During this holiday season, please donate (via Paypal) to Tikun Olam via my fiscal sponsor, Independent Arts & Media. I can’t recall any story I’ve ever written here over many years that threatened tremendous controversy and outrage, but which ended in a wonderful resolution. Tonight, you’ll read such a story. View this post on […]
Sally Rooney, BDS, and the Literary Boycott Commandeering Language on Behalf of Apartheid
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 […]
