How come noone ever told me how delicious this combination is? On my way home from hearing David Grossman speak at the PEN festival’s closing event I stopped into Sparky’s All-American Food (333 Lafayette Street) and had a simple. warm and gooey grilled peanut butter and jelly sandwich. So yummy!

I’ll have to try an upscale one at the cute Peanut Butter and Co. (240 Sullivan Street).

Is it because my parents (and me, technically) were immigrants that I didn’t know about this All-American treat? What else have I been missing out on?

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Fame Junkies: The Hidden Truths Behind America’s Favorite Addiction

Fame Junkies by Jake Halpern subtitled “The Hidden Truths Behind America’s Favorite Addiction” is really interesting.

You can read about fame school, the expensive conventions precocious children go to be discovered and industries that have sprouted up to support this, celebrity assistants who subordinate their own lives for someone else (they have a support group!), a celebrity home mapmaker, obsessive Rod Stewart fans, police officers on stalker patrol, a retirement home for celebrities and more.

It also explores interesting theories and research.

Efforts to boost self-esteem in the classroom and in the home may have increased young people’s (already greater) tendency toward self-importance and narcissism. And in the age of reality television the perceived availability of fame means many young people do not have to face reality at all.

Belongingness theory – About craving social acceptance, social relations create happy chemicals in the brain and para-social relations with celebrities or characters on a show can induce the same thing.

Studies on Birging – basking in reflected glory (an example being college students wearing a school team jersey – when team wins vs. when they lose; also the language that gets used – “We won” vs. “They Won” or “They Lost” vs. “We Lost”)

A study with monkeys : ) on decision theory. Using a juice currency, monkeys were willing to pay to see frontal shots of dominant males or closeups of female hindquarters; and had to be paid [extra juice] to watch frontal female or subordinate males. It seems that acquiring this social information is useful for survival. Human obsession with celebrity may work the same way.

There’s lots of great stuff in here. Though I do think some of the studies created for the book could use some work. The research seems to reflect the commonsense idea that people who are secure in themselves and have stuff going on may need celebrity less in their lives. In healthy people, healthy doses can still be fun.

Catch A Mate

Catch a Mate by Gena Showalter is fun chic lit, a super quick, sexy read. Suspicious wives can go to the Catch a Mate agency to hire someone to tempt their boyfriends or husbands and confirm their suspicions. The women who work there as bait, especially Jillian Greene, have a very jaded and simple view of men – they are pigs – oink oink. Her opinion will of course change when explosive sparks fly with Marcus Brody – the male version of her.

While I enjoy historical romance (Johanna Lindsey) I do like well-done modern chic lit that reflects now. The business referenced in this book exists in our modern age (talk shows tell me so, it must be true). The one weird thing about the book – the female protagonist is involved in a sexual business, it is 2007, and her fantasy during a wild, anything goes romp is having the male protagonist go down on her. She has never had this experience and is surprised that he is an excited willing participant. Is that truly reflective of women’s experience in 2007? That makes me sad.

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Just Married

Just Married by director Ayelet Bechar was really good. It documents the difficulties of two couples Israeli Arabs who marry Palestinians from Gaza or the West Bank. As of 2002 there is a law prohibiting family reunification.

Suhad and Rabia are a young couple that met at university. To be together Suhad becomes an illegal resident in Jerusalem. The film depicts her change from vibrancy to depression as she stays in her home most of the time so she is not caught. In a depressing bit of circular beaurocracy, her husband Rabia (the one with legal status in Israel) requests a permit for her and is told he must file for Family Reunification but that no requests are being taken at this time and she cannot be given any other sort of document because she needs the one of family reuinification.

For the older couple on the film Kifach and Yazeed, the solution is to stay in Berlin until the law changes and they can go home. Kifach struggles to learn German and at the same time, she must be in Israel for part of the year so she does not lost her status as is threatened in one municipal office. She had been very active in the struggle for coexistence in Israel and has many photos with major Israeli political figures such as Shulamit Aloni and Ehud Barak. Her husband views Barak as slime and does not want to see the photo, there is elegant symmetry in the film as Kifach later confronts Barak at a conference in Berlin about this law keeping families apart.

There is also a beautiful symmetry as the film ends with both families giving birth to children.

