Athol Fugard’s “The Road to Mecca” (2 cents)

The first Athol Fugard play that I ever saw was years ago at Arena Stage, “Sizwe Bonzi is Dead”; it was very powerful, particularly during years of apartheid in South Africa.  The next Fugard play that I saw was “My Children! My Africa!”, last year at the Studio Theatre, another play about race relations, this time focusing on the first integrated team competing in a nation-wide academic contest, the male black student, the female white student, and the black academic coach.  It was extraordinary.

This year, Studio started with another Fugard play, “The Road to Mecca”.  Set in apartheid South Africa, it is only tangentially a race relations play.  This is a play, factually based, set in an remote Afrikaans village, about an aging woman, Helen Martins, a widow who had grown increasingly isolated from her church and community, spending her time creating “art”, sculptures which she placed outside her house, and various forms of light (candles, mirrors, etc) inside her house.  The local Reformed Church minister is trying to convince her that she should move to an old folks’ home, that she can no longer live alone.  A young friend who lives 800 miles away, a 31 year old teacher who has her own problems, visits after receiving a “why am I still living?” letter from Martins.  Both the minister and the teacher want Martins to make her own mind up – the minister wants her to make her own mind up to move into the home; the teacher wants her to make her mind up to stay where she is.  Martins is understandably confused.

This is a play of extraordinary verbal emotion (sort of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf” in tone), requiring extraordinary intensity.  The three actors were excellent (Tana Hicken, Holly Twyford and Martin Rayner), holding the audience until the conclusion (and this is not a play where you know exactly where it is going).

It is based on a true story.  There was a Helen Marins.  Her home and 500 outdoor sculptures are a national monument in Nieu Bethesda, S.A.  She did have a young teacher friend in Capetown, although I doubt that the intensity of this play was anything but the product of Fugard’s fine mind.  The real end was tragic.  Growing more and more isolated, Marins swallowed lye and ground glass at the age of 78.  She was found still alive, transported to a hospital, and died after a three day interval that I cannot even imagine.

“The Road to Mecca”.  Definitely worth seeing.  Also, for information about Helen Martins, see http://africanhistory.about.com/od/biography/p/OwlHouse/htm.

Manoel de Oliveira’s Recent Films

Manoel de Oliveira is a Portuguese film director who made his first feature film at age 63, and will be celebrating his 100th birthday on December 12 of this year.  He has made eight or nine full length films, two of which were shown yesterday afternoon at the National Gallery of Art. His most recent film (last year) is being shown at 4 this afternoon; I may go, because it is a story of someone searching for the truth of the birth of Christopher Columbus – was he really Portuguese?

Yesterday’s two films were both French language, not Portuguese.  One starred Marcello Mastroianni in his last role; the other starred Chiara Mastroianni, the daughter of Marcello and Catherine Deneuve.  Marcello’s film was his last; he died shortly after making Journey to the Beginning of the World, the story of an aging Paris based director, and three actors, traveling through Portugal, visiting places important to the director in his youth, and meeting the aunt of one of the three actors, also of Portuguese descent (but who had never before been to Portugal).  Chiara’s film, The Letter, is a transposition of the 17 century French novel, The Princess of Cleves, to modern times.

Both films were very slow moving.  Both were beautifully photographed.  Each lacked any semblance of action.  Both were intellectually engaging.

There are certainly reasons to see these movies, but you don’t want to see them on a day when you are either restless or tired.

The Debate (2 cents)

I was disappointed that Barack Obama did not trounce John McCain in the debate, but he didn’t.  I am not certain that many independents will be moved into the Obama camp by the exchange.  Of course, what will be, will be, and I am never a very good judge of such things.

As to foreign policy, I thought that in fact, there were few differences between the candidates, in spite of what the campaigns and the pundits are saying.  Let’s look at what they said:

1.  On Afghanistan, they both said that more troops and more effort was needed.  Obama said that Afghanistan has been a step child to Iraq, but as to the future, there was no sense that they would act differently from each other.  (Obama tried to paint McCain as being insufficiently concerned in the past, but that is the past)

2.  The same is true with regard to Iraq.  They both want to end the war, with “victory” (my take: impossible) and honor.  (McCain tried to hook Obama with a ‘timeline’, but Obama said nothing about a timeline; again that was the base)

3.  Russia.  They both had very tough things to say about Putin and about protecting Georgia.

4.  Israel.  They both talk about protecting Israel.

5.  Iran.  They both talk about allies and sanctions (although Obama had a broader potential group of allies on the subject.)  McCain brought up Obama’s previous statement about sitting down with Ahmedijad without precondition; Obama said that that did not mean without preparation and without a decision by the president that it would be helpful to American security

They both sounded tough on terrorism an al-Quaeda equally.

