We’re back!
Housekeeping notes: This week, paid subscribers got this month’s ET Watch Home, a monthly essay on a different Czech New Wave movie. This month’s was Vojtěch Jasný’s All My Good Countrymen.
Paid subscribers also get the premium version of The Election Tricycle, a weekly podcast I co-host on this year’s elections in the United States, United Kingdom, and India.
With that! Onto news, views, and Jews.
THE NEWS
For Slate, I wrote about why events—even dramatic and tragic and historic events, like the Israeli strikes on the WCK aid workers and Iran’s strikes on Israel—aren’t shaking public opinion or policy in Israel.
This week on the Election Tricycle, we interviewed Matthew McGregor, a veteran digital campaign strategist, and spoke about how digital media campaigns have changed over the last 15 years and how they differ (and don’t) in our various countries.
This is a really lovely Tiny Love Story from Susannah Clark Matt about the last words her father said to her.
This is a good, upsetting piece on how the Hindu right has turned its eyes to other mosques since the consecration of the Ram Temple earlier this year.
MY VIEWS ON…
…seeing Chekhov plays with my mom!
My mom loves the theatre. Her dad and his brothers ran a restaurant near Times Square while she was growing up, so she used to say that the two luxuries she had as a child were food and theatre tickets. And I think she tried to instill that in us. One summer, she decided that we were going to learn the classics of the American songbook. West Side Story made a huge impact on us and we played the soundtrack as she drove us around from one summer activity to the next. And she brought us to plays, too. I saw Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat in Toronto as a little kid. Later, growing up on Long Island, she and my dad brought us into the city to see musicals and, when we were old enough, plays. In 2006, she, my grandma, and I saw Awake and Sing, which is relevant to the work I do now but which we saw at the time because my grandma had a crush on Mark Ruffalo. I did not have a sweet sixteen, but I did take three friends to see Spring Awakening.
In college, my mom told me to take a literature class. The second semester of my freshman year, I decided to listen to her, and took a class on Anton Chekhov. I became obsessed. I went to college in New York City, and there were, during my time there, a number of Chekhov productions put on. I saw The Cherry Orchard and Three Sisters at BAM. I saw a student production of the Cherry Orchard on campus. I saw The Seagull starring Kristin Scott Thomas and Peter Sarsgaard and a young Carey Mulligan at the Walter Kerr Theatre.
But the productions I remember most were with my mother. We saw Uncle Vanya starring Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard again (he loves Chekhov!) and Denis O’Hare and Mamie Gummer at Classic Stage Company. We went with a friend of mine from undergrad and saw The Cherry Orchard with John Turturro and Dianne Wiest there, too. And with my sister, we saw Uncle Vanya again, this time starring Cate Blanchett as the lovely, bored Elena. (We were also supposed to see Three Sisters at Classic Stage Company but my parents still lived on Long Island at the time and it was snowing and we couldn’t get into the city. I’m still upset about that as I didn’t love the production at BAM and I still have never seen a great Three Sisters.)
Our last Chekhov play together was almost 12 years ago. Since then, she’s seen two more productions of Uncle Vanya, both with my dad (I have not done that, but I have watched the movie Vanya on 42nd Street). And then, this past weekend, she, my dad, and I went to see Uncle Vanya at Lincoln Center. Steve Carrell was very good as Vanya; William Jackson Harper was great as Astrov; Allison Pill was maybe the best Sonia I’ve ever seen. The production was excellent. I was so glad I got to experience it.
More than that, though, I’m glad I’ve gotten to see so much Chekhov, and specifically so much Uncle Vanya, and even more specifically that I’ve gotten to see it with my mom and now my dad, too. The plays are about trying to figure out what it means to be alive, and how to sustain human connection, and what to hold onto as the world around you is changing. And ironically, as the characters have asked all of that of themselves, they have given me something to hold onto with my parents in my own life. What can we do? We must live and try to get tickets to see Uncle Vanya with our moms.
AND SOME STUFF ABOUT JEWS
The Forward has a piece from a college student (and president of the National Board of J Street U) about why the narrative that universities are a hotbed of antisemitism is unhelpful to Jewish students.
From Haaretz: “Two Israeli courts ordered in the last few days the eviction of 35 Palestinians from their homes in the East Jerusalem's flashpoint Silwan and Sheikh Jarrah neighborhoods, ruling in favor of right-wing Jewish nonprofits.”
From JTA: “A Holocaust research center founded by Steven Spielberg has gotten embroiled in a drama over campus Israel speech that is dividing the University of Southern California, where it is housed. The USC Shoah Foundation is downplaying its role in the school’s academics after the university’s valedictorian, a pro-Palestinian student who earned a minor in ‘resistance to genocide,’ touted her ties to the center.”
Sigal Samuel in Vox has a great piece on the history of Arab Jews and Arab Jewish-Palestinian solidarity.
Neil and I are going to see this stage adaptation of Hester Street on Sunday. I will report back!
For those celebrating: Chag Pesach Sameach! A Zissen Pesach! Happy Passover!
-ET