The Problem With Big Bird And Oscar The Grouch On The West Bank

The dilemma is “how to promote the ‘core values’ of Sesame Street, like optimism and tolerance, while at the same time portraying a version of local life realistic enough that broadcasters will show it … A central premise of each Sesame Street [international] co-production is that the show should be apolitical, but few of the writers seemed to think that made sense in a Palestinian context.”

Medieval Thinkers’ Liberal Idea Of God

“[They] understood faith primarily as a practice, rather than as a system – not as ‘something that people thought but something they did.’ Their God was not a being to be defined or a proposition to be tested, but an ultimate [and unknowable] reality to be approached through myth [and] ritual … And their religion was a set of skills, rather than a list of unalterable teachings.”

Making Art From Debris Of The SoCal Wildfires

“With the heat of the embers still glowing from one of the worst wildfires in California history, it’s difficult to imagine anything beautiful coming out of such destruction.” The group ART from the Ashes “takes [as] its mission to help individuals, businesses and organizations affected by wildfires by transfiguring fire site debris into works of art.”

Schlemiels, Scholars, Wannabe WASPs And Basterds: Jewish Identity On Screen

“More than 60 years after the Nazi genocide and the founding of the state of Israel, … and more than a century into the Ashkenazi passage through the North American melting pot, the old puzzles persist … In novels, on television and especially, lately, on movie screens, fresh expositions of ancient dilemmas and anxieties quarrel and contend. Nothing is settled.”