Marriage Story

When I last wrote, we had returned to New York and Barry was embarking on a week of teaching his course to a group of radiation oncology residents in Israel. He was up well before the crack of dawn every morning this past week, which left us both fairly exhausted, so we were happy not to leave the house all weekend.

It is quite amazing how one can, these days, without getting all dressed in warm winter clothing and heading out into the cold, see a new film right in the comfort of our own family room. So, although it is playing at a number of theaters in New York, we chose to watch it the new film, “Marriage Story,” on Netflix.

It probably comes as no surprise that this is not a happily-ever-after tale. This Noah Baumbach story follows the two main characters, actress Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) and theater director Charlie (Adam Driver) Barber through the dissolution of their once seemingly happy marriage. It is not a pretty story, and it is particularly painful to watch the impact on their young son, Henry, played by Azhy Robertson. As the film opens, Nicole is offered a role in a television series and takes off for Los Angeles with their son, while Charlie remains in New York where he is about to open a new play.

It is no surprise that this does not work as a long-term arrangement, but things between the two of them grow quite ugly. I suppose it is a tribute to the writing and acting that it is rather painful to watch the dissolution of what had seemed a reasonable relationship. After a year of shuttling between New York and Los Angeles, Charlie takes on a directing role in Los Angeles, and although by then Nicole has already moved in with a new partner, there is at least some hope that they will be able to maintain a civil enough relationship to be decent parents to Henry.

Have a great week.

Love,

Rebecca

The return of winter

It is the first of December and there is snow falling. This cannot bode well for the weeks and months ahead. The weather forecast indicates that this will continue on and off into Tuesday.

As a result of listening carefully to the predictions, we did something we virtually never do: we drove back to New York from Sharon after Shabbat. Although it ends early Saturday night at this time of year, the traffic was quite heavy, and the ride took a good hour longer than the usual 3½ hours it usually takes. But we arrived home safe and sound, and the flakes began to fall by late this morning, validating our decision.

Having said all that, we still regret having to make that decision, because it cut short the time we had with our family. Still, we did manage to have some fun. In order to avoid the eve-of-holiday traffic, we had arranged for our usual Wednesday house cleaning to be done on Tuesday, and left New York that afternoon. On Wednesday, the schools had early dismissal, so we took Eliana and Ella to see “Playing with Fire.” I am not even going to dignify this movie with a full review, but it did have a few amusing lines and the girls enjoyed it, which was, after all, the main goal of the exercise.

On Thurday morning we headed off with Dina and family in a cold, light rain to the nearby town of Dedham, where all 6 of them ran a 5K “Turkey Trot.” This has become fairly popular, with similar races in a slew of small towns in the area. Technically the two little ones participated in jogging strollers pushed by their parents. Ella has gotten into running with Dina, and Joshua, who had never run such a race, did quite well, arriving at the finish line well before the rest of the group. The rain finally stopped about midway through the race.

Joshua came over to watch some sports with Barry for the afternoon, and then we all headed over to Simmie’s house for a huge Thanksgiving feast with our daughters and their families, who were joined by Ronen’s parents and his sister and brother-in-law and their four children, so we were a group of twenty in total. It was a “Thanksgiving dinner that couldn’t be beat,” to steal a phrase from Arlo Guthrie.

We spent Friday morning with Julia, playing games and drawing and watching a movie. She is really such a joy to have around.

On Shabbat we had lunch with Dina and family. And as soon as it ended, we packed up the car and headed back to New York.

Barry has a busy week ahead. Early this morning – at 6 am local time – he taught the first of five mornings of lectures to a group of radiation oncology residents at the various hospitals in Israel. For over thirty years, he had travelled to Israel (or in two instances, it was actually in Istanbul and included residents from a variety of countries throughout the Middle East) every five years or so to teach this course. He wanted to be able to continue to do this but was reluctant to take on the travel, because it would keep him away from me for too long and is simply exhausting. So, he told the organizers that he would be happy to teach if they would allow him to do so remotely, which these days, with the wonders of modern technology, is actually quite feasible. The first sessions this morning went quite smoothly.

Of course, since we arrived home rather late last evening, we have really burned the candle at both ends, and although it is only mid afternoon we are definitely starting to slow down.

I hope all of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving, and if you are in the path of this storm, which is quite large and intense, just stay safe and warm!

Love,

Rebecca

The history of an iconic Thanksgiving song

Thanks to my sister Wendy for passing along the following clip from the 29^th November 1965 edition of The Berkshire Eagle, a Pittsfield, MA paper which has been published daily since 1892.

And no Thanksgiving would be complete without listening to Arlo himself, here performing his iconic song at the 2005 Farm Aid benefit concert.

