Benjamin Ivry is a frequent Forward contributor.
Benjamin Ivry
By Benjamin Ivry
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Culture In Chile, where Jewish writers fought bigotry in search of a literary utopia
Cristián Opazo teaches literature and drama at Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. In “Jewish Voices, Chilean Literature,” co-written with the Chilean Jewish author Marjorie Agosín, Opazo investigates how Jewish refugees in Latin America became literary heroes against all odds. Benjamin Ivry spoke to Professor Opazo about how these writers managed to achieve their lasting artistic…
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Culture How an Arab Schindler saved Jews during the Holocaust but still eludes recognition
Ronen Steinke, a German Jewish lawyer and journalist at the Süddeutsche Zeitung, has worked at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. His books include a study of the political function of war crimes tribunals since 1945 and a biography of Fritz Bauer, the German Jewish judge and prosecutor instrumental in the postwar capture…
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Film & TV How Dean Stockwell fought antisemitism and inspired Jewish moviegoers
Dean Stockwell, the Hollywood actor who died on Nov. 7 at age 85, is best remembered for appearances in such films as “Dune,” “Blue Velvet,” and “Married to the Mob,” in addition to the TV series “Quantum Leap” and “Battlestar Galactica.” Yet starting as a child actor at the beginning of his lengthy career, Stockwell…
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Culture Retrying the Dreyfus case, France flirts with a Jewish candidate’s antisemitism
On Oct. 26, French President Emmanuel Macron inaugurated the Dreyfus Museum in Médan near Paris, the first such historical collection dedicated to the unjustly accused Jewish officer Alfred Dreyfus. Macron’s visit underlined that you don’t have to be Jewish to be shocked by the French army’s perfidy in covering up its persecution of Dreyfus. Back…
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Culture Will this woman be the next Jewish winner of the Nobel Prize for literature?
After the deaths of Philip Roth and Amos Oz, two perennial runners-up for the Nobel Prize in Literature, this past year’s short lists for the award included only one Jewish representative, the French author Hélène Cixous. Born in Oran, Algeria in 1937, Cixous has written repeatedly about her upbringing in a German Jewish household, which…
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Culture For Mort Sahl, being Jewish meant being part of the opposition
The American Jewish standup comedian Mort Sahl, who died Oct. 26 at age 94, provided spontaneous garrulity that first galvanized audiences during the tight-lipped Eisenhower era. At a time when Senator Joseph McCarthy dominated Washington, D.C. politics, Sahl represented free speech. The English Jewish author Jonathan Miller opined that Sahl and other Jewish comedians made…
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Culture Who does hummus belong to — and could it have the power to bring peace to the Middle East?
Hummus, the dish of cooked chickpeas, tahini, lemon juice, garlic and spices is a national favorite in Israel and across the Levant. Cherished alike by diners of different faiths, hummus became the unlikely center of so-called Hummus Wars in 2008, when a proprietary spat arose between Lebanese and Israeli restauranteurs. This and related matters are…
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Culture In Brazil, 8,000 Christians have adopted Orthodox Jewish customs — a scholar is trying to figure out why
Manoela Carpenedo, a native of Southern Brazil, is an anthropologist and sociologist of religion. Her latest book “Becoming Jewish, Believing in Jesus: Judaizing Evangelicals in Brazil” (Oxford) analyzes the allure of Jewish history and observance for groups of Christians in South America, where around 8000 Christians across Brazil in a network of Pentecostal churches have…
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