It is a complex issue. The situations these people are in are terrible. They are being kept from having a family with the person they love in their homes. The Israeli government believes that this horrible law may be saving someone’s life; it feels it must ignore the fact that it is also adding much misery to many innocent civilians.

The law was ammended so that women above the age of 25 and men above the age of 35 may now apply for family reunification. The director was at the screening and gave the update that Suhad was about to have her birthday and would more than likely obtain family reuinification and that Kifach’s struggle continues as well.

It makes me feel lucky that all I have to deal with is a bunch of paperwork and a $1000 fee for a fiancee visa to the UK. Our revolution was a really long time ago. (Though, it does suck that the price doubled as of April 1st of this year.)

There is a great summary of the Israeli law involved from a recent Jerusalem Post article (Background: Terror plot may have blown family reunification By DAN IZENBERG, April 11, 2007) :

“Prohibitions on family reunification were first introduced by the Interior Ministry on April 1, 2002, following the suicide bombing at the Matza restaurant in Haifa’s Neveh Sha’anan neighborhood in which 15 Israelis were killed. The driver of the car bomb was a Hamas terrorist who had married an Israeli and carried a blue identity card.

Initially, the freeze on family reunification was total. No Palestinian who married an Israeli could begin the five-year process for obtaining residential rights or citizenship, and those who were in the middle of the process could not advance.

On July 31, 2003, the Knesset turned the administrative decision into a one-year law, which was periodically extended.

On July 27, 2005, the law was amended so that Palestinian women above the age of 25 and men above 35 could live with their Israeli spouses if they met security criteria. Younger Palestinians were still barred from living in Israel.

On March 21, 2007, the law was amended again and extended until July 2008. The current law provides a humanitarian committee to consider exceptional requests for family reunification from women under 25 and men under 35, but toughens the security criteria and extends the restrictions to spouses from countries classified as enemy.

The law in all its forms has been harshly criticized by human rights groups in Israel and abroad. In May, the High Court narrowly rejected a petition to overrule it in its second version. The Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Meretz MK Zehava Gal-On and the Israeli-Arab rights group Adalah have already declared they will petition against the newly amended law.

The human rights groups claim the law violates the fundamental right of every citizen to a family and is motivated by Jewish demographic concerns. The law prevents roughly 20,000 Palestinians from living in Israel with their Israeli spouses and also prevents them from raising families in Israel.

The government insists the temporary law is based on security considerations. Granting Palestinians Israeli identity cards and the right to unrestricted freedom of movement throughout Israel is dangerous, officials say.”

UPDATE: 29 Oct. 07: Israel to approve some 3,400 requests for family unification in one-time action

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You may have received a frantic email forward in recent days stating that the UK has banned Holocaust education. It is an extreme exaggeration. A study was done and one Northern school stopped teaching it in an elective setting because teachers felt ill-equipped to confront Muslim students’ antisemitism and Holocaust denial. The answer would be more teacher training in the case of the school. As for the rest of us, we need to get facts before forwarding something automatically.

Full story in short at Snopes and the Holocaust Educational Trust in London‘s response below.

From Holocaust Educational Trust in London:

After recent rumours regarding Holocaust Education in UK schools. We feel we have no option but to release the following statement.

16th April 2007

Dear Friend,

Over the past weeks there have been a number of rumours circulating via email regarding Holocaust education here in the UK. The emails suggest that the UK Government are removing Holocaust education from the National Curriculum and that in general British schools steer away from teaching what they might consider a ‘controversial’ subject. We want to make it clear that our understanding is the Holocaust is and will continue to be on the National Curriculum and therefore continue to be taught in all UK schools.

Background

These rumours stemmed from a piece that featured in a number of newspapers including the Daily Mail, the Guardian and Telegraph at the beginning of April. See the following links:

Daily Mail Link

Telegraph Link

Guardian Link

The news stories came about as a result of a report commissioned by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) and undertaken by the Historical Association. The report, ‘Challenges and Opportunities for Teaching Emotive and Controversial History 13-19 (TEACH)’, addresses both the challenges teachers face, as well as the good practise that is occurring when teaching all emotive and controversial historical issues such as slavery, the Crusades and the Holocaust. The full TEACH report is available on the Historical Association website:

http://www.haevents.org.uk/PastEvents/Others/Teach%20report.pdf

In light of this story the Holocaust Educational Trust would like to clarify what to our knowledge is the situation in the UK.

