional astuteness. Piket, who will be performing at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola from Sept 22-26, delights audiences with urbane charm, meditative sensitivity, and even humor, in…
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Culture Fiddlers on the Wane
In the world of Jewish strings, two major but disparate commemorations mark 2009: the centenary of Polish-born Szymon Goldberg, and the 10-year anniversary of the death of Yehudi Menuhin, born seven years later in New York to Belarusian-Jewish parents. A century ago, the violin was a passport out of the ghetto, with Eastern European child…
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Film & TV An ‘Unmistaken Child’ Crosses the USA
Released in June from Oscilloscope Distribution, the documentary “Unmistaken Child” by Jerusalem-born Nati Baratz, a graduate of Tel-Aviv University’s Film School, continues its triumphal march across America, with scheduled screenings in Honolulu (Sept. 9); Cleveland (Sept. 11); Great Barrington, MA (Sept. 11); Key West (Sept. 11); and San Francisco (Sept. 13), and further showings into…
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Culture Whoa, Nelly!
French-Jewish filmmaker and writer Nelly Kaplan, born in Buenos Aires in 1936 (some sources say 1931) to Russian-Jewish parents, has long been the incarnation of a particularly romantic ideal. She is featured as part of the first major exhibition of women artists and surrealism to be held in Europe, Angels of Anarchy, opening on September…
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Life Isaiah Berlin at 100
Commemorations continue apace for the hundredth birthday of the historian of ideas Isaiah Berlin (1909–1997). Born in Riga to a Russian Jewish family, he is being honored by the American Political Science Association Annual Meeting in Toronto (Sept 3-6); a Harvard conference from September 25-26 and other academic events. Yet much remains also for general…
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Culture Photographs That Are Deserved
French-Jewish photographer Willy Ronis, born in 1910, has never been more popular. Honored at a special exhibit at this summer’s Rencontres d’Arles photography festival on view in Southern France until September 14 (alongside such counterculture stars as America’s Nan Goldin), Ronis has recent books out from a flurry of international publishers, including Taschen, Phaidon, Gallimard…
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מאַטי מענדלאָוויטשעס ברודער, וואָס האָט יאָרן לאַנג געליטן פֿון דעפּרעסיע, האָט הײַיאָר זיך גענומען דאָס לעבן. .
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