Benjamin Ivry is a frequent Forward contributor.
Benjamin Ivry
By Benjamin Ivry
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Culture Remembering Broadway Legend George S. Irving From the Original ‘Oklahoma’
The Tony-winning character actor George S. Irving, who died on December 26 at age 94, exemplified art that conceals art. Born George Irving Shelasky to a Russian Jewish immigrant family, he adopted a stage name redolent of success, following the example of the hit playwright George S. Kaufman. Apparently the last survivor of the original…
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Culture Everything You Wanted To Know About Menorahs But Were Afraid To Ask
Hanukkah does not begin until December 24, but the historian Steven Fine has already captured the holiday mood in “The Menorah: From the Bible to Modern Israel.” Among other things, Fine’s book, published by Harvard University Press, explains the distinction between the seven-branched menorah used in the ancient Temple and the hanukiah, or nine-branched candelabrum…
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Culture Is Dr. Heimlich’s Maneuver All It Was Cracked Up To Be?
Dr. Henry Heimlich: Were his Maneuvers Beneficial or Misbegotten? Some doctors help humanity, although not always in the manner they intended. Dr. Henry Judah Heimlich, the American Jewish thoracic surgeon who died on Saturday, December 17, at age 96, entered popular culture through his much-publicized Heimlich Maneuver, or abdominal thrusts to stop choking. The lifesaving…
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Culture Zsa Zsa Gabor, the Hollywood Starlet Who Pointedly Forgot Her Jewish Roots
Jewish tradition indicates that eulogies should not be over-effusive, lest the undeserving deceased be judged all the more strictly in the next world. This problem arises afresh in the case of Zsa Zsa Gabor, who died on December 18 at age 99. Zsa Zsa (surely we can call her that in death as in life)…
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Culture Remembering Leonard of Mayfair, Stylist for Stanley Kubrick and The Beatles
How much the styles of Swinging London in the sixties depended on the creativity of Jewish craftspeople remains to be fully appreciated. Leonard Lewis, the hairstylist known as Leonard of Mayfair, who died on November 30 at age 78, was part of the mix. Raised in the Shepherd’s Bush area of west London, Lewis explained…
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Culture Paul Krassner Celebrates Abbie Hoffman’s 80th and Remembers Dropping Acid With Groucho
On November 30, fans of 1960s counterculture commemorate what would have been the 80th birthday of the American Jewish activist and anarchist Abbie Hoffman, who died in 1989. Hoffman was a cofounder of the Youth International Party, whose adherents were called Yippies, alongside Jerry Rubin (1938 –1994), Nancy Kurshan (born 1944), and Paul Krassner (born…
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Culture How Jewish Writers Learned To Loathe Fidel Castro
In February 1961, the Newark-born socialist, anti-Communist poet Louis Ginsberg wrote a fretful letter to his son. The poet Allen Ginsberg, among his many other vagaries, seemed over-optimistic about the Castro regime in Cuba, as his father cautioned: “Visitors tell of being in manipulated throngs chanting pro-Soviet and anti-American slogans in whose frenetic atmosphere it…
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Culture So, Why Were The Rothschilds So Generous?
The Rothschilds: a Dynasty of Art Patrons in France Edited by Pauline Prevost-Marcilhacy Published by Somogy Éditions d’Art, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, and Musée du Louvre Éditions. To paraphrase the old Yiddish joke, “If I were Rothschild, I’d be richer than Rothschild; I’d donate some art on the side.” This new three-volume study explains more…
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