Benjamin Ivry is a frequent Forward contributor.
Benjamin Ivry
By Benjamin Ivry
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The Schmooze Never Mind Bismarck, Listen to Grünfeld
Who left more of a legacy to mankind, a German chancellor or a Jewish pianist? At the end of January, excited headlines announced that a previously unknown 1889 recording of the voice of Prussian ruler Otto von Bismarck was discovered by a scholar digging in the archives of sound pioneer Thomas Edison. An overlooked find…
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The Schmooze Neurologist and Anti-Nazi Partisan Davide Schiffer
The French Jewish neuropsychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Boris Cyrulnik has written widely about the importance of “Creative Disobedience” and how when faced by the Nazis, badly-behaved children often had more useful survival strategies than polite, well-trained ones. The eminent Italian neurologist Davide Schiffer has produced a memoir of his own war years, underlining the truth…
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The Schmooze The Arty Semite Guide to Upcoming Concerts
Classical music events both before and after Purim (on March 8) focus on dialogues redolent of Yiddishkeit, as New Yorkers and others will discover. On February 10 at Weill Recital Hall pianist Lia Jensen-Abbott will perform Fanny Mendelssohn’s “The Year,” a work inspired by the composer’s relationship with her brother Felix. The Hungarian Jewish composer…
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Culture Poet Laureate of the Airwaves
Norman Corwin, the writer and radio producer who died on October 18 at age 101, was often dubbed the “poet laureate of radio” by journalists, but he was rather more than that. Born in an East Boston tenement to parents of Russian-Hungarian Jewish origin, Corwin inspired the following paean of praise from one of his…
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The Schmooze Private Letters of a Noble French Statesman
Along with Léon Blum, Pierre Mendès France (1907-1982) was the only Jewish statesman ever allowed to serve as Prime Minister of France. Mendès France held that office from 1954 to 1955, following years in the wartime French Résistance. Like Blum, Mendès France was targeted for a multitude of anti-Semitic insults, which made him resolve not…
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Culture Freud Family’s Secret Letters
The marriage of Martha Bernays and Sigmund Freud in 1886 united two distinguished German-Jewish families who hardly need more publicity, although clearly the clan had an aptitude for it. Edward Bernays, a nephew of Sigmund Freud, would become known as the “father of public relations,” and Londoner Matthew Freud (a great-grandson of Sigmund) is currently…
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The Schmooze Tannhäuser and the Jews
Three central Jewish thinkers, Heinrich Heine, Theodor Herzl, and I. L. Peretz were all profoundly inspired by the medieval legend of Tannhäuser, a knight and poet who worshipped the goddess Venus. Herzl and Peretz were also fans of the 1845 opera based on this legend, by the notoriously anti-Semitic Richard Wagner. This paradox is explored…
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The Schmooze Newly Delighted by ‘The Book of Delights’
A doctor and the Angel of Death both kill, but the former charges a fee. Never send for a doctor, for one cannot expect a miracle to happen. A Jewish doctor wrote the above ironic observations, a remarkable 12th century Barcelona-born author named Joseph Zabara. The sole surviving work by Zabara is “Sefer Sha’ashu’im” (“The…
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