Benjamin Ivry is a frequent Forward contributor.
Benjamin Ivry
By Benjamin Ivry
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News Mikhl Herzog, Columbia Professor and Yiddishist, Dies at 85
Marvin (Mikhl) Herzog, who passed away on June 28 at age 85, exemplified the lexicographer’s belief that by genial attention to minutiae, a life’s work can be constructed. Toronto-born Herzog was a longtime professor of Yiddish at Columbia University as well as director and editor-in-chief of the Yiddish Atlas Project which co-published with YIVO the…
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Culture Jewish Artist Who Once Called Chagall’s Art ‘Crappy’ Finally Gets His Due
The French Jewish painter Sam Szafran is the subject of an exhibit, “Sam Szafran, 50 Years of Painting,” at the Pierre Gianadda Foundation in Martigny, Switzerland, and a new book, [“Sam Szafran: Entretiens avec Alain Veinstein” (“Sam Szafran, Conversations With Alain Veinstein”)][3], that sheds further light on the artist’s inspirations. Born Samuel Berger in Paris…
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Culture Edgar Feuchtwanger Recalls Living Across The Street From Adolf Hitler
When we call someone a “nightmare neighbor from hell,” we usually mean that phrase hyperbolically, but some of those who lived in the vicinity of Adolf Hitler decades ago in Germany and Austria found the term remarkably apt. The French publisher Les éditions Michel Lafon has published the German Jewish historian Edgar Feuchtwanger’s “Hitler My…
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News Geza Vermes, Hungarian Bible Scholar Who Returned to Jewish Roots, Dies at 88
The renowned Hungarian Jewish biblical scholar Geza Vermes, who died of cancer May 8 at age 88, disproved the old canard “You can’t go home again,” at least when it comes to Judaism. Born in the town of Makó in southeastern Hungary in 1924, Vermes was 7 when his family converted to Catholicism in what…
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News Joyce Brothers, Brought Jewish Sensibility to Suburbia Through TV, Dies at 85
The Jewish psychologist Joyce Brothers, who died May 13 of respiratory failure at age 85, was a peacemaker in the emotionally fraught field of pop media therapeutic counseling. Born in Brooklyn as Joyce Bauer to a married couple of attorneys, Brothers became a primary authority on how to live in the mid-century suburban age. Although…
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Culture Vladimir Nabokov and the Jews
Vladimir Nabokov, the Russian American author of such novels as “Lolita,” “Pnin,” and “Pale Fire,” was a compassionate observer of modern Jewish history. This has been established in such works as Stacy Schiff’s “Véra (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov),” a 1999 study of the writer’s much beloved Jewish wife; essays by critics Maxim Shrayer and Shalom Goldman,…
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The Schmooze Russian Jews on the Silver Screen
My Dad Is Baryshnikov,” directed by Dmitry Povolotsky, about a klutzy Russian Jewish version of Billy Elliot, is among the latest in a tradition of Russian Jews ardently seeking reflections of their own experience onscreen. This impulse dates back to the earliest years of cinema history, as is explained in the brilliantly researched “Kinojudaica: Representations…
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Culture Remembering Hungarian Cello Master János Starker
Having survived a Nazi internment camp during World War II, Hungarian Jewish cellist János Starker (1924-2013) led a life focused on civic contributions and behaving with utter freedom. Starker, who died in Indiana on April 28 at age 88, witnessed some of the worst horrors of modern history, and was determined to devote himself to…
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