Benjamin Ivry is a frequent Forward contributor.
Benjamin Ivry
By Benjamin Ivry
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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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The Schmooze Historian Marc Bloch and Family: Still Fighting the Good Fight
On March 3, to commemorate the centenary of the first publication by French Jewish historian Marc Bloch, CNRS editions reprinted Bloch’s “Historical Miscellanies” (Mélanges historiques). Carole Fink’s 1991 “Marc Bloch: A Life in History” from Cambridge University Press explains how Lyons-born Marc Bloch was an admirably lucid, groundbreaking historian, as well as heroic man of…
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Culture What He Contributed, What He Endured
On May 29, at the Théâtre d’Orléans, a gala concert, Hommage à Jean Zay, paid tribute to a minister of education and fine arts in the 1930s government of French-Jewish socialist Léon Blum, whose lasting impact on French culture is being newly celebrated. Son of a left-wing Jewish newspaper editor in north-central France, Zay was…
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The Schmooze The Yenta in Question Is Charles Busch
In anticipation of his eagerly-awaited new play, “Olive and the Bitter Herbs” which opens at Primary Stages on July 26, veteran playwright and actor Charles Busch continues to rake in the tributes. On June 27, The New York Innovative Theatre Foundation will present Busch with its 2011 Innovative Theatre Luminary Award at a benefit performance…
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