But Obama was more polite than McCain – McCain was much more aggressive (“Senator Obama does not understand…..”).  I thought that might influence people to be more pro-McCain; you don’t want to take a chance on someone who does not ‘understand’.

On the economy, although there was attention only for the first twenty minutes or so, I thought that Obama did better than McCain, who suggested a spending freeze on all but a few categories of government programs, while Obama said that while spending was important, there were some programs that require more spending now, and some that could clearly be cut or diminished.  But even here, Obama did not attack McCain’s irrationalities of the past few days.

Finally, there are very strange dynamics here.  The present president is a Republican; McCain is a Republican.  But McCain attacks Bush as if Bush were a member of an opposing party.  So you have two candidates, a Democrat and a Republican, both arguing against a sitting Republican.  Obama tries to paint McCain as a continuation of Bush, but McCain continues to attack Bush, blunting much of what Obama says.  It makes Obama’s campaign harder.  It must also confuse Bush Republicans to a great extent.

It is al-Kuds day in the middle east.

Can anyone other than a mid-east Arab or Iranian imagine a day when people come out in the streets to celebrate and the celebrations include burning of American and Israeli flags, hatred slogans at Israel and Jews, Holocaust denial cartoons, and exhortations to suicide bombing?

I guess God did not make everyone in his image.

Not a sermon; just a thought.

Somewhat Rambling Thoughts on the Economy (5 cents)

Perhaps, these are more questions than thoughts…..

First, the problem:

It is too easy to say that the problem is simply “subprime loans”.  The problem is more the following:  the Fed kept interest rates too low, making the cost of money seem too affordable.  People were encouraged to borrow money to buy homes and to improve their lifestyles.  These loans included mortgage loans (often with adjustable interest rates) to finance the purchase of housing, and to refinance existing mortgage loans, as well as home equity loans and credit card debt.  There were at least two faulty assumptions – one that housing values would increase so that the collateral would be worth more than the outstanding secured debt, and two, that borrower income would increase, making the monthly loan payments more affordable.  Thus, as time went by, the assumption would be that the outstanding loans would become more affordable to borrowers with increased incomes, and secondly, that loans with adjustable interest rates would be able to be refinanced when the interest rates increased because of the increased value of the underlying real estate, the increased income of the borrowers, and the continuation of interest rates kept low by the Fed.

But the assumptions were false – because the other governmental goal was to keep inflation in check, and if you don’t have inflation, it is hard to assume increased income and increased real estate value.

Of course, there were scoundrels and con men in the mortgage business.  But the governmental policy facilitated their actions, not only the monetary policy described above, but also the concept of an “ownership society” as a hallmark of the Bush administration, including the intensive push for homeownership even for those who clearly were not in a position to maintain a home.

The thoughts:

1.  Even though some families borrowed unwisely, the foreclosure of homes should be discouraged.  One way to do this would be to permit homeowners to reduce their monthly payments, ballooning the reduced payments at the time the house is sold or refinanced, or even to enable homeowners to borrow governmental or governmentally insured loans which have no monthly debt service to enable their existing loans (to the extent that they cannot be modified) to be kept current.  If when the house is sold there are insufficient funds to repay these emergency loans, the loans would be forgiven with no income tax ramifications (that is, the normal taxes on forgiveness of indebtedness would be waived).

2.  The complexity of securitized mortgage loan instruments needs to be reeled back in.  With the very complex instruments that now exist, there are many problems, including lack of transparency, lack of flexibility, lack of connection between borrower and true lender.  This leads to large profits by investors and their principals, while the institutional lenders and insurers are caught because of various guarantees, shifting resources from what would otherwise be a greater amount of available credit.

3.  As the government loans money as part of a recovery program, it is crucial that repayment of these funds be secured as tightly as possible.  It sounds like everyone agrees with this.

4.  Along with the principles between discussed by federal officials, I think that this is a time to think about redirecting much about the United States economy to discourage excessive profit taking generally (as especially by some foreign interests), and to concentrate on:  eliminating the ever increase gap between rich and poor, investing in American industry (and ceasing to support moving jobs overseas), developing a plan to put people to work fixing up the American infrastructure, becoming less dependent on foreign fossil fuels, and of course creating a universal health care program.  I am not sure how you get there, of course, but I don’t think we do ourselves any favor by leaving the world as it is, even if we are able to get beyond the current credit/equity crisis.

The Jews of Kurdistan (1 cent)

I heard Ariel Sabar speak about his new book, My Father’s Paradise, last night at the DC JCC.  It was a fascinating presentation, and I would like to read the book.