Have a healthy and enjoyable holiday! 

Love,

Rebecca

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

We had a lovely Sunday. In the afternoon we went to see “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” a film based on the life of Fred Rogers. Mr. Rogers was played by Tom Hanks, who really did an amazing job of capturing his voice, body language, and facial expressions. It was almost uncanny, and after a few moments you could easily believe you were in fact watching Mr. Rogers! I believe that the story is based on actual events in the life of Fred Rogers. It centered around the relationship between Mr. Rogers and journalist Tom Junod, played by Matthew Rhys), who reluctantly accepted an assignment from his editor at Esquire Magazine to write a profile of Fred Rogers. He started the task with a combination of annoyance and cynicism, but Mr. Rogers managed to turn the tables on the reporter and quickly became the one asking the questions and ultimately helping Mr. Junod come to terms with the sources of pain and anger in his own life. Although the movie became a bit sappy towards the end, this did not significantly detract from the beautiful story and the amazing acting. Unlike the beloved television show, this is not a film for children, but certainly one for adults who share Fred Rogers’ love of children.

  

We had a quick dinner and then headed over to the 92^nd Street Y to a discussion between David Rubenstein, co-founder of the Carlyle Group, and Doris Kearns Goodwin, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, on the topic “what can the great leaders of the past tell us about today’s critical times?” By way of background:

David M. Rubenstein is a co-founder and co-executive chairman of the Carlyle Group, one of the world’s largest and most successful private equity firms. Mr. Rubenstein is Chairman of the Boards of Trustees of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Smithsonian Institution and the Council on Foreign Relations. Mr. Rubenstein is an original signer of The Giving Pledge and a recipient of the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy and the MoMA’s David Rockefeller Award, among other philanthropic awards. The host of The David Rubenstein Show on Bloomberg TV and PBS, he lives in the Washington, DC area.

Doris Kearns Goodwin’s interest in leadership began more than half a century ago as a professor at Harvard. Her experiences working for LBJ in the White House and later assisting him on his memoirs led to her bestselling Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream. She followed up with the Pulitzer Prize-winning No Ordinary Time: Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II. Goodwin earned the Lincoln Prize for the runaway bestseller Team of Rivals, the basis for Steven Spielberg’s Academy Award-winning film Lincoln, and the Carnegie Medal for The Bully Pulpit, the New York Times bestselling chronicle of the friendship between Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft. Her latest book is Leadership: In Turbulent Times.

They’ll discuss Rubenstein’s new book, The American Story: Conversations with Master Historians, which takes us on a sweeping journey across the grand arc of the American story through revealing conversations with today’s greatest historians, Goodwin on Abraham Lincoln; David McCullough on John Adams; Jon Meacham on Jefferson; Robert Caro on Johnson; Bob Woodward on Nixon, and more. Goodwin’s recent book is Leadership: In Turbulent Times, a highly acclaimed New York Times bestseller, which draws upon the presidents she has studied most closely to show how they recognized leadership qualities within themselves and were recognized as leaders by others.

Nothing I could possibly write here would do justice to their fascinating discussion. I do not consider myself a history buff by any means but this really was quite a moving evening. Particularly memorable was Ms. Goodwin’s outline of the six essential traits a president needs:

1. Empathy
2. Resilience
3. Communication
4. Openness
5. Impulse Control
6. Relaxation

You can read some of the details here:

https://www.history.com/topics/doris-kearns-goodwin-on-presidential-leadership

And here is a clip from a recent interview on “CBS This Morning.”

As we head into the Thanksgiving holiday and weekend, let us all try to be mindful that the things that tie us together as a human race are far more important than the things that tear us apart.  

Love,

Rebecca

Latin lesson

Let me just say at the outset that I am not a lawyer, have never studied law, and therefore cannot in any way claim that what I am about to write here has any veracity.

We have been hearing endlessly about an alleged “quid pro quo.” On the assumption that much of the American public is not able to absorb the meanings of Latin phrases, let alone recognize that they are long established concepts in our legal system, the media and politicians have come to focusing on bribery and extortion, which I suppose they assume people can better understand.

The way quid pro quo is being used currently is based on the definition of this term as referring to a favor or advantage granted or expected in return for something. But in that case, is quid pro quo the right phrase to use to describe the actions of which the President is being accused? I am not quite sure how this came to be the misdeed of which Mr. Trump is accused, although it may well have been his own insistence that there was “no quid pro quo here.”

The main reason given by the House of Representatives for moving toward impeachment comes from a well-documented conversation between President Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky, the Prime Minister of Ukraine. In response to Mr. Zelensky’s request to President Trump to release the aid package previously promised to Ukraine, the President said “I would like you to do us a favor though.” The particular favor for which the President was seeking Ukraine’s assistance was providing negative information on the former Vice President of the United States and current candidate for President, Joe Biden, and his son Hunter.

