Benjamin Ivry is a frequent Forward contributor.
Benjamin Ivry
By Benjamin Ivry
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The Schmooze Hans Bethe: Great Scientist and Mensch
Must a great scientist also be a mensch? The historian of science, Silvan Schweber, who teaches at Harvard and Brandeis, has offered some ideal examples in such previous books as “Einstein and Oppenheimer: The Meaning of Genius” from Harvard University Press and “In the Shadow of the Bomb: Oppenheimer, Bethe, and the Moral Responsibility of…
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Culture Marvin Hamlisch Was Top of the Pops
When the much-honored screen and stage composer Marvin Hamlisch died suddenly and unexpectedly on August 6, he was serving or had served as principal pops conductor for orchestras in Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, Dallas, Pasadena, Seattle and San Diego. The Philadelphia Orchestra was also considering Hamlisch for similar duties, having recently fired its longtime Philly Pops founding…
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The Schmooze Yiddishkeit on the Pampas
Although long considered a target for comedy, the concept of a Jewish cowboy has been taken more seriously after translations of “The Jewish Gauchos of the Pampas,”, a 1910 story collection by the Argentine Jewish author Alberto Gerchunoff (1883-1950), became available. Gerchunoff’s Russian family moved to a settlement in Argentina, founded by philanthropist Baron Maurice…
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Culture Gore Vidal and the Jew He Loved
Even before the novelist, essayist, screenwriter, and playwright Gore Vidal, who died on July 31, is buried in Washington, D.C’s Rock Creek Cemetery alongside his life companion Howard Austen, bloggers have hastily called Vidal an anti-Semite. The reality is more complex. Vidal will be remembered not for his political views, but his historical novels such…
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The Schmooze Salmon Maimon: 18th Century Thinker
In George Eliot’s “Daniel Deronda” the eponymous hero purchases “that wonderful bit of autobiography, the life of the Polish Jew, Salomon Maimon.” The British author Israel Zangwill concurred, paraphrasing passages from Maimon’s life story in chapters of his 1898 “Dreamers of the Ghetto.” Maimon’s 1793 classic also impressed Franz Kafka, who described it in one…
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Books A Catalan Jew’s Concise Wisdom
“Tell a blind man his house is on fire and he will reply, ‘I wish I could see that!’” “I don’t like having white hair but I like even less when it falls out. Isn’t it sad to worry about the loss of something one dislikes?” “My son, I prefer to see you hunting lions…
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The Schmooze Willie Howard, More Than Just a Sunshine Boy
Although London’s hit revival of Neil Simon’s “The Sunshine Boys” starring Danny DeVito and Richard Griffiths closed on July 28, a possible fall transfer to Broadway has been announced. That’s a good excuse to shine light on a neglected Jewish vaudeville great who inspired Simon’s play. In his 1996 “Rewrites: a Memoir” Simon describes how…
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Culture From Rabbi’s Daughter to World-Shocker
The subject of a new documentary, “Love and Politics,” which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in April, actress and director Judith Malina is internationally celebrated for startlingly unconventional theater, such as her 2011 play “Korach: The Biblical Anarchist.” A rabbi’s daughter who turned 86 on June 4, Malina has long been invigorating and scandalizing…
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