Benjamin Ivry is a frequent Forward contributor.
Benjamin Ivry
By Benjamin Ivry
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The Schmooze French Feminist Cathy Bernheim Investigates a Hypnotic Ancestor
An interest in family roots can appear without warning. A new biography, “Hippolyte Bernheim: a Destiny Under Hypnosis” (“Hippolyte Bernheim, un destin sous hypnose”), appeared in March from Les éditions Hugo & Cie, recounting the life of a French Jewish neurologist and pioneer of hypnotic therapy. Its author is French novelist and essayist Cathy Bernheim,…
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The Schmooze Arnold Schoenberg and the American Dream
Coming to America is normally shorthand for the opening of opportunity: apparently not for Arnold Schoenberg. Commentators on modern music have long undervalued the Vienna-born composer Arnold Schoenberg’s years in America, from 1934 until his death in 1951. Admittedly, there were some disappointments, such as when the Guggenheim Foundation notoriously refused to grant Schoenberg a…
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The Schmooze Lydia Flem: Words Beyond Suffering’s Reach
The Belgian Jewish author Lydia Flem explored her family’s heritage in 2004’s “How I Cleared Out My Parents’ House” (Comment j’ai vidé la maison de mes parents) from Les éditions du Seuil. Holocaust survivors, Flem’s parents never spoke of their wartime sufferings. Flem, spared the horror of her family’s history, writes that her generation “had…
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Culture Henri Raczymow Takes Readers on Journeys Imbued With Jewish History
When Aby Wieviorka, the eminent Paris-based Yiddish translator, sought a collaborator for French versions of Mendele Moykher Sforim’s 1888 novella “Fishke der Krumer” (“Fishke the Lame”) and Oyzer Warshavsky’s 1920 novel “Shmuglars” (“Smugglers”), he turned to an ideal colleague. As French readers have long noted, Henri Raczymow combines literary refinement with a deep emotional understanding…
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The Schmooze Roberto Saviano, Scourge of the Mafia and Reader of I. B. Singer
To paraphrase Samuel Johnson, when a man knows he is to die shortly, “it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” The young Italian Jewish journalist Roberto Saviano, under threat of imminent death from angered mafiosi after his 2006 “Gomorrah: A Personal Journey into the Violent International Empire of Naples’ Organized Crime System”, has decided to concentrate on…
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The Schmooze CDs to Cool Off the Dog Days of Summer
Nothing distracts more from brutal estival heat than revitalizing musical discoveries with a refreshing dose of Yiddishkeit on CD. Turin-born Italian Jewish composer Leone Sinigaglia was admired by Fritz Kreisler and Arturo Toscanini, but fell into obscurity after dying at age 75 in 1944, just as he was being arrested in hospital by Nazis. A…
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Culture Being Where He Deserves To Be
Multiple exile was the singular experience of 20th-century Jewish musicians. Fleeing from fascist Europe, Soviet oppression and war, they sought audiences capable of giving them shelter and appreciating their talents. A key example is Vienna-born conductor and composer Georg Tintner, who worked in quasi-obscurity in New Zealand, Australia and Canada until late in life, when…
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The Schmooze ‘I’d gladly turn into a bird, to breathe the free air’
In Italy today, resistance against official anti-Semitism and Fascism has become an unexpectedly current topic. A counterweight is provided by current interest in Holocaust memorials and by an anthology which appeared on January 11 from Einaudi Editore, “Jews Under Persecution in Italy: Diaries and Letters from 1938 to 1945 (Gli ebrei sotto la persecuzione in…
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