Benjamin Ivry is a frequent Forward contributor.
Benjamin Ivry
By Benjamin Ivry
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Art Miriam Schapiro Married Judaism and Feminism in Her Art
Toronto-born Miriam Schapiro, who died on Saturday, June 20, at the age of 91, proved that an ardent feminist can also be a joyous artist. Born in 1923 to Russian Jewish parents, Fannie Cohen and Theodore Schapiro, she had a rich and varied imagination, as described in Thalia Gouma-Peterson’s “Miriam Schapiro” from Harry N. Abrams…
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Music Berlin Philharmonic Names First Jewish Music Director
On June 22, it was announced that the musicians of the celebrated Berlin Philharmonic (BPO) have elected their first-ever Jewish music director, the Russian maestro Kirill Petrenko. Not only was this choice ground-breaking, it was an indirect response to another job candidate, the German conductor Christian Thielemann whose right-wing politics and anti-immigrant feelings seemed to…
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Culture When Langston Hughes Sang Jewish America
Selected Letters of Langston Hughes By Langston Hughes Edited by Arnold Rampersand Knopf, 480 pages, $35 These missives written by one of the most limpid African-American poets are self-concealing in the extreme. Langston Hughes was so discreet that when he was hospitalized for gonorrhea in 1941, he told intimate friends that the problem was arthritis….
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Culture What James Merrill Thought of the Jews
James Merrill: Life and Art Langdon Hammer Knopf, 944 pages, $40.00 On the 20th anniversary of his death, this massive funerary stele of a book pays tribute to an American poet much inspired by Jewish friends and mentors. Merrill was born in 1926 to a WASP family in New York – his father was a…
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Film & TV Remembering Fagin and Ron Moody, the Man Who Played Him
The British Jewish actor Ron Moody, who died on June 11 at age 91, will be remembered for making Charles Dickens’ harshly anti-Semitic character Fagin into someone loveable. In stage productions and the 1968 film of the musical Oliver!, Moody, who was born Ronald Moodnick, became the definitive interpreter of the role, despite the reservations…
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Art Why Jewish Artists Were At the Forefront of Social Awareness
Social Concern and Left Politics in Jewish American Art: 1880-1940 by Matthew Baigell Syracuse University Press, 280 pages, $39.95 This ambitious, meticulous cultural history examines how and why Jewish artists and art critics cared about social upheavals in American life. Focusing on the years of abundant immigration of European Jews to the USA until the…
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Culture Remembering the Glorious Jewish Humanity of Anne Meara
Anne Meara, who died on May 23 at age 85, was considerably more than one-half of the beloved comedy act Stiller and Meara. Born into a Roman Catholic family, she converted to Reform Judaism in 1961, as she told “People Magazine” in 1977, because she “wanted my children to know who they were.” Those children,…
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Culture Who Should Replace Alan Gilbert at the New York Philharmonic?
Earlier this year, Alan Gilbert, music director of the New York Philharmonic, announced that he would step down from his job in 2017. With Avery Fisher Hall, the orchestra’s home, scheduled to close in 2019 for two years of renovation, fevered speculation has ensued about his successor. Music directors should quit more often, as such…
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