Benjamin Ivry is a frequent Forward contributor.
Benjamin Ivry
By Benjamin Ivry
-
The Schmooze Paul Ehrlich, a ‘Markedly Jewish’ Humanitarian
Fans of golden age Hollywood biopics will recall the 1940 classic “Dr. Ehrlich’s Magic Bullet,” available from Warner Brothers DVDs, a collaboration between the Jewish director William Dieterle, screenwriter Norman Burnstine, and star Edward G. Robinson, (born Emanuel Goldenberg of Romanian-Jewish origin). Ehrlich’s widow Hedwig Pinkus, by then a near-destitute refugee, was a paid consultant….
-
The Schmooze Israeli Fashionistas in Under 500 Years
Internationally recognized stars of Israeli clothing design such as Ronen Chen, Kedem Sasson, Yigal Azrouel, and Ziv Gil Kazenstein have won applause on the runways of the world’s fashion capitals. Yet decades ago, during the ferment and danger of Israel’s early days as a nation, what the pioneering generation should wear might have seemed a…
-
Culture Photographer to ’30s Literary Stars
From James Joyce to Virginia Woolf, camera-shy European writers were captured on film in the 1930s by German Jewish photographer Gisèle Freund. These psychologically revealing images, in vividly tight close-up — as if the viewer were crammed into an elevator next to the great writer — are enough to guarantee Freund, who died in 2000…
-
The Schmooze Emerson, Emma Lazarus and the Jews
On June 13, Harvard University Press published a luxuriantly definitive Variorum edition of poems by Ralph Waldo Emerson, which may cast light on a still-remembered episode in American Jewish literary history. The poet Emma Lazarus, whose “New Colossus” adorns the Statue of Liberty, knew Emerson personally, and her admiring essay “Emerson’s Personality” was collected in…
-
The Schmooze Jews in Motion: The Artistry of Josef Herman
The Polish Jewish painter Josef Herman, who settled in the UK as a refugee, is best known for his monumentally blocky paintings of Welsh miners whom he depicted empathetically while living for over a decade in a Welsh mining town, starting in 1944. Now a centenary exhibit, “Josef Herman: Warsaw, Brussels, Glasgow, London, 1938-1944” traces…
-
The Schmooze Paul Mazursky From ‘Curb’ to Warsaw and Beyond
At 81, Brooklyn-born screenwriter and director Paul Mazursky may be most familiar to some HBO-TV viewers as Sunshine, the ill-fated poker dealer in “The Sopranos” and Norm, strictly unamused by Larry David’s antics in “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” A new book, “Paul on Mazursky,” out from Wesleyan University Press this fall, reminds us that Mazursky’s varied…
-
The Schmooze In Bed with Émile Meyerson
The Lublin-born French epistemologist and philosopher of science Émile Meyerson died in 1933, but is still remembered for his dedicated Zionism and friendship with fellow Jews, such as author and activist Bernard Lazare. Yet until now, Meyerson has been little known as a man. On April 28, Les éditions Honoré Champion published “Miscellanies: Short Unpublished…
-
Culture To Understand and Equate, Passionately
It says something about the fraught history of North African Jewry that one of its most vivid authors of today was inspired to write a reminiscence of her youth not by dipping a Proustian madeleine into her tea, but by almost being crushed by a train. Colette Fellous, who was born in Tunis in 1950…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
Fast Forward ‘Murdered for speaking truth’: Netanyahu and US Jewish leaders mourn Charlie Kirk
- 2
Antisemitism Decoded Israel is being blamed for Charlie Kirk’s death. Here’s what that conspiracy theory says about the far right’s divide
- 3
News Who was Horst Wessel, and why are people comparing Charlie Kirk to him?
- 4
News A new kaffiyeh policy is designed to help divided Jews pray together. Is this the Jewish future?
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward Cosmetics firm Weleda to examine Nazi ties amid revelation of its role in Dachau experiments
-
Fast Forward Buenos Aires mayor vows to punish teacher who waved Palestinian flag during school ceremony
-
Fast Forward A Jewish clothing brand is making Charlie Kirk yarmulkes
-
Yiddish אַ פֿײַערונג לכּבֿוד ייִדיש־ליגעס „ווערטער פֿון דער וואָך“ A celebration of the League for Yiddish series ‘Words of the Week’
גיטל שעכטער־ווישוואַנאַט, וואָס פֿירט אָן מיט דער סעריע, וועט רעדן וועגן דעם אָפּרוף פֿון אָן אַ שיעור לייענער.
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
