Benjamin Ivry is a frequent Forward contributor.
Benjamin Ivry
By Benjamin Ivry
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Culture Remembering Fyvush Finkel — a Character Actor of Uncommon Character
The Forward played an integral role in the start of the long and glorious performing career of the multitalented Fyvush Finkel, who died on August 14 at age 93. He was born Philip Finkel in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn to a mother from Minsk and a father from Warsaw. Around 1931, when Philip was…
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Culture How Poet Marianne Moore Was Inspired By the Jews
American modernist poets, including T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, and William Carlos Williams, were notorious for differing degrees of anti-Semitism, but their colleague Marianne Moore (1887–1972) was uniquely inspired by Jewish tradition and lore. Linda Leavell edited a recently published edition of Marianne Moore’s landmark first poetry collection, “Observations” (1924). She has also published…
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Culture Remembering Zelda Fichandler, ‘Great Founding Rabbi’ of Regional Theater
The American Jewish stage producer, director and educator Zelda Fichandler, who died on July 29 at age 91, was more than just the cofounder of Washington D. C.’s much-lauded Arena Stage and longtime inspiring mainstay at the graduate school of acting at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. She was, as Todd London’s…
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Culture Remembering Seymour Papert: Revolutionary Socialist and Father of A.I.
The South African Jewish computer scientist and educator Seymour Papert, who died on July 31 at age 88, was a long-time fixture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He pioneered artificial intelligence and co-invented the Logo programming language. Yet his work as a social reformer, rather than with machines per se, was a primordial obsession….
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Culture Bernie Krause Played for Pete Seeger and Inspired an Animal Orchestra
Born in Detroit in 1938, for the past quarter-century Bernie Krause has traveled the world, capturing natural sounds of creatures and environments large and small. Since briefly replacing Pete Seeger in the folk-singing group “The Weavers” in 1963, Krause has gone on to contribute synthesizer performances to many feature films, including “Apocalypse Now.” His company,…
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Culture Remembering Broadway Theater Impresario James Nederlander
James M. Nederlander, the American Jewish theater impresario who died on July 25 at age 94, was more than just a producer and theater owner in New York and Chicago. Growing up in Detroit, Nederlander, known in the theatrical world as Jimmy, honed his showbiz smarts by studying such star performers as Ed Wynn (born…
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Culture Remembering Marni Nixon, the Greatest Ghost Singer
Marni Nixon, who died on July 24 at 86, was more than just the off-screen dubbed singing voice for unmusical actresses in such Hollywood movies as “The King and I,” “West Side Story,” and “My Fair Lady.” A marriage with the screen composer Ernest Gold (born Ernst Goldner), who wrote the soundtrack music to “Exodus,”…
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Culture Why Are the Chinese So Obsessed With the Jews?
In China today, shoppers snap up self-help books about how be smart, rich, and have successful children supposedly by imitating Jews. At least ten universities in China offer Jewish Studies programs. This popularity is in spite of, or due to, the fact that there are almost no Jews in China. “The Image of Jews in…
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