Benjamin Ivry is a frequent Forward contributor.
Benjamin Ivry
By Benjamin Ivry
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Books The Secret Jewish History of ‘My Fair Lady’
● Alan Jay Lerner: A Lyricist’s Letters Edited by Dominic McHugh Oxford University Press, 336 Pages, $39.95 Sometimes the Yiddishkeit of a creative talent comes through only in private writings. Playwright and lyricist Alan Jay Lerner won immortality with the stage musicals “My Fair Lady,” “Camelot,” and “Gigi,” which are filled with British and French…
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Culture Susan Sontag’s Not-So-Secret and Not-Always-So-Jewish History
● Susan Sontag: A Biography By Daniel Schreiber Translated from the German by David Dollenmayer Northwestern University Press, 296 pages, $35 According to this welcome biography, which originally appeared in German in 2007, the artist Joseph Cornell believed that the American Jewish essayist and filmmaker Susan Sontag was the “great-great-grandmother of [French actor] Jean-Paul Belmondo……
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Culture For Patrick Modiano, Nazi Occupation Offers Rich Backdrop to Tales of Trial and Triumph
Although London’s betting parlors had claimed the odds-on favorites for this year’s Nobel Prize for literature were Kenya’s Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and Japan’s Haruki Murakami, the choice of France’s Patrick Modiano was good news for Jewish readers. In awkward English, the Nobel Academy referred to Modiano’s obsession with wartime France as the “art of memory…
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Culture The Secret Jewish History of Dr. Zhivago
The Zhivago Affair: The Kremlin, the CIA, and the Battle Over a Forbidden Book By Peter Finn and Petra Couvée Pantheon, 368 pages, $26.95 The Russian Jewish poet Boris Pasternak (1890-1960) was most celebrated by his compatriots for his lyric collections such as “My Sister, Life” and translations of plays by Shakespeare, Calderón and Schiller….
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Culture The 110 Jewish Women Who Changed France
● 110 French Jewish Women Who Changed France: the 19th and 20th Centuries By Michèle Bitton Les Éditions Normant, 678 pages, $38 Although overachieving Jews can transform their native lands triumphantly, the way their countries change them can often be tragic. This is one conclusion to be drawn from “110 French Jewish Women Who Changed…
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Fast Forward Jewish Comedian Joan Rivers Dies at 81
Would the caustic comedian Joan Rivers, who died at age 81 on September 4, have jested about her own sudden illness and unexpected demise? Probably, given her track record as a no-holds barred comedian in the style of Lenny Bruce, and benefiting from relaxed cable TV standards about what is sayable on entertainment programs. Indeed…
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Culture Legendary South African Jewish Athlete Dies at 103
South African Jewish cricketer Norman Gordon, who has died today at the age of 103, epitomized speed and durability in sport. Gordon was the first Test cricketer to become a centenarian (duration is a key to Test cricket itself, the longest form of the sport, which may last up to five days.). In Gordon’s day…
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Culture Was Pope John Paul II Good for the Jews?
John Paul II’s Letter to a Jewish Friend: The Heart-Rending Story of Two Polish Boys Divided by World War II, Reunited by Love by Gian Franco Svidercoschi The Crossroad Publishing Company, 108 pages, $13.13 In April, when Pope John Paul II became Saint John Paul the Great, admirers recalled the late pontiff’s affinity for the…
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