Benjamin Ivry is a frequent Forward contributor.
Benjamin Ivry
By Benjamin Ivry
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Culture A Personal Remembrance of Classical Pianist Claude Frank
Claude Frank, who died on December 27 at age 89, was one of the last surviving pupils of the legendary Austrian Jewish pianist Artur Schnabel. In a reprint from Music & Arts of Frank’s set of complete Beethoven sonatas, originally released in 1970 for the composer’s bicentenary, the music is allowed to speak directly and…
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Culture Reconsidering Louis Ginzberg’s Legendary ‘Legends of the Jews’
Louis Ginzberg’s Legends of the Jews: Ancient Jewish Folk Literature Reconsidered edited by Galit Hasan-Rokem and Ithamar Gruenwald Wayne State University Press, 224 pages, $44.99 The legacy of the Talmudist Louis Ginzberg exemplifies the benefits of lovability in Jewish studies. Those familiar with the life of Henrietta Szold (1860-1945), founder of Hadassah and Ihud, the…
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Culture Israel Zamir, a Man Who Was Far More Than Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Son
The journalist, author, and translator Israel Zamir, who died on November 22 at age 85, deserves to be remembered as more than just the son of Nobel prize-winner Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902–1991). As he wrote in Journey to My Father, Isaac Bashevis Singer, a 1995 memoir which is due out in paperback in June 2015,,…
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Culture 200 Years Later, Remembering Anti-Semitism of Marquis de Sade
December 2 marks the 200th anniversary of the death of the Marquis de Sade, although Mel Gibson’s “Passion of the Christ,” “Fifty Shades of Grey” by E. L. James, and the pop star Rihanna’s 2011 song “S&M” suggest that for some, sadism retains its chic. The French Jewish essayist Alain Finkielkraut asked in a 2012…
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Culture Jew on a Hot Tin Roof
● Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh By John Lahr W. W. Norton & Company, 784 pages, $39.95 An energetically gossipy biography of playwright Tennessee Williams has been written by the son of Irving Lahrheim, better known as Bert Lahr, filmdom’s Cowardly Lion. Williams, who wrote “The Glass Menagerie,” “A Streetcar Named Desire” and…
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Culture Alexander Grothendieck, Brilliant Jewish Mathematician, Dies at 86
The French mathematician Alexander Grothendieck, who died on November 13 at age 86, was profoundly influenced by his family roots. His father Alexander “Sascha” Schapiro was a Russian Jewish social progressive who was murdered in Auschwitz in 1942. Grothendieck’s work, finding connections between algebra and geometry, helped to create the field of algebraic geometry. His…
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News Doc Paskowitz, Jewish Surfer Dude for Ages, Dies at 93
What do you get when you mix West Coast catch-a-wave surfing culture with the profoundly Jewish sensibilities of the son of Yiddish-speaking immigrants? Some answers can be found in the life story of surfer Dorian “Doc” Paskowitz, who died on November 10 at age 93 and introduced a measure of Yiddishkeit to a sport not…
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Culture Was Leo Tolstoy Really an Anti-Semite?
Duelling new English-language versions of the 1870s novel “Anna Karenina” are raising questions about the novelist Leo Tolstoy’s complex and contradictory attitudes toward Jews. Placed by the philosopher Isaiah Berlin in his famous essay “The Hedgehog and the Fox” among the foxes (who know many things) as opposed to the hedgehog (who knows one big…
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