Benjamin Ivry is a frequent Forward contributor.
Benjamin Ivry
By Benjamin Ivry
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The Schmooze ‘Ringing’ Voice of German Jewish Compassion
November 21 marks the 200th anniversary of the German dramatist and novelist Heinrich von Kleist’s death but European literati have been celebrating all year long. Reflected glory is cast on Max Ring, a German Jewish poet and playwright who has not yet even been accorded a German-language Wikipedia entry despite lasting literary achievements. Ring, a…
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The Schmooze Human Rights Pioneer Retains Human Mystery
A 1968 Nobel Peace Prizewinner for his activism on behalf of human rights, the French Jewish legal scholar René Cassin is more honored for his public actions than understood as a man. Co-author of the UN’s postwar Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Cassin was given a book-length homage in 2001 from Les editions Honoré Champion,…
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The Schmooze Curly Locks and Pocket Watches of Henri Herz
As CD releases celebrate 19th century Jewish romantic composers such as Ignaz Moscheles, Jakob Rosenhain and Edouard Wolff, the time to rediscover the composer/pianist/piano manufacturer Henri Herz may finally be here. Born Heinrich Herz in Vienna to a Jewish family, he composed gracious high-society music which has been recorded by recent keyboard notables such as…
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The Schmooze Coaches at Penn State Filmed By Documentarian
Dee Mosbacher, a San Francisco psychiatrist and Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker, has inherited her family’s gift for prescience. Her paternal grandparents, Gertrude (née Schwartz) and Emil Mosbacher, of German Jewish stock, had the foresight to divest their ample stock holdings before the 1929 Wall Street Crash, reaping financial rewards instead from Texas oil investments. This week,…
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Culture Pauline Kael Left Jewish Imprint on Criticism
Can anyone love a professional critic? Perhaps not, but film critic Pauline Kael, who died on September 3, 2001, is receiving a stream of new tributes. The 10th anniversary of her demise was commemorated by three books that treat her life and work with awe, and sometimes with shock. “The Age of Movies: Selected Writings…
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The Schmooze Singer Georges Brassens and His Estonian Love
October 29 marked the 30th anniversary of the death of the warm-voiced, humane French singer/songwriter Georges Brassens (born 1921), and tributes have included a 19-CD set out on October 17 from Mercury/Universal, following the interrogatively titled study “Brassens?” by French popular song specialist Bertrand Dicale, out in February from Les éditions Flammarion. Also receiving posthumous…
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The Schmooze No Smoke Without Freud
As all Freudians realize, an analysis is an analysis, but a good cigar is a smoke. French-Jewish psychoanalyst Philippe Grimbert is known to American readers for his autobiographical novel, “Memory,” published in 2008 by Simon & Schuster — the United Kingdom edition from Portobello Books was titled “Secret”— translated from the 2004 original from Les…
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The Schmooze Henri Borlant on Language that Destroyed and Saved Lives
In 1995, Serge Klarsfeld described Henri Borlant, a French Jewish doctor born in 1927, as “the sole survivor out of 6000 French Jewish children under age 16 who were deported to Auschwitz in 1942.” On March 3, Borlant published a lucidly eloquent memoir from Les editions du Seuil, “Thanks for Surviving” (Merci d’avoir survécu). The…
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