Benjamin Ivry is a frequent Forward contributor.
Benjamin Ivry
By Benjamin Ivry
-
Culture Spark Flies
Muriel Spark: The Biography By Martin Stannard W.W. Norton & Company, 656 pages, $35 The Scottish novelist Muriel Spark is mostly famous for a single book, “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie,” made into an Oscar-winning film, and for her 1954 conversion to Catholicism. Now, a new biography by Martin Stannard offers fascinating new information…
-
The Schmooze Krauthammers Answering “Great Ignorance” with Jewish Classical Music
Years ago, if a French composer had too many Jewish associates, it was assumed he was Jewish too. Thus Maurice Ravel, of Basque origin, was included in “Judentum und Musik,” a 1937 Nazi publication, as noted in the well-researched “The Twisted Muse: Musicians and Their Music in the Third Reich” by Michael H. Kater. A…
-
The Schmooze French Actor Sami Frey: or ‘Beckett Judaizing Beckett’
The other evening, a solo performance of Samuel Beckett’s “First Love” (Premier Amour) at New York’s French Institute Alliance Française had an unexpected Jewish aura to it. The French Jewish actor Sami Frey, born Samuel Frei in 1937 to Polish Jewish parents deported from Paris and killed during World War II, will also perform it…
-
The Schmooze Remembering French Jewish filmmaker Claude Berri
Just over a year ago, Kaddish was recited over the grave of French Jewish film director and producer Claude Berri at the suburban Bagneux Cemetery, known for its large Jewish section. More up-to-date recognition is overdue, and Berri’s longtime companion, the glamorous French Jewish novelist Nathalie Rheims, recently produced a memoir, “Claude” from Editions Léo…
-
The Schmooze Julia Louis-Dreyfus and the French Jews Who Did Not Surrender
May 17 will be a landmark date in the family of actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Her grandfather Pierre Louis-Dreyfus will be 102. Beyond a highly lucrative career as a banker, Pierre is a noted war hero, one of the 42 still-living Compagnons de la Libération, a lofty distinction for war resisters. Like Louis-Dreyfus, a number of…
-
The Schmooze Véra Belmont: A Jewish Piaf Who Grew Up to be a Filmmaker
On April 27, at New York’s French Institute/Alliance Française, the noted French Jewish film director and producer Véra Belmont will introduce one of her films as the culmination of a three-week festival in her honor, running from April 6 to 27. At 77, Belmont has just published with Les Éditions Stock in Paris a touching…
-
The Schmooze Luise Rainer: Can an Actress’s Yellowface Be Forgiven?
At the Turner Classic Movies Classic Film Festival in Hollywood, which runs from April 22 to 25, the German Jewish actress Luise Rainer will embody a still-controversial paradox. Rainer, who turned 100 in January, will introduce a screening of one of her two Oscar-winning roles, as a tragic Chinese farmer’s wife in 1937’s “The Good…
-
The Schmooze Hours of Catherine of Cleves: for 15th century Jews, First the Good News…
A few weeks ago, at an absorbing lecture offered as part of the Morgan Library’s “Demons and Devotion: The Hours of Catherine of Cleves” exhibit which opened January 22 and runs through May 2, the art historian James Marrow explained the exquisite imagery found in the 15th-century Dutch illuminated manuscript on view. Included are such…
Most Popular
- 1
Opinion I’m a Jew of color. Ta-Nehisi Coates can’t apply U.S. lessons to Israel
- 2
Culture How my odious cousin Roy Cohn was responsible for creating Donald Trump — and me
- 3
Fast Forward Was the viral Ta-Nehisi Coates interview a hit piece or fair play? A journalism ethics expert weighs in.
- 4
Sports 5 Jewish things about the Mets — and why Jewish fans adore them
In Case You Missed It
-
Culture Columbus may have had Jewish heritage — that doesn’t mean he was Jewish
-
Fast Forward Christopher Columbus was genetically Jewish, Spanish researchers say
-
Fast Forward Israeli Deni Avdija sits out Yom Kippur NBA game; Jewish BYU quarterback suits up
-
Fast Forward US to send troops to Israel as Hezbollah ramps up its attack
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism