Benjamin Ivry is a frequent Forward contributor.
Benjamin Ivry
By Benjamin Ivry
-
Art How Avram Finkelstein Changed The Way We Think About AIDS — With One Pink Triangle
In the 1980’s the American Jewish artist and writer Avram Finkelstein was a co-creator of the iconic AIDS crisis protest poster which features a pink triangle with the words “Silence=Death.” How this influential graphic image was designed is recalled in Finkelstein’s new memoir, “After Silence: A History of AIDS Through Its Images” (University of California…
-
Film & TV Why The Spielberg-Kushner ‘West Side Story’ Might Turn Out Okay
Few American musicals have won more sustained audience devotion than “West Side Story,” the 1957 brainchild of an all-Jewish creative team. Playwright Arthur Laurents, choreographer Jerome Robbins, composer Leonard Bernstein, and lyricist Stephen Sondheim, collaborated, despite sustained tensions, to produce a musical that has been staged around the world for six decades and inspired an…
-
Culture Hollywood’s Oldest Working Jewish Actress Dies At 105
Old Jewish character actors never die, they just stop going on casting calls. Charles Lane (born Charles Levison; 1905–2007) a mainstay in small roles in Frank Capra films and on the TV series “I Love Lucy,” kvetched during his hundredth birthday celebration that his performing career had recently slowed down. Connie Sawyer, who died on…
-
Culture Mathilde Krim Was The Oskar Schindler Of The War Against AIDS
Oskar Schindler is celebrated for saving the lives of 1,200 imperiled people, so how can one begin to describe the achievement of Mathilde Krim, who by most accounts helped to save the lives of millions? The dauntless advocate of AIDS research, prevention, and treatment who died on January 15 at age 91, was motivated by…
-
Culture Remembering Chicago’s Milt Rosenberg — And How He Revived The Art Of Conversation
In recalling Milt Rosenberg, the veteran Chicago radio host who died on January 9 at age 92, the first memory is of a soothing light baritone voice that might have been expected from a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Chicago, where he served as director of the doctoral program in social and…
-
Culture How Aharon Appelfeld Found His Home In Hebrew
In Philip Roth’s novel “Operation Shylock”, a fictional Israeli writer named Aharon Appelfeld offers warnings about an identity thief targeting the narrator. In real life, Appelfeld, who died on January 4 at age 85, cautioned readers about what losing Jewish cultural identity might lead to. With a laconic, unelaborate style echoing his soft-spoken manner in…
-
Culture A King Who Saved Jews From The Holocaust: Remembering Michael I Of Romania
King Michael I of Romania, who died on December 5 at age 96, proved that being a mama’s boy can result in a mitzvah. Three-quarters of a century ago, he defied his country’s Hitler-allied Prime Minister, Ion Antonescu, and worked to save hundreds of thousands of Jews from the Holocaust. Through the cooperation of Antonescu,…
-
Culture Lilli Hornig Fled Hitler And Helped Develop Atomic Weapons — Then Fought Against Their Use
Lilli Hornig, the Czech-born Jewish chemist who died on November 17 at age 96, showed an exemplary interest in what in the “Pirkei Avot” a book of the Mishnah, is termed g’milut chasadim, or acts of loving kindness. Hornig’s family, many of whom were scientists, fled their homeland in the early 1930s after her father…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
News Exclusive: ADL chief compares student protesters to ISIS and al-Qaeda in address to Republican officials
- 2
News A Jewish farmer drove 600 miles to rescue a century-old synagogue. Now he’s building a new one in a cornfield.
- 3
Opinion Pete Hegseth is targeting a Jewish American hero — who’s next?
- 4
Opinion The two things I fear most after the horrifying attack on Jews in Boulder
In Case You Missed It
-
Culture That time Yiddishists met extraterrestrials a short while ago in a galaxy not far away
-
Opinion Were the attacks in Boulder and D.C. the product of ‘blood libel’? Not so fast
-
News Exclusive: ADL chief compares student protesters to ISIS and al-Qaeda in address to Republican officials
-
Culture In the Trump-Musk feud, both sides are united by antisemitism
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