His father, Yona Sabar, a professor at UCLA, was born in 1938 in a village called Zakho, in northern Iraq (Kurdistan), just a few miles south of the Turkish border.  The Jews of Kurdistan, perhaps 20,000 in number, had lived in small villages in the Kurdish mountains for millenia (literally, millenia), perhaps since the capture of the northern Kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians in the 8th century B.C.E.  They lived in small communities, did not isolate themselves from their Moslem (and Christian neighbors), but were totally and completely isolated from the rest of the world, maintained their own customs and language (a dialect of Aramaic, now called by some Neo-Aramaic, to distinguish it from the Aramaic of Kol Nidre, the Kaddish, and Jesus.

Their world was very stable – until the founding of the state of Israel, and the burgeoning anti-Semitism in Iraq and other parts of the middle east.  Virtually the entire community moved to Israel.  Sabar’s family settled in Jerusalem (it was 1951), and he and his siblings all became educated Israeli citizens, but Yona Sabar, the oldest sibling with the strongest memories of Kurdistan, could not pull himself from his roots, and (complete with a Ph.D. from Yale) has devoted himself to the preservation of the community’s language and culture.

His son, Ariel, growing up in the Los Angeles of the 1980s, was not interested, and in fact was more than a little embarrassed by his father’s background.  He wanted nothing to do with it, and became a journalist, writing for the Christian Science Monitor and the Baltimore Sun.  But, with the birth of his first son, he says that he realized that he was not the end of a chain, but a link within it, and decided to learn what he could, to pass it along to future generations.

Thus, this book, which is apparently mainly a family story, but necessarily as well a story of the history of the Kurdish Jews, a branch  of Judaism which did not record its own history and whose past is quite sketchy until recent times.

The presentation was excellent, I thought, and was supplemented by a series of terrific questions from the large audience.  The lecture was part of the Jewish Literature Festival at the JCC.

Amos Oz and Stelios Charalampopoulos (the long and the short of it)

Charalamp, opoulos, a Greek director with a long name, has made an hour long movie about Oz, the Israeli writer/Ben-Gurion University professor/peace activist with a short name.  The movie had its North American premiere last night at the Washington DC Jewish Community Center.

Oz is a short story writer, novelist, memoirist, professor, and outspoken political activist who is both loved and mistrusted by large segments of the Israeli population.  He is an original thinker, and a charismatic and captivating speaker both in Hebrew and English.  I have had the pleasure (and that is the right word) or hearing him speak on a number of different occasions.

Oz’s family memoir, A Tale of Love and Darkness, published in Hebrew and English a few years ago, is a masterpiece of a family memoir.  His cultured, educated parents cut adrift from the Europe they loved, eeking out a difficult existence in Jerusalem; his mother’s depression and suicide when Oz was 12; his rebellion against his Euro-centered father and escape to a northern kibbutz when he was only 15; his participation in the wars of 1967 and 1973; his emergence as a writer and the development of his political conciousness; his belief that peace is possible and his allegiance to his labor-Zionist philosophy.  All are on display in this wonderful book.

The film catches a good deal of this, showing Oz, in conversation with the director, at his house in Arad where he has lived for twenty years, in front of the flat in Jerusalem where he grew up, and at Kibbutz Hulda where he lived for over 30 years.  You grasp the tragic story of Oz’s family, the manner in which Oz was able to reinvent himself (including changing his name to Oz from Klausner), his feelings about Israel, and about the Israeli-Palestinean conflict.

And you certain pick up Oz’ personality and his cleverness and humor.  Humor not just to tell a joke; humor to make a point.  An example at the end of the movie where Oz, where Oz is bemoaning some of the trends of life in today’s busy world:  people, he says, are working harder than they should, to make more money than they really need, to buy things that they don’t really want, in order to impress people that they don’t like.

And, when I saw him last speaking in June, he had just returned from a successful lecture trip to China, where he said he had been very impressed by the positive and extensive interest that the Chinese academic community had in Israel and Judaism.  He said that he suggested in a speech at Beijing University that the Chinese and the Israelis could create a wonderful partnership.  “Together”, he said, “we make up 25% of the world’s population”.

I thought that the evening was marred, however, by the presentation made after the film by Eric Zakim, who teaches Israeli studies at the University of Maryland.  His much too long remarks seemed to wander far off the topic of the night, he expressed his appreciation of Oz as a “character” but said he did not think much of his writing, and his concepts of the relationship of Oz and of Hebrew literature in general to Israel society seemed well off the mark.   He was unable to recommend a particular Oz book to a questioner, asking the audience for help, and showing me that he really did not know his subject.  Not only did I think that he added nothing to the evening, I think that his participation was a negative, leading me to leave after his second overly lengthy and not quite responsive answer to the second on-point audience question.

