How a New York visit made me more aware of home (The JC)

In vain, we searched for the pickle shop. Wandering around New York’s historic Lower East Side, it seemed improbable, impossible even, that we wouldn’t encounter a Yiddish-speaking man selling barrels of flavoursome and juicy cucumbers and telling us we had chutzpah when we tried to negotiate a good deal.

We did eventually find some (delicious, too), although only in a trendy coffee shop on a run-down but fashionable street, where the clientele ate them ironically with one hand on their Apple computers or their chai lattes.

Pickles aside, finding traces of Jewish life and history in New York was not much of a challenge. A century from its peak, the Lower East Side is as empty of Jews as it once was full. In that respect, it’s like London’s East End, a thriving hub reduced to a whisper. But what used to be there is still clear, from shops bearing the names of their Jewish founders to delis that are, if now no longer kosher, still steeped in an unequivocally Jewish cuisine, and streets and buildings adorned with the names of Jewish impresarios.

The history is not dissimilar to our own. Many Jews from far flung lands ended up in New York, but many, too, my ancestors among them, ended up in Liverpool, Cardiff – and the East End.

As in New York, they built lives, set up shuls, schools and newspapers, became visionaries, wrote books and built industries.

Physically, there is more to see in New York than in our old Jewish hubs; many of the buildings that British Jews once inhabited have gone, destroyed during the Blitz or torn down, with perhaps a solitary blue plaque to denote their presence. But, beyond this, what struck me during my stay was the locals’ pride in the past – particularly pride in this very Jewish story of survival and success against the odds.

Down the road from the café was the Tenement museum, offering heritage tours of the area and a video history of the “huddled masses” – Italian, Chinese and of course Jewish – who arrived there in the late 19th century. A look inside the tenement itself we had a glimpse into the lives of the Jews who came to Ellis Island from shtetls, impoverished and not speaking the language, only to leave the factories and the slums for a better life just a generation or so later.

This comment piece was first published in the JC. Read the rest of it here

Gossip Girl recap: The Fasting and the Furious

So, the thing about writing an entire episode centred on a specific day in the Jewish calendar is, get the basic facts right.

Surely Josh Schwartz – the inventor of Chrismukkah – should know that Yom Kippur is a 25 hour fast, not a 24 hour one. Hello writers, ever heard of Wikipedia.

That said, Yom Kippur is all about forgiveness, and while they bastardised key aspects of Jewish life, it was a pretty decent episode.

In the circus that has become Dan “I’m an awesome celebrity writer” Humphrey’s life lately, it seems his book is the one every producer in Hollywood wants. Serena’s formidable boss – who, clearly, is a bit crap if she’s staking her career prospects on a now-notoriously slutty college dropout – is particularly desperate.

So despite still being mad that Dan wrote “Sabrina” exactly as her real life alter-ego is – dumb, ditzy, not overly concerned with clothes and rather self-centred – Serena goes on a breakfast bid to convince Dan to give her the rights to the book. It sort of works, until Dan realises just how much of a big shot he is, but in the end, after a dastardly media leak, Serena wins the day.

So, basically, she’s put her career on the line so that her trainwreck teenage years can come to a big screen near you, showing she’s every bit as bright as Dan wrote her to be.

Perhaps the high point of the episode was when her boss noted: “If something doesn’t fall right into your lap, you don’t have a clue what to do about it.” Never a truer word spoken about Serena. Although I’d add “someone” as well.

For Chuck, Yom Kippur turns out to be the day he finds Judaism, via an Asian-Jewish convert therapist who he meets walking his best friend dog. Discovering her religious identity – “probably a smart move in your line of work” he says, propagating the arguably–true stereotype that New York Jews are more neurotic than their non-Jewish citymates – he decides to pay a trip to Shul.

Well, sort of. Actually, he donates $100 dollars to Chabad then, when sexy-secretary therapists psycholanalyses him for the sad-case he is, has a moment of awakening about his life.

Chuck Bass at Chabad. Wow. Mostly they just ply people with sushi and alcohol (and, obvs, Jewish learning); this would be a sure-fire way to up their attendance.

In Nate and Ivy’s world of high-class muckraking, Liz Hurley is on the prowl. After some typically bizarre scenes involving him considering what JFK would do, Nate stays true to his moral compass, though Ivy hands over the secret incriminating files from the VdW safe.

What’s this we see? Liz Hurley in some kind of pre-season five Gossip Girl related scandal?

Perhaps it will be that she’s actually a fembot. It would explain her appalling acting.

Over at the Waldorf’s, Cyrus is back holding Yom Kippur (with kugel and, of course, champagne – the perfect remedy for more than a day of dehydration) and Blair’s baby secret is out.

After a big to-do with the royal witches, prince McDull chooses Blair over mummy. But with his discovery of Blair’s Secret Baby Daddy Envelope, it looks as if he’ll soon be regretting that decision.

