Benjamin Ivry is a frequent Forward contributor.
Benjamin Ivry
By Benjamin Ivry
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Fast Forward Alexander Imich, Long-Living Survivor and Student of Paranormal, Dies at 111
Alexander Imich, the Polish-born American Jewish parapsychologist who died over the weekend at age 111, suggested that belief, or even credulity, might be a key to longevity. Imich, a Holocaust survivor who lived in New York, was considered the oldest man on earth at the time of his death. A devotee of the Israeli-born illusionist…
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Culture Guinness Record Holder For Longest Theater Career Dies at 90
In 2011, it was announced that the Israeli actress Hanna Maron had set a Guinness world record for the longest career in theater. Born Hanna Meierzak in Berlin in 1923 to a Polish father and mother of Hungarian origin, she began acting at age 4, and appeared in German silent films, as well as performing…
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Culture A Jew Joins the Académie Française
In April, after the deaths in recent years of such venerable French Jewish members as anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss and biologist François Jacob, the Académie française increased its quotient of Yiddishkeit. That day, the author Alain Finkielkraut, born in Paris in 1949 to a family of Polish Jewish origin, was elected to join the group of…
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Culture Louis Armstrong’s Secret Lessons From Judaism
Louis Armstrong, Master of Modernism By Thomas Brothers W. W. Norton & Company, 608 pages, $39.95 A massive, and massively detailed new biography, reminds music mavens that jazz pioneer Louis Armstrong assimilated lessons from Judaism and expressed them through music and writing during his long career. “Louis Armstrong, Master of Modernism” by Thomas Brothers is…
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News Is Handel’s ‘Messiah’ an Anti-Semitic Screed?
I recall walking through the lobby of Jerusalem’s King David Hotel around 1978, when TVs were blasting the Israeli broadcast premiere of Handel’s “Messiah.” Sung in Hebrew and played by the Israel Philharmonic, this “Messiah” supposedly deleted every mention of Jesus. With or without Jesus, music-loving Jews tend to enjoy “Messiah,” which makes Michael Marissen’s…
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Culture A Century of Anti-Semitism on the American College Campus
Antisemitism on the Campus: Past & Present Edited by Eunice G. Pollack Academic Studies Press, 470 pages, $65 In 2012, the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise published “Israel and the Campus,” a study noting 674 anti-Israel events at 108 United States and Canadian universities during the 2011-12 academic year. It remains undetermined how many of these events…
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Culture How Darren Aronofsky and ‘Noah’ Got The Ark Wrong
● The Ark Before Noah: Decoding the Story of the Flood By Irving Finkel Doubleday, 432 pages, $30 Darren Aronofsky’s $130 million Hollywood epic “Noah” starring Russell Crowe has displeased Christian fundamentalists with its non-literal approach to the Old Testament story. Jewish moviegoers might also find it irksome that Aronofsky and his team of designers…
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Culture Remembering Art Raymond, Who Provided Yiddishkeit in a Black Sombrero
Art Raymond, who died on February 21 at age 91 in Boynton Beach, Florida, exemplifies the fluidly shifting indentities of past generations of American Jewish performers. An esteemed radio host and nightclub emcee, Raymond (born Rosen in 1922 in Brownsville, Brooklyn) made his name as a specialist in both Jewish and Latin music. When he…
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