Benjamin Ivry is a frequent Forward contributor.
Benjamin Ivry
By Benjamin Ivry
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Culture Ed Asner’s very righteous (and very Jewish) journey
The American actor Ed Asner, who died on Aug. 29 at age 91, showed that Jewish identity can mean defending a range of minority groups, not just fellow Jews. Asner had little opportunity to express this viewpoint as the editor Lou Grant on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” a character he described to Jewish journalist…
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Culture In Thailand, a rich and complicated Jewish history
Thailand is usually mentioned in world media in terms of Jews when local students or rock performers use Nazi imagery frivolously, unaware of its meaning. Apologies are then duly rendered to the Embassy of Israel in Thailand, which are graciously accepted by the ambassador, and everyone moves on, although the major focus of Thai national…
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Culture 100 years of baseball on radio, a century of Jewish announcers
This month marks the centennial of the first live radio broadcast of a Major League Baseball game. Which provides as good excuse as any to examine the tragicomic lore of a century of Jewish baseball announcers. Setting a precedent was Albert Stark, an umpire-turned-announcer in the 1930s who was nicknamed Dolly, because a player who…
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Culture How Jewish alliances fueled the rise of Vernon Jordan
Vernon Jordan, who died in March of this year, would have turned 86 today, Aug. 15, which provides a good occasion to examine how a Black power broker and civil rights advocate used Jewish alliances to further his goals. More than a mere attorney, Jordan was a fixer and kingmaker. He owed his entry into…
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Culture Remembering Steven Weinberg, the Nobel-prize winning physicist who argued with God
The Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg, who died on July 23 at age 88, was publicly proud of being an atheist. But he retained a Jewish structure to his thinking throughout his life. Weinberg received the Nobel for his innovations, building on the work of Albert Einstein, in helping to understand how the tiniest components…
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Culture For 50 years of Greenpeace, inspiration from Jewish values and visionaries
This year, as Greenpeace celebrates 50 years of environmental activism, it’s a good time for a look at the powerful Jewish inspirations that have helped to inspire the non-governmental organization throughout its history. With the stated goal of ensuring the ability of the Earth to “nurture life in all its diversity,” Greenpeace campaigns on issues…
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Culture Why there were more Jews than Christians in Dante’s ‘Paradise’ (and no Jews of his time in Dante’s ‘Hell’)
This year, commemorations of the 700th anniversary of the death of the Italian poet Dante Alighieri, author of “The Divine Comedy,” have scarcely addressed the subject of how Dante wrote about Jews. Dante places a number of Old Testament Jews, including Abraham, Sarah, Rachel and Joshua in Paradise. Because some of the limited space is…
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Culture A contrarian artist who took inspiration from a Hasidic rabbi and a Vietnamese general
The French artist Christian Boltanski, who died on Bastille Day at age 76, expressed emotions through conceptual art associated with Judaism as well as universal experience. His Ukrainian Jewish father escaped deportation during the Nazi Occupation of Paris by hiding in a space under the floorboards of the family apartment for 18 months. Boltanski’s mother,…
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