Benjamin Ivry is a frequent Forward contributor.
Benjamin Ivry
By Benjamin Ivry
-
The Schmooze Recreating Eden, The Brazilian Landscapes of Burle Marx
Fans of landscape architecture will have enjoyed the four month stay of an exhibit which opened in March at Paris’s Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine (Center for Architecture and Patrimony), honoring Roberto Burle Marx. Son of a German Jewish émigré to Brazil, Burle Marx lavished his fertile imagination on applying modernist abstract art approaches…
-
The Schmooze Star-Gazing, Optimism and Courage From Italy’s Jewish Partisans
Isacco Levi, who turned 87 in July, a distant relative of Primo Levi who fought as a wartime anti-Nazi partisan, is the sole survivor of a family of thirteen from Saluzzo in northwest Italy; the rest were murdered in Auschwitz. In 2005, a Berlin war claims conference bizarrely denied Levi any compensation for this loss…
-
The Schmooze Perfectly Pitched Music From a Hungarian Fable
On September 21 at a church in Hannover, the Hungarian Jewish conductor and organist Andor Izsák will lead a concert of liturgical music under the auspices of The European Centre for Jewish Music (EZJM) which he founded in 1988 and still directs. A special zest should infuse the event, as a new biography, “Andor the…
-
Culture Novelist Patrick Modiano Peers Into Moral Ambiguity
Few European writers today have been more consistently haunted by modern Jewish history than French novelist Patrick Modiano. The selection of works by Modiano available in English represent only a small fraction of his prolific fictional output. All his books, including “Dora Bruder,” (University of California Press, 1999), the brooding account of his search for…
-
The Schmooze Jewish Novels From the Finnish Saul Bellow
The modern history of Finland’s Jews, who during World War II fought on the Nazi side to combat the Russians, is genuinely surreal. It seems appropriate that the leading novelist of Finland’s tiny Jewish population — today estimated at around 1,500 people — should be equally expressive of a surrealist sensibility. Daniel Katz, born in…
-
The Schmooze How Jews Can Defend Animals without Invoking Treblinka
French Jewish philosopher Élisabeth de Fontenay has published books on Jewish themes, such as 1973’s “The Jewish Faces of Karl Marx” (Les figures juives de Marx) from Les editions Galilée, and on animal rights, such as 1998’s philosophical inquiry “The Silence of Animals” from Les éditions Fayard or 2008’s “Without Offending Mankind” from Les éditions…
-
The Schmooze Gil Ben Aych Breathes Life into France’s Sephardi Experience
On February 24, L’École des loisirs publishing group reprinted two minor classics of French Jewish writing for young readers: “The Hand-Towel for Your Feet” (L’Essuie-mains des pieds) and “Granny’s Trip” (Le voyage de Mémé). Originally published in 1981 and 1982, respectively, by French author, philosophy teacher, and wine merchant Gil Ben Aych, both books charmingly…
-
The Schmooze Dream a Little Dream of Tobie Nathan
The Cairo-born French Jewish ethnopsychiatrist Tobie Nathan author of a 2010 novel, “Who Killed Arlozoroff?” from Les Éditions Grasset about the 1933 murder of left-wing Israeli political leader Haim Arlosoroff, has also focused on psychiatry’s ultimate father figure, Sigmund Freud. In a 2006 novel from Les Éditions Perrin, “My Patient Sigmund Freud, Nathan offers a…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
News No Jews allowed: White supremacists are building a segregated community in Arkansas, but is it legal?
- 2
News Zohran Mamdani has represented Astoria’s Jews for 4 years. What do they think of him?
- 3
News Curtis Sliwa has a plan to beat Zohran Mamdani in NYC mayor’s race — and it starts with apologizing to Jews
- 4
News What Zohran Mamdani has actually said about Jews, Israel and antisemitism
In Case You Missed It
-
Opinion Right-wing insurrectionists tried to topple the German government in 1920 — it’s happening again in Trump’s America
-
Theater Can a kinky new Yiddish musical resurrect a lost art — and one man who got spanked to death?
-
Fast Forward Josh Shapiro’s Judaism was not why Kamala Harris snubbed him, new book claims
-
Yiddish דאָקטוירים פֿון אַן אַנדער שניטDoctors of a different sort
די ווילנער דאָקטוירים יעקבֿ וויגאָדסקי און צמח שאַבאַד זענען אויך געווען געזעלשאַפֿטלעכע טוער.
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