So how does all of this relate to impeachment? Impeachable offenses fall into the following categories:

• Bribery: the offering, giving, soliciting, or receiving of any item of value as a means of influencing the actions of an individual holding a public or legal duty

• Treason: the crime of betraying one's country, especially by attempting to kill the sovereign or overthrow the government

and

• Other high crimes and misdemeanors: allegations of misconduct by officials. Offenses by officials also include ordinary crimes, but perhaps with different standards of proof and punishment than for non-officials, on the grounds that more is expected of officials by their oaths of office. Indeed, the offense may not even be a breach of criminal statute.

The first category would seem to be most relevant in this case. It will ultimately be in the hands of the American people and our elected officials to determine whether any of the President’s actions meet this definition. 

But simply the fact that we are having this discussion, although perhaps an interesting civics lesson, is an incredibly sobering thought. Having spent perhaps too much of the past two weeks absorbed in watching the hearings, I can only say that the return on Friday of “The Price is Right” on daytime television was a most welcome relief!

Love,

Rebecca

A very busy week

Over four days last weekend, basketball teams from Jewish high schools all over the country travelled to Los Angeles for the 5^th annual Steve Glouberman^Z”L (an avid basketball player and fan who unfortunately died four years ago at the age of 46, leaving a wife and three children) Basketball Tournament.

Last week, Joshua travelled with the Maimonides High School basketball team to play in the 5^th annual Glouberman Tournament. The M-Cats, as the team is known, had an impressive showing, winning 3 of their 4 games.

2019 Glouberman Tournament Scores

Date	Day	Time	Location	Game	Score
11/6/2019	Wednesday	6:00 PM	JCC	Maimonides vs Hebrew Academy	63-47
11/7/2019	Thursday	5:00 PM	Shalhevet	Maimonides vs YULA	66-60
11/8/2019	Friday	12:00 PM	JCC	Maimonides vs Hebrew Academy	58-60
11/9/2019	Saturday	8:30 PM	Pressman	Maimonides vs YULA	59-52

The games at JCC and Shalhevet were made available through a video link, and we managed to watch them. Joshua continues to be the youngest member of the team but he played more this year than last, so it was quite a thrill to see him on TV! With the three-hour time difference, the Friday game, which had been neck and neck the entire time, ended just minutes before the start of Shabbat on the east coast.  

We still had a lovely Shabbat. Simmie and family came to our apartment for dinner, and we had Shabbat lunch with Dina and family (minus Joshua, of course). On Sunday we had brunch with one of our “old” friends and former Sharon neighbor. Hilary’s first husband, Barry ^Z”L, died four years ago, and she recently married a fellow who had also been widowed. It was really wonderful to meet Bob and get to spend some time with both of them.

Barry barbequed for all twelve of us when Joshua returned on Sunday evening. We headed back to New York on Monday morning.

I had a couple of relatively quiet days, and then spent the better part of Wednesday at MSKCC, where I had a scan which looked good (yeah!), saw Dr. Iyer, and received my pembrolizumab treatment. Pretty much every room in the unit had the TV tuned in to the impeachment hearings. I would rather have been watching “The Price is Right”!

Have a great weekend.

Love,

Rebecca

Where's My Roy Cohn?

“Where’s My Roy Cohn?” is reportedly what President Trump said to federal investigators who were looking into interference in the 2016 presidential election. Roy Cohn was Mr. Trump’s one-time personal attorney who was known for his ruthlessness and apparent lack of concern with ethics.  

There have been a number of plays and films about Mr. Cohn, including Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America,” which premiered in 1991. This current film is a documentary, and includes extensive interviews with some of Mr. Cohn’s accomplices as well as lawyers, journalists, lovers, and younger members of his extended family.

There are many famous cases covered in the film, including Mr. Cohn’s key role on the team prosecuting Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for espionage, during which he is now known to have made phone calls to the judge urging the execution of the couple that eventually took place on June 19^th of 1953.

There is no question that he was a brilliant man. He graduated from Columbia University Law School at the age of 20, and had to wait a year to take the bar exam because one must be 21 years old to do so. He was also amazingly clever, and although it is hard to be overly impressed by this, he had an uncanny ability to convincingly state clear falsehoods. He was a homosexual in the days before it became acceptable to openly admit this. Many people flocked around him, at least until it became known, despite his denials, that he was infected with the AIDS virus. It was quite stunning how quickly all those admirers abandoned him at that point.

The film is quite a fascinating documentary about a man who had so much potential to have done good in this world but unfortunately took a very different path.

Love,

Rebecca