In response to a few questions about that lovely car we have
our eyes on, there are (only?) 400,000 souls who have placed their names on the
wait list, each of whom has a $1000 bill on their credit card for this honor, fully
refundable if minds or plans change. So who knows?
On that subject, here was the clue for 1-Down in this
morning’s New York Times Crossword Puzzle
Autos with charging stations
6 letters, and I knew the 3rd letter was an “s”…..
TESLAS
Amazing timing, huh?
Back to the Oscars, one of the movies nominated for Best Picture was “Lion,” a film
based on the true story of a very poor family in India, a mother and her three
children. The two older boys, who seem to be about 5 and 10 years old, go off
to try to help earn some money. The little one is tired so his big brother
leaves him to rest while he goes off to find work. But the big brother never
returns (we later learn that he was killed that same evening), and the little
guy is left wandering around unable to find his way home. After searching for
his brother from place to place, narrowly evading a number of threatening
situations, he eventually ends up in an orphanage, from which he is adopted by
a lovely family from Australia. He has a wonderful life with this loving couple
but as a young adult he decides he must try to find out what happened to his
birth family. Through the miracle of Google Earth he eventually finds his way
back to his mother and his young sister, twenty-five years after having seen
them last.
This was a gripping story beautifully told. I am almost
surprised myself at how much I loved it and cannot recommend it highly enough. I can now see why it was one of the nominees for Best Picture. The actors
who played both the boy as a young child (Sunny Pawar) and as an adult (Dev
Patel) were outstanding.
The second movie we saw over the past few days was quite a bit less enjoyable, but extremely well done and an important film, a documentary called “Keep Quiet,” which received a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. This film is about a Hungarian man named Csanad Szegedi, the former vice president of the Jobbik far-right political party in Hungary. A few years ago he discovered, much to his initial hooror, that his maternal grandparents were in fact Jewish. In the Jewish tradition, Jewishness is inherited through the mother’s line. His grandmother, who had survived Auschwitz, had hidden her faith in the hopes of never again being persecuted. Szegedi hooks up with a Chabad rabbi in Budapest, Rabbi Boruch Oberlander, who helps him find his way back to his traditional Jewish roots. But not everyone in the Jewish community embraces him, and even law enforcement officials are uncertain of the sincerity of his transformation.
Barry and I did not grow up in traditional Jewish homes, and like many of our friends we became more involved in Jewish life in our twenties. We certainly can relate to the idea of people shifting their religious focus as adults. But that is just not the same as this. This young man was a virulent anti-Semite. At the end of the film he expresses the possibility that this newfound religion may not be a permanent transformation. I suppose time will tell.
A lot to think about.
Love,
Rebecca
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