Bring on the episode where the Prince is run out of town for daring to mess with the natural order of Gossip Girl.

September 11: waking up a generation to terrorism (The JC)

It was Tuesday afternoon and school was out. It had been an odd day. We’d had some kind of ‘skills workshop’, with the positive outcome that I had no homework. My sister drove us home, music blaring.

As we pulled up, my mum was on the doorstep, a concerned expression on her face. “They’ve hit the Twin Towers,” she said.

I should have been more shocked. I was, later, when I’d watched the looping footage of the buildings collapsing, or people jumping from burning floors without a hope of survival. I woke up even more to what had happened the following month when I visited New York for the first time and saw smoking metal being transported away from Ground Zero and missing person posters staring hopelessly across the city.

But I was 14, more interested in who was at number one in the charts than the number one news story. I didn’t have any context for what had just happened.

There were people who hated us – it turned out quite a few

I knew about terrorism but mostly in the context of Israel, where the Second Intifada had been waging for a year. But Israel was the exception, the only place I went or knew people where such things were real.

New York – America – was an exciting place I wanted to visit, not somewhere despised by the non-Western world. War happened in other places. News only occurred in isolated events and really terrible things were consigned to history.

For my generation – the millenials, the kids born in the 1980s – 9/11 was a turning point. Before, our worlds were largely about hope; we’d only experienced peace. Wide-scale tragedy was famine or earthquakes. Things happened because of natural disaster or poverty, not the deliberate actions of man.

This comment piece was first published in The Jewish Chronicle. Read the rest of it here.

Gossip Girl: Belles de Jour

It couldn’t have been a more dramatic previously on Gossip Girl. Which was apt, because it was a pretty dramatic opener for Season Four.
 
We rejoin our cast of fashionable folk in Paris, a city of paintings, pavement cafes and pretentiousness – in other words, a Paris dreamt up in a writers room in Manhattan.
 
Yet while we are far from New York, when it comes to Serena and Blair we’re back to the good old days. S is slutting it up (bartenders, waiters, guys with Vespas – she’s as discriminating as ever) and B is, well, not.

But of course, summer must come to an end.

Blair is off to Columbia, while Serena is off to Brown and out of Blair’s jealousy zone. Right? RIGHT?

Well, no. Despite being possibly the most ridiculous and brainless blonde ever to grace TV screens, S has been accepted to Columbia too. Columbia alumni include both Roosevelts and Supreme Court judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg, so clearly it’s just the place for our Serena.
 
Maybe the admissions officer drives a Vespa.

Of course, the college clash creates a typical B versus S bitch fight, played out in their tried and tested passive aggressive boy rivalry. In a nutshell: Blair meets a man over a Manet who has almost as appalling an accent as the fake British prince / duke / random aristocrat from season two.

He’s a Grimaldi, Blair discovers – European royalty. History suggests this will end well. History is right.

Prince turns out to be more pauper, with the real deal Serena’s date for the night. With the inevitable consequence of Serena being pushed into the fountain. Been there, seen that.

Back in America, Nate, in his bid to become the male Serena, is working his way though a veritable yellow pages of one night stands.

They are all hideous caricatures of women, necessitating a particularly hammish meet-cute with a blonde-with-book. Naturally, she’s the new woman in Nate’s life, and just as naturally, she’s stalking him.

Why is that most stalkers look, well, like stalkers, and on Gossip Girl they look like they have stepped out of America’s Next Top Model?

Dan meanwhile, is doing the Dad Thing. Which, because this is an in-no-way-plausible teenage drama, is actually going OK.

Shocking, given his Gina Ford of choice is Nate – who, come to think of it if current behaviour continues may find himself in a similar predicament.

In case he isn’t aware of how insane the situation is, Vanessa is back from saving the world to tell him. Complete with even more hair extensions and some choice ‘wacky’ traveller bracelets.

 She sums up the crazy in Dan’s new baby-centric life with the phenomenally Gossip Girl term ‘George-gina’. A euphemism I am certain will soon make it into the OED.

Rufus, sporting a dashing new haircut, is missing his psychotic daughter (guess absence really does make the heart grow fonder) and being left out of Lily’s life again. And Dan’s, although Georgina clears up baby-gate for him soon enough (then ups and leaves Dan holding the baby).

What is preoccupying Lily is Chuck, last seen stabbed in fake-Prague. He’s in financial trouble – this show being all about the politically resonant storylines.

So Lily gets all Harriet the Socialite and starts digging – suspecting something is up from the “second class train tickets” charged to his card. Turns out he’s gallivanting around Europe in Shakespearean tragedy mood, and what do you know, he’s headed to the same place as Blair.

Though Lily thinks he is dead, which means we may still get the answer to that age-old question; who exactly would come to Chuck Bass’ funