Benjamin Ivry is a frequent Forward contributor.
Benjamin Ivry
By Benjamin Ivry
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Culture Novel Stance for a Serial Biographer
The Book of Job has inspired English-language masterworks from William Blake’s poetry to Muriel Spark’s novels “The Comforters” and “The Only Problem,” but France — especially Bible-resistant, post-Revolutionary and secular France — has lagged behind in such inspiration. Until now, that is. Pierre Assouline, a French-Jewish biographer, novelist and journalist born in Casablanca, Morocco, in…
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The Schmooze Pink Triangles: Gays, Jews and Gay Jews
Despite such pioneering exhibits as 2003’s “Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals: 1933-1945” at the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust, official commemorations of the Nazi mistreatment of gay men and women pose still-evolving problems, as a brilliantly researched study, “Pink Triangle: Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals and its Remembrance,” (Triangle rose. La persécution nazie des homosexuels et…
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The Schmooze Overlooking Henry Mayhew’s ‘Street-Jews’ in Dickensian London
The vivid scenes of a bustling and brutally poor metropolis at the heart of Empire make Henry Mayhew’s masterpiece “London Labour and the London Poor,” first published in 1851 compelling reading. With or without Jews. The Victorian social researcher originally published his work in three volumes and augmented it to four volumes in 1861 so…
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Culture J’Accepte
April 8 marks the 100th birthday of French-language aphorist Emil Cioran, and the celebrations in Paris include the publication of ‘Cioran: Mystical Short Prayers’ a philosophical appreciation by Stéphane Barsacq from Les Éditions du Seuil. A colloquium, ‘Cioran: Jubilatory Pessimism’ was held at this year’s Paris Book Fair. And on April 7, Les editions CNRS…
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The Schmooze Walter Benjamin, Book Collector Redivivus
Enthused readers of the German Jewish intellectual Walter Benjamin are impatiently awaiting the announced May 9 publication date of a landmark translation of Benjamin’s “Early Writings” from Harvard University Press. Until then, readers afflicted with Benjamania can delight in a catalog published by the Kunstmuseum Solingen in Germany, “Stellar Immortality” (Die Unsterblichkeit der Sterne, to…
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The Schmooze Adah Isaacs Menken: a Civil War-era Sexpot Remembered
The 19th century New Orleans-born entertainer and sex symbol Adah Isaacs Menken is still shivering timbers long after her premature death in 1868. Back in 2003, Renée M. Sentilles, a history professor at Case Western Reserve University, published an enjoyable scholarly analysis with Cambridge University Press, “Performing Menken: Adah Isaacs Menken and the Birth of…
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Culture A Jew by Choice: Elizabeth Taylor, 1932-2011
Whereas Judaism, unlike some other religions, discourages conversions, there has always been a certain amount of giddy excitement when a star, from Marilyn Monroe to Sammy Davis Jr., converts to the Jewish faith. Few, if any, such conversions, however, made the lasting impact of the ceremony at Hollywood’s Temple Israel on March 27, 1959, at…
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The Schmooze A French TV Host’s Ardor Emanates from Jewish Roots
For decades, a French Jewish host of chat show and variety programs on radio and television has been famous locally for filling a Johnny Carson/Ed Sullivan role, but with the likeability of a Mike Douglas/Merv Griffin. At 68, Michel Drucker, born in Normandy of Romanian and Austrian ancestry, has been looking back at his Jewish…
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Yiddish דאָקטוירים פֿון אַן אַנדער שניטDoctors of a different sort
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Yiddish ווידעאָ: ווען ייִדיש האָט געקלונגען אין די גאַסן פֿון מעקסיקע VIDEO: When Yiddish rang throughout the streets of Mexico
יעקבֿ פֿינקלמאַן באַשרײַבט אויך זײַן לאַנגיאָריקן פֿאַך — ווי ער האָט צוגעשטעלט וויסן אין טעלעקאָמוניקאַציע איבער דער וועלט
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Opinion Want to understand what’s wrong with the ‘pro-Palestine’ movement? This Palestinian can help
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