May you live in interesting times?

What weird times!

We remained bogged down in Iraq, we seem to be stagnated in Afghanistan, Pakistan is upset at our arrogance, the economy has collapsed, we still don’t have an energy plan, Iran may go nuclear, Russia wants to be at least a regional superpower, we can’t figure out how to manage health care, Latin America has turned against us, hurricanes have devastated not only parts of Louisiana and Mississippi, but now large parts of Texas and recovery is slow, our job situation is abysmal, our auto industry shows no signs of recovery, travel is becoming prohibitively expensive  ……..

This is the Bush legacy, I guess.

But what will happen now?  Bush has deferred to Secretary Paulson to get us out of the economic mess.  He has become the lamest of lame ducks.  Everyone abroad thinks that they can take advantage of us.  And, if Putin is an example, they are probably right.

And we are 6 weeks from an election, with both candidates running against the Republican administration.  But has anyone noticed that Obama seems quite sincere when speaking, and that McCain seems like, if he wasn’t reading the speech prepared by someone else, he wouldn’t know what to say at all?  And has anyone noticed that McCain and Palin both (I guess because of their ghost writers) seem to be saying mistruth after mistruth?  If so, where is the outrage?

These are weird times, as I said.

Memory Loss (one cent)

Last night’s dinner table conversation included discussions about people we knew (elderly, and not so elderly) who suffered from Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia or memory loss.  It must have affected me, because throughout the night (although I slept well enough), I had anxiety-provoking dreams about memory loss.  And I mean anxiety-provoking.

I was trying to remember the name of the city that my college was in.  It was not my actual college, but had the name of an actual college that is in New York.  I couldn’t remember the name of the town, and I thought the town was in California.  I looked at maps of California (the San Francisco area particularly), and none of the names seemed familiar.  I thought and I thought and I thought, and I grew more and more frustrated not knowing the name of my college town.  (It was only after I awoke and remembered the dream that I realized that the city in which the college is located is 3000 miles from California.)

I went to a lecture (or maybe a concert or a play) with a friend.  My friend went into the auditorium first and told me he/she would save me a seat.  I came in a few minutes later.  I knew that someone was saving me a seat, but I couldn’t remember who I came with.  I looked at the entire auditorium, row by row.  No one looked familiar; no one motioned me to a seat.  The frustration increased.

I was with a large group of people.  I don’t think we were touring, but we were part of a regular group, or class or something.  Our plan was, on the given day, to go to some location where you were not allowed in unless you had made a reservation to come within the past 30 days.  There was no way to check to determine if you had made a reservation.  The job of making the reservation was mine, and no one else’s. I had no idea if I had made a reservation or not.  The location was difficult to get to; it was a major trip.  I was afraid that we might get there and not be able to get in because I had neglected to make the reservation.  I was petrified that my memory loss secret would be discovered.

Were these the only three elements of memory loss in my dreams of last night?

I honestly don’t remember.

A Short Trip to NY (40 cents)

We took the 7:30 a.m. Amtrak on Monday, and arrived at Penn Station just about on time before 11 a.m.  It is a relatively short walk to the Center for Jewish History on West 16th Street, and I arrived well before the 12 noon start of the board meeting of the American Associates for Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.  I had never been to the Center before; I was impressed.  The Center is the home to four separate organizations, who have separate administrative space and exhibition space, but share resources, including the joint use of libraries and archives.  The organizations are the American Jewish Historical Society, American Sephardi Federation, Yivo Institute for Jewish Research, Leo Baeck Institute, and Yeshiva University Museum.  You can check on activities at www.cjh.org.

After our board meeting and informal lunch, we had a tour of the facilities, looking at the excellent temporary exhibit on the Yiddish Theater (it closes October 31), a photographic exhibit on the last emigration from Yemen (1993), paintings by Stella Cohen (African/Jewish artist), and an exhibit of Jewish chaplains in the military during and immediately after World War II.  We also saw some of the libraries containing research facilities as well as rare books, and learned about the architecture and the permanent art work in the building.  I thought we saw it all, but looking at the web site, I see that there are other exhibits, as well, that just passed us by:  65 paintings by Shoshanna, an Austrian painter, an exhibit on Zionism and the formation of Israel, medieval Jewish treasures from the middle ages, culled from a private collection in Erfurt, Germany, an exhibit on Viking trading, and one on I.J. and I.B. Singer.  Where could they have been?  (My next trip to NYC is in November; virtually all of these will be gone).

