Benjamin Ivry is a frequent Forward contributor.
Benjamin Ivry
By Benjamin Ivry
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Culture Tony Randall at 100 — Once a Rosenberg, always a Rosenberg
The American Jewish actor Tony Randall, beloved star of the TV sitcom “The Odd Couple,” whose centenary is celebrated on February 26, was an example of a professional façade covering a persistent search for Yiddishkeit. Born Aryeh Leonard Rosenberg in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Randall was the son of Mogscha Rosenberg, an antique and objet d’art dealer…
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Culture Susan B. Anthony’s Jewish Sisters
February 15 marks the bicentenary of the American social reformer Susan B. Anthony. Deemed an “incomparable organizer” by historian Eleanor Flexner Anthony grew up in a Quaker family that possessed only a handful of history books. Yet these included two different editions, in two and six volumes respectively, of the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, who…
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Culture How Nobel Prize-winning poet Derek Walcott identified with the Jews
Editor’s Note: Derek Walcott would have turned 90 today. In honor of this date, we’re revisiting this essay written on the occasion of the poet’s death on March 17, 2017. Derek Walcott, the Nobel Prize-winning poet from the West Indies who died March 17 at age 87, was long inspired by Jewish culture, history and…
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Culture The secret Jewish history of Muhammad Ali
Editor’s Note: The boxer and civil rights icon Muhammad Ali, who died on June 3, 2016, at the age of 74, would have turned 78 today. On this occasion, we return to this story about the champ’s complex relationship with the Jewish people. Muhammad Ali was accused of having “frequently clashed with the Jewish people.”…
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Culture A new Holocaust opera premieres — in Thailand
Thailand might not seem the most probable point of origin for a new opera about the Holocaust, but on January 16, the world premiere of “Helena Citrónová” by the composer Somtow Sucharitkul, 67, will be staged in Bangkok. It is about a real-life Auschwitz survivor of Slovak Jewish origin who at a trial in 1972,…
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Culture Remembering The Ultimate Jewish Polymath — Jonathan Miller
Jonathan Wolfe Miller, the English Jewish author, stage director, and medical doctor, who died on November 27 at age 85, proved that issues of identity can transcend conscious denials. During youthful appearances in the influential satirical review “Beyond the Fringe,” Miller played a character who announced: “I’m not really a Jew, you know, just Jew-ish.”…
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Culture In Asia, A Mania For Kafka
On October 26, an “Unfolding Kafka Festival” featuring art installations, dance performances and film screenings, will open in Bangkok and Chiang Mai, Thailand. It is the third such biennial festival organized and directed by the Thai choreographer Jitti Chompee, marking a further advance of the Prague-born Jewish writer in Asia. Among its offerings is a…
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Culture On Her 100th Birthday, Doris Lessing And The Jews
Doris Lessing, who died on November 17, 2013 at age 94, won the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature for her prolific writings ranging from autobiography to what she called “space fiction.” Sometimes overlooked was the lasting inspiration which Lessing, born Doris May Tayler in 1919 in Persia, drew from Jews and Jewish heritage. In 1925,…
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