Benjamin Ivry is a frequent Forward contributor.
Benjamin Ivry
By Benjamin Ivry
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Culture Opera Star Marta Eggerth Dies at 101
The Budapest-born soprano Marta Eggerth, who died on December 26 at the age of 101, incarnated the fact that the frothy Middle European art-form of operetta had a vastly significant Jewish element. Both Eggerth and her husband the star tenor Jan Kiepura (1902-1966), Poland’s prefiguration of Mario Lanza, had Jewish mothers. This made life difficult…
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Culture Everything About Her Was Grand, Even Her Pettiness
December 14 marks the centenary of the American pianist Rosalyn Tureck. The legacy of Tureck, who died in 2003, is being commemorated with CD releases and a recital dedicated to her at New York’s 92nd Street Y by her student, guitarist Sharon Isbin. Critic Harold Schonberg called Tureck the “high priestess” of Johann Sebastian Bach…
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Culture The Jewish History of Jean-Paul Sartre’s Private Secretary
Ten years after his death, a French Jewish author hitherto celebrated chiefly for making philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre more sympathetic to Jews, is now earning attention for his own works. Benny Lévy, who died in 2003 at the age of 58, is being honored with the posthumous publication of his works, along with homages from students…
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Culture André Schiffrin, the Publisher Who Knew When the Party Was Over
André Schiffrin, who died on December 1 of pancreatic cancer at age 78, made a lasting impression as longtime managing director of publishing at Pantheon Books, followed by his co-founding The New Press, a not-for-profit. Yet as Schiffrin, born in France of Russian Jewish origin, recounted in his memoir, “A Political Education: Coming of Age…
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Culture World’s Oldest Living Holocaust Survivor Celebrates 110th Birthday
Alice Herz-Sommer, the Czech pianist and Theresienstadt concentration camp survivor, celebrated her birthday on November 26th. A Londoner for three decades, Herz-Sommer had received the tribute of “Everything is a Present,” a 2009 film by the noted British documentarian Christopher Nupen who has also worked on films starring Daniel Barenboim, Itzhak Perlman, and Pinchas Zukerman,…
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Culture Celebrating 200 Years of French-Jewish Composer Charles Valentin-Alkan
This month marks the bicentenary of the French Jewish composer and pianist Charles-Valentin Alkan (1813-1888). A new biography was published earlier this year in France, written by two devotees, Brigitte François-Sappey and François Luguenot. And pianists such as Pascal Amoyel and Alessandro Deljavan, have released recordings of his work, which range from the resolutely virtuosic…
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Culture My Dinner With Leonard Bernstein
Although marred by unexplained omissions and bowdlerizations, the publication of “The Leonard Bernstein Letters” brought to mind a dinner I attended at Bernstein’s Fairfield, Conn., home around 30 years ago. Unlike the interviewer, Jonathan Cott, author of “Dinner With Lenny: The Last Long Interview With Leonard Bernstein,” I did not ask the maestro any portentous…
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Culture Doris Lessing and the Jews
Doris Lessing, who died on November 17 at age 94, won the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature for her prolific writings ranging from autobiography to what she called “space fiction.” Sometimes overlooked was the lasting inspiration which Lessing, born Doris May Tayler in 1919 in Persia, drew from Jews and Jewish heritage. In 1925, her…
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