Benjamin Ivry is a frequent Forward contributor.
Benjamin Ivry
By Benjamin Ivry
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Culture Remembering Jesse Zel Lurie, Witness To A Century Of History
Jesse Zel Lurie, who died in Florida on April 10 at age 103, proved that there was nothing like being on the spot to advance a journalistic career. New York-born in 1913, he made Aliyah in the 1920s and attended high school in Haifa. In 1935, he started writing for The Jerusalem Post, then known…
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Culture For Better And Worse, Don Rickles Embodied American Discourse
Don Rickles, who died on April 6 at age 90, weathered over a half-century of comedic trends, seeing his insult humor absorbed into everyday conduct. He was not always an insult comedian. Raised in the Jackson Heights area of Queens by his parents, Max Rickles and Etta Feldman, Rickles studied at the American Academy of…
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Culture Why Yevgeny Yevtushenko Made Jews Wary
In 1961, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, who died on April 1 at age 84, published the poem “Babi Yar” in Russia’s “Literary Newspaper” (Literaturnaya Gazeta). The poem objected to Soviet refusal to recognize that Jews were the principal target at Babi Yar in present-day Kiev, Ukraine, where thousands of Jewish men, women and children were murdered by…
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Culture This Israeli Conductor Wants To Use Music To Fix The World
David Ben Gurion once stated that “it is in the Negev that the creativity and pioneer vigor of Israel shall be tested,” but he probably wasn’t thinking about opera. Omer Meir Wellber, born in 1981 in Be’er Sheva, the largest city in the Negev desert of southern Israel, has carved out an international career as…
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Film & TV How Chuck Barris Turned Jewish Anxiety Into A Multimillion Dollar Industry
Charles Hirsch Barris, who died on March 21 at age 87, proved that one Jewish man’s inner conflicts could entertain America in a series of game shows. Creator of TV’s “The Dating Game” and “The Newlywed Game,” in the ‘60s, Barris also launched and hosted “The Gong Show” in the 1970s, tapping into such matters…
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Culture How Bob Silvers Made Friends And Influenced People At The New York Review Of Books
More than any other modern editor, Robert Benjamin Silvers, who died on March 20 at age 87, turned a social circle into a compelling publication. Of Russian and Romanian Jewish origin, Silvers cofounded The New York Review of Books (NYRB), which he co-directed with Barbara Epstein until her death in 2006. As Silvers told The…
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Culture How Nobel Prize-Winning Poet Derek Walcott Identified With The Jews
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 friendships. As the literary scholar Bénédicte Ledent has pointed out, Walcott’s poem “A Far Cry from Africa” draws a “parallel between blacks and Jews.” The poem, about the Mau Mau…
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Culture Why Have So Many Jews Wanted To Play Shylock?
Shakespeare’s “Merchant of Venice,” with Shylock, the vengeful Jewish money-lender, is seen by many as anti-Semitic. Yet Jewish actors and directors have been drawn to the play. “Wrestling with Shylock: Jewish Responses to The Merchant of Venice,” a collection of essays edited by Edna Nahshon and Michael Shapiro from Cambridge University Press, tries to explain…
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Fast Forward NYC Mayor Adams pushes controversial antisemitism definition as issue dominates mayoral election
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