Benjamin Ivry is a frequent Forward contributor.
Benjamin Ivry
By Benjamin Ivry
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Culture Forever marked by his wartime experience, Pierre Cardin remained loyal to his Jewish customers
The French fashion designer Pierre Cardin, who died on Dec. 29 at age 98, likely acquired empathy for Jewish customers through his wartime experience as an Italian émigré to France. Cardin, who created futuristic garb for everyone from the Beatles to NASA astronauts, was born Pietro Costante Cardin in the province of Treviso, in the…
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Culture Once enemies, Anthony Fauci and Larry Kramer developed a surprising bromance
One way to celebrate the 80th birthday on Dec. 24 of Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, would be to re-examine his complex friendship with the American Jewish author and AIDS activist Larry Kramer. When Kramer died in May of this year at age 84, Fauci recounted in…
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Culture Remembering Catie Lazarus, a beacon of optimism and humor
The American Jewish comedian Catie Lazarus, who died on Dec. 13 at age 44, made interviews into performance art through affectionate sibling-like jibes at guests, as if they were members of an extended mishpocheh. Her “Employee of the Month” series of chats at the Public Theater’s Joe’s Pub in downtown Manhattan featured sassy challenges to…
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Culture How Alison Lurie inherited her Jewish sense of social consciousness
The writer Alison Lurie, who died on Dec. 3 at age 94, proved that an inherited Jewish sense of social consciousness can inspire a literary career. Author of the celebrated novels “The War Between the Tates” and “Foreign Affairs,” Lurie was the daughter of Harry Lurie (1892-1973), a Latvian-born sociologist and expert in Jewish social…
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Culture Why the Mona Lisa is a lot more Jewish than you might think
Art mavens have until Dec. 15 to bid on the chance to witness the annual inspection of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa outside of its display case in the Louvre Museum. Mona Lisa mania, as the Louvre calls it, has affected people, including many Jewish fans, ever since the portrait was painted around the year…
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Culture Sammy Davis Jr.’s daughter understood her father’s commitment to Judaism
Tracey Davis, the daughter of Sammy Davis Jr., who died on Nov. 2 at age 59, co-wrote two memoirs of her father, implying that as the proverb goes, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. From the mid-1950s onward, Hollywood stars including Carroll Baker, Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor converted to Judaism, but Davis was…
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Culture So, what did Agatha Christie really think of Jews?
With “Death on the Nile,” Kenneth Branagh’s latest film adaptation of Agatha Christie’s detective Hercule Poirot tales due for release in December, along with a new book-length study of Poirot, who is celebrating the centenary of his creation, it’s a moment to recall just how antisemitic the early detective novels of Agatha Christie were. “The…
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Culture A pioneering artist, Nelly Kaplan used Jewishness as her form of rebellion
The French Jewish filmmaker and author Nelly Kaplan, who died on Nov. 12 of COVID-19 complications at age 89, expressed creativity with Yiddishkeit as a form of rebellion. She was born into a prosperous family who had moved to Argentina from Kiev and Odessa to flee Russian anti-Semitism. They had relocated to colonies founded by…
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