Holocaust Education in the UK:

• The Holocaust became part of the National Curriculum for History in 1991. It is statutory for all students in England and Wales to learn about the Holocaust at Key Stage 3 usually in Year 9 History (aged 13-14).

• Many students will study the Holocaust in Religious Studies, English and Citizenship lessons.

• The UK holds a national Holocaust Memorial Day on January 27th (marking the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau), and this is marked widely in primary and secondary schools across the country.

• The UK has a permanent Holocaust exhibition at the Imperial War Museum in London, visited by thousands of people each year.

• The British Government sponsors two students (16–18 year olds) per secondary school/ further education college to visit Auschwitz-Birkenau through the Holocaust Educational Trusts Lessons from Auschwitz Project (This is due to a £1.5 million grant from the Government every year from 2006-2008)

• School groups and private individuals visit the permanent Holocaust exhibition at the Imperial War Museum, the Jewish Museum, London, and The Holocaust Centre, Beth Shalom in Newark, and educational establishments work with resources and educational programmes provided by other important organisations such as the Anne Frank Trust (UK), London Jewish Cultural Centre, and the Wiener Library.

• Teacher training ensures that hundreds of newly qualified teachers are provided with skills and materials to ensure effective Holocaust education for their students.

• Existing teachers participate in training around the UK, and specialist programmes run by Holocaust education organisations including the Holocaust Educational Trust, Imperial War Museum and Beth Shalom.

Within the TEACH report from the Historical Association, there is one particular line relating to Holocaust education which has been the focus of the press and various alarmed emails. It features in the section addressing why teachers avoid teaching certain subjects and states: ‘… a history department in a northern city recently avoided selecting the Holocaust as a topic for GCSE coursework for fear of confronting anti-Semitic (sic) sentiment and Holocaust denial among some Muslim pupils’. (p15)

The key points regarding this statement are:

• This does not refer to Holocaust education on the National Curriculum-it is a post- 14 History GCSE course (publicly examined course)

• History at GCSE is not compulsory (only one third of pupils opt for history post-14) • This is an anecdotal response from one teacher in one school out of four thousand five hundred secondary schools in the UK. While we cannot say what happens in every single school, our understanding is that this is highly unusual and not general practise of teachers around the country.

• All schools can choose which history topics they wish to study for coursework at GCSE level.

• There is no suggestion that this or any other school is failing to cover the National Curriculum in teaching about the Holocaust at Key Stage 3, Year 9 (age 13–14). At no point does the report from the Historical Association suggest that the Holocaust be removed from the National Curriculum for England and Wales.

Obviously we and all Holocaust related organisations in the UK take this very seriously, however on this occasion we want to allay all fears and impress upon everyone that the Holocaust is not being removed from the National Curriculum. This particular incident does of course merit further investigation but in no way represents all the good work in our schools across the country.

Please do circulate this far and wide to all who have shown an interest in this particular issue and Holocaust education in general here in the UK.

Should you require further information please do contact us at the Holocaust Educational Trust

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program

Classic Stage Company is awesome again. Went to see a reading of The Tempest last night. The culmination of their Monday Night Open Rehearsal Series where you explore parts of a text with different directors and actors. It had Michael Cumpsty reading Prospero with Brian Kulick directing (full cast below). There are times when I go to a crappy show and am really impressed by the lighting or the scenery in service of something mediocre but a night like this reminds you that a good text and good actors are all you need.

Full Cast (Apologies for any errors. The program listed only their names so matching the actor to the character was via google searches and process of elimination in some cases.):

Craig Baldwin – Antonio
David Costabile – Trinculo
Michael Cumpsty – Prospero
Herb Foster – Alonso
Melinda Helfrich – Miranda
KK Moggie – Ariel
Luis Moreno – Caliban
George Morfogen – Gonzalo
Lorenzo Pisoni – Ferdinand
Steven Rattazzi – Stephano
David Skeist – Sebastian

Upcoming at CSC is an open rehearsal series for Aquila Theatre Company and The Iliad. I think I’ll skip that one but for those unafraid of the classics go for a really unique theater experience.

Discovered the artwork of Ted Lange via a boingboing link to his Son of Super Mario today with some great drawings based on The Tempest.

I don’t think that he is Isaac from The Love Boat.

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