Benjamin Ivry is a frequent Forward contributor.
Benjamin Ivry
By Benjamin Ivry
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Culture Remembering Mell Lazarus, Creator of Miss Peach and Inspiration to Joseph Heller
Mell (born Melvin) Lazarus, the American Jewish cartoonist who died on May 24 at age 89, was more than just the creator of the long-running comic strips Miss Peach and Momma. Lazarus was also a novelist, whose fiction may have inspired his friend Joseph Heller, author of “Catch-22”. Lazarus had befriended Heller, a fan of…
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Culture How Morley Safer’s Jewish Upbringing Inspired His Quest for Decency and Justice
The Canadian Jewish broadcast journalist Morley Safer, who died at age 84 on May 19, was as much preoccupied with ethics and the arts as reporting during his more than a half-century with CBS News, 46 of them with the program “60 Minutes.” He told Abigail Pogrebin, author of “Stars of David: Prominent Jews Talk…
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Film & TV Last Surviving ‘Casablanca’ Actor Dies — Along With a Slice of Jewish History
When Madeleine Lebeau, the last surviving actress from the film “Casablanca” (1942) died earlier this month at age 92, she took with her more than film history. Her screen role as Yvonne, Humphrey Bogart’s discarded mistress, was twinned with her real-life role as the wife of French Jewish actor Marcel Dalio (1899–1983). Dalio was born…
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Music Did George Gershwin Plagiarize From Broadway’s ‘Shuffle Along?’
“Shuffle Along, Or The Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921,” the Broadway show starring Audra McDonald, opened on April 28. Its book by George C. Wolfe purports to explain how the African-American songwriter Eubie Blake encountered difficulties along the way to producing a show, “Shuffle Along,” nearly a century ago. One of the key…
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Culture Library of America Founder Daniel Aaron Dies at 103
The Chicago-born American Jewish literary historian Daniel Aaron, who died on April 30 at the age of 103, combined stamina and longevity with an implicit belief in humanity’s moral evolution. Aaron’s “Writers on the Left: Episodes in American Literary Communism,” published by Columbia University Press (1961), discussed such notables as Mike Gold (born Itzok Isaac…
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Music 100 Years Ago, Violin God Yehudi Menuhin Was Born
April 22 marks the centenary of violinist Yehudi Menuhin (born Yehudi Mnuchin in New York). After 12-year-old Yehudi Menuhin played three concertos in Berlin, Albert Einstein famously exclaimed: “Now I know there is a God.” Menuhin later demurred that Einstein, as an “exalted Romantic man,” might have said the same thing about a worm or…
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Culture The Secret Jewish History of Don Quixote and Miguel de Cervantes
April 22 marked the 400th anniversary of the death of the Spanish novelist and playwright Miguel de Cervantes, who was likely born into a family of conversos, Spanish Jews forced in 1492 to convert to Christianity or leave their homeland. Jewish themes have been discerned by some readers in Cervantes’ “Don Quixote.” In time to…
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Culture Who Should Replace James Levine at the Metropolitan Opera?
The Metropolitan Opera press release dated April 14 stating that long-time music director James Levine is retiring at age 72 due to health issues — without even a perfunctory quote from the departing maestro himself — has left all opera fans agog at the possibilities of who may be hired for the job. No one…
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