Benjamin Ivry is a frequent Forward contributor.
Benjamin Ivry
By Benjamin Ivry
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Culture Playwright Israel Horovitz wrote with Jewish ethics, didn’t always practice them
The playwright Israel Horovitz, who died on Nov. 9 at age 81, proved that creating works redolent with Jewish history and identity can be a matter of adaptation. As Horovitz told The New York Times in March 1986, he grew up in a Massachusetts town with a tiny Jewish population, and felt himself ill-equipped to…
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Culture As we mourn Alex Trebek, we honor the Jewish history of ‘Jeopardy’
While we mourn longtime “Jeopardy!” host Alex Trebek, who died on Nov. 8 at age 80, we also pause to honor the game show’s admirably constant quotient of Yiddishkeit. Since 1990, Billy Wisse has worked for “Jeopardy!” as writer and editorial producer, among other responsibilities. Son of Ruth R. Wisse and professor emerita of Yiddish…
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Culture The Jewish James Bond stories Sean Connery likely never knew
Sean Connery, the Scottish actor who died on October 31 at age 90, may have been unaware that his celebrated film role as James Bond could possibly have included lines about how he preferred Manischewitz kosher wine, instead of martinis, shaken and not stirred. Rabbi Raphael Zarum of the London School of Jewish Studies has…
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Culture In search of the lost time of a gay Jewish novelist
In a new book, Saul Friedländer shows how an analytical approach that made him an acclaimed Holocaust historian, can explicate a gay writer of Jewish origin. “Proustian Uncertainties,” concerns the French novelist Marcel Proust, whose “In Search of Lost Time” offers emotionally complex narration and memories linked to sexuality and Judaism. Perhaps surprisingly, this subject…
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Culture On its 50th anniversary, the secret Jewish history of ‘Doonesbury’
Celebrating its 50th anniversary on October 26, the comic strip “Doonesbury” must hold a longevity record for what was originally intended as an undergraduate jape. And it has a surprising amount of Jewish influence. Created by Garry Trudeau, “Doonesbury” early on peppered a wide range of targets with wry comments, as the Harvard Bulletin”commented in…
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Culture Devoted to his friends and Israel, sometimes to a fault — Zubin Mehta at 84
Zubin Mehta’s retirement last autumn after a half-century as musical director of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (IPO) was followed by many tributes, including massive CD box sets of his complete Warner recordings, his complete recordings for Decca with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and complete Columbia albums. Now 84, Mehta has earned a retrospective look at…
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Culture Meet the last surviving Jewish member of ‘The Chicago 7’
At 81, Lee Weiner, the last surviving Jewish defendant among the Chicago Seven, published a memoir, “Conspiracy To Riot” before the October 16 release of the Netflix film “Trial of the Chicago 7” written and directed by Aaron Sorkin and starring Sacha Baron Cohen. Over a half-century ago, Weiner, a Chicago native, was charged with…
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Culture Elizabeth Taylor was the original Jewish Cleopatra
Editor’s Note: Gal Gadot will not be the first Jewish Cleopatra. While news of the Israeli actress’ casting in a new version of the Egyptian queen’s story caused on online kerfuffle, there is a high quality precedent for a member of the tribe donning the Ptolemaic monarch’s beaded headdress. Elizabeth Taylor, whose conversion to Judaism…
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