-
3 days ago | 
forward.com | Benjamin Ivry
For Pope Francis, who has died at the age of 88, one of the most intriguing personal brushes with Yiddishkeit occurred when he was 42. Born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Argentina on Dec. 17, 1936, the future Pope was psychoanalyzed by an unnamed Jewish woman psychiatrist in his homeland. As leader of the Jesuit order in Argentina, he revealed in a book of conversations with French sociologist Dominique Wolton, he experienced anxiety when smuggling refugees out of the country, ruled by a dictatorship.
-
1 month ago | 
forward.com | Benjamin Ivry
The recent White House shuttering of The United States Agency for International Development (USAID), founded in 1961 to fund programs in global health, disaster relief, socioeconomic development, environmental protection, democratic governance and education, will harm Jews and especially Israelis. But for the most part, Jewish reaction has understandably alluded to more general impacts.
-
1 month ago | 
forward.com | Benjamin Ivry
By Benjamin Ivry March 18, 2025The news that the current occupant of the White House has dismantled the Voice of America (VOA) by eliminating its budget hardly surprised attentive Jewish listeners.
-
2 months ago | 
forward.com | Benjamin Ivry
In Brady Corbet's The Brutalist, Adrien Brody plays László Tóth, a Hungarian Jewish survivor of Buchenwald concentration camp, with his customary emotional intensity. Brody's portrayal exudes a certain hysteria that belies the ultra-refined Marcel Breuer, a Hungarian Jewish architect whose story, along with some furniture designs, are echoed in the film, Corbet has acknowledged.
-
Jan 15, 2025 | 
forward.com | Benjamin Ivry
According to Margarethe Weissenstein, the Vienna-born Jewish author of The Power of the Charlatan, Casanova - who was born 300 years ago in 1725 - was an itinerant charlatan who manipulated credulous nobles and other moneyed clients through 18th century Europe with promises about numerology, supposedly derived from the Kabbalah.
-
Jan 7, 2025 | 
forward.com | Benjamin Ivry
The American Jewish singer songwriter Peter Yarrow, who died Tuesday at age 86, exemplified the paradoxes of assimilating in the world of pop music. Although he was never bar mitzvahed, following a secular upbringing, he wrote, and performed with his group Peter, Paul, and Mary the popular Hanukkah song " Light One Candle " as a pacifist response to the 1982 Lebanon War.
-
Jan 7, 2025 | 
flipboard.com | Benjamin Ivry
NowLOS ANGELES (AP) — Peter Yarrow, the singer-songwriter best known as one-third of Peter, Paul and Mary, the folk-music trio whose impassioned harmonies transfixed millions as they lifted their voices in favor of civil rights and against war, has died. He was 86. Yarrow, who also co-wrote the group’s …
-
Jan 7, 2025 | 
stljewishlight.org | Benjamin Ivry
The American Jewish singer songwriter Peter Yarrow, who died Tuesday at age 86, exemplified the paradoxes of assimilating in the world of pop music. Although he was never bar mitzvahed, following a secular upbringing, he wrote, and performed with his group Peter, Paul, and Mary the popular Hanukkah song “Light One Candle” as a pacifist response to the 1982 Lebanon War.
-
Dec 29, 2024 | 
forward.com | Benjamin Ivry
By Benjamin Ivry December 29, 2024Jimmy Carter, the nation's longest-living former president, died at 100 on Dec. 29. We are re-sharing this article, first published in September. To equitably understand the diverse stances towards Jews of former President Jimmy Carter, whose centenary is celebrated on Oct. 1, a precedent far from the stamping grounds of the peanut farmer from Plains, Georgia may be cited.
-
Dec 12, 2024 | 
forward.com | Benjamin Ivry
By Benjamin Ivry December 12, 2024The news that the Manhattan townhouse occupied by the Friars Club was auctioned on Dec. 10 at a foreclosure sale raises the question of whether some old Jewish social traditions are worth preserving, or are rightly doomed to oblivion. The Friars Club, welcoming showbiz folk and their fans, was founded in 1904, and although songwriter Irving Berlin (born Israel Beilin) was an early participant, it was not at first mainly a Jewish society. That changed with time.