After the tour, two member of the BGU faculty spoke to us.  It was the fourth time that I recall hearing Professor (emeritus) Ilan Troen, who also is on the Brandeis Faculty, where he heads an Israel Studies program.  He spoke very nicely about the concept of Israel studies as the academic study of an entire society, not only of the Arab-Israel conflict, and how Brandeis has pioneered this concept in conjunction with BGU and how much interest there is in it (and should be) amongst diverse groups including the Chinese (for whom Israel as a young ethnic oriented state can serve as a model) and Turks (who are looking to combine Islam and democracy and are interested to see how/if Israel combines Judaism and democracy).  The other speaker, whom I had not heard of before, was Hamutal Bar-Yosef, a poet and scholar of Hebrew literature, who talks about the centrality of this literature to Israel society in general, and whose presentation was extraordinarily impressive.  We were given signed copies of their latest books: “Night Morning”, a collection of poems (in translation) by Bar-Yosef, and Jews and Muslims in the Arab World by Troen and Jacob Lassner.

We then attended a reception (good passed food/hard-to-drink wine), where we got to speak with each other informally, and then heard a presentation by Moshe Arens, former Israeli politician.

From the Center for Jewish History, we went to Molyvos, a Greek restaurant on 7th Avenue, where we had eaten a few times before.  I had a delicious halibut dinner, probably the best food at the table.  When you eat at Molyvos, you know you are in New York (and think you are in New York of the 1950s, not the 2000s).  The decor is heavy and somewhat formal, although the mood is very contemporary.

We were concerned about our hotel, the Days Hotel on West 94th Street, but need not have been.  The lobby is very unprepossessive, the elevators should be replaced, and the hall carpeting shows its age and then some, but the room was large enough (not always the case in New York), very clean, had a comfortable bed and, most surprisingly for Manhattan, was quiet, with no intruding outside noise.

On Tuesday, we wandered.  We walked up 7th Avenue to the Columbia campus, but then walked left the few blocks to Riverside Park and then down through the Park nature reserve almost to the level of FDR Drive; then back up, down Riverside drive past the big church to Grant’s Tomb, where we were very impressed by ranger David Stoughton, who was both knowledgeable and very friendly, and by the restoration work going on at the 400 feet of mosaic tiled benches outside.  We then walked through the campus, stopping to see a dance performed by a group from Bhutan, brought over to help celebrate the opening of an exhibit on Bhutan at the Rubin Museum (on 15th Street).  I had been to the Rubin Museum a year or so ago; it also is a remarkable place.  We then walked down the many, many steps crossing Morningside Park, had lunch at a small organic food store just north of 110th Street, and dipped into the northwesternmost corner of Central Park before taking the subway to the Half-Price ticket stand in Times Square and buying tickets for the first night of previews of Chekhov’s “The Seagull”, with much of the well-reviewed London cast.  We also looked at the Public Library’s 5th Avenue Library Store, and wandered a bit more mid-town, before having a Brazilian dinner at Ipanema.  The food was good (if not great), but I had a yucca croquette with ground beef inside that was a real treat.  We had a very nice talk with our Italian/Brazilian waiter about safe travel in Brazil.  We’d (I’d) like to go.

The play was enjoyable but the inconsistency of the cast left something to be desired.  (I’ll try to review this separately).  After the play, we took a subway back uptown to the hotel.

After such an accomplishment filled Tuesday, Wednesday was much looser and enjoyable, if a bit rougher around the edges.  We walked back up from 94th to 110th, stopping at a bakery for coffee and a croissant, and then crossed Central Park at the top, looking at the lakes (where fishing was the in-thing), and the beautiful topography, before reaching 5th Avenue, and then Madison Avenue, where we looked for lunch.  Our memory of Madison Avenue was that it was gallery filled, and food starved.  Up at 110th Street, there is nothing but lower income residential buildings, and then you walk past Mt. Sinai Hospital facilities, and you reach a block with a number of deli/lunch type restaurants, one of which we chose to eat in.  The food was very ordinary at best; we could have done better.  And, in fact, had we walked another five blocks or so south, we would have.  At any rate, it was a rest, as was the next place we stopped, a very nice organic coffee shop called Le Pain Quotidian.  Then, a shoe store, a clothing store, and a taxi back to the hotel to pick up our clothes, and then down to 33rd Street, where we waited for the 5:30 Bolt Bus to bring us home.

The bus left at 5:40, made one short and one longer (15 minute) stop, and still arrived at 11th and G at 9:45.  Pretty impressive.  The bus was very comfortable, much more so than the Vamoose I had taken a few months ago.

A good, if tiring trip.  Nice to be home.