Benjamin Ivry is a frequent Forward contributor.
Benjamin Ivry
By Benjamin Ivry
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The Schmooze Jean Ferrat: France’s Musical Voice of Holocaust Remembrance
When the leftist French Jewish singer/songwriter Jean Ferrat (born Tenenbaum) died last March at the age of 79, the outpouring of affectionate tributes surprised some. After all, Ferrat had been retired to an Ardèche village in south-central France for a number of years. A detailed new biography has appeared from Les éditions Fayard, “Jean Ferrat:…
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The Schmooze Yehuda Lancry’s Memoir Written in the ‘Ink of his Tears’
The diplomatic career of Yehuda Lancry includes postings as Israel’s Ambassador to France in the 1990s, followed by service as a member of the 14th Knesset, and in 1999, as Israel’s representative to the United Nations. Yet before these lofty responsibilities, Lancry, who was born in Bujad, Morocco and emigrated to Israel in the 1960s,…
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The Schmooze Ludwik Hirszfeld: Great Medical Researcher in the Warsaw Ghetto
Readers do not expect witnesses to historical tragedy to be supremely intelligent, producing gimlet-eyed conclusions about executioners and victims. Yet Ludwik Hirszfeld, a Polish Jewish microbiologist and serologist (expert in blood serum) who died in 1954, did just that in a book issued last August to no fanfare from University of Rochester Press. “Ludwik Hirszfeld:…
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The Schmooze Leon Kirchner, a Sometimes-Grumpy, Permanently Inspired Composer
Contemporary American composers have few able defenders, and once out of sight, composers are often forgotten, so it is good to have a biographical tribute, out in November, from University of Rochester Press to Leon Kirchner, who died in 2009 at age 90. “Leon Kirchner: Composer, Performer, & Teacher” by Robert Riggs recounts the life…
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News A Chameleon on Show
December 2, 2010, marked the 30th anniversary of his death, but the French-Jewish novelist Romain Gary, born Roman Kacew in Vilnius in 1914, has never been more current. And as if to prove it, an insightful new biography, ?Romain Gary: A Tall Story? by David Bellos, appeared recently from Harvill Secker. Bellos, an expert translator…
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The Schmooze Pierre Dac, a Humorist in the French Resistance
Born André Isaac to an Alsatian Jewish family (his father was a butcher), the French humorist Pierre Dac became an unlikely hero of the French Resistance. After serving in the French army in World War I and being severely wounded — his brother Marcel died on the field of battle — Dac became a performer…
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The Schmooze Author Imre Kertész Enriches Western Culture
Parkinson’s disease has not deterred the octogenarian Hungarian Jewish Nobel Prize winner Imre Kertész from literary productivity. Adding to justly-praised books such as “Fatelessness,” “Kaddish for an Unborn Child,” and “Detective Story,” still available from Vintage Books, in October Kertész’s French publisher Les éditions Actes Sud released a new translation of “A Galley Slave’s Diary”…
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The Schmooze Classical Rediscoveries for the New Year
World War II delayed the just appreciation of many wonderful Jewish composers, such as Mieczyslaw Weinberg, a Russian composer who died in 1996. Trio Voce, a gifted piano trio, has nimbly recorded Weinberg’s multifaceted Trio, Op. 24 on Con Brio Recordings, bringing out the composer’s attachment to the works of J. S. Bach. Viktor Ullmann,…
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