Sally Rooney ignited the latest hasbara tempest-in-a-teapot with her announcement that she would not be translating her latest novel, Beautiful World, Where Are You? into Hebrew with her current Israeli publisher: The statement expressed her desire to support the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement (BDS), a campaign that works to “end international support for Israel’s oppression […]
Le Chambon: It Takes a Village…to Save Jews
Tonight, a small detour from my usual subjects. When I was a UCLA graduate student in 1978, I studied Yiddish with Prof. Janet Hadda. During that year, she asked the class if they would meet with a filmmaker who was planning a film on Yiddish in America. The director was Pierre Sauvage, a Franco-American documentary […]
Iran: Graphic Art Confronts the Virus
As the Trump administration turns the screws ever tighter on the Iranian people with worsening sanctions, it’s critical to remember Iran and its people are as human as we are; that they are suffering as much or more than we are with the Covid19 epidemic; and that they deserve all the compassion that any nation […]
Israel Lobby Criminalizes Children’s Books
A few years ago, Iranian author and Rutgers faculty member, Golbarg Bashi, published a children’s alphabet book, P is for Palestine (now out of print). It is an abecedary for children, teaching them words associated with the Palestinian struggle for justice and national rights. Somehow the book has become a cause celebre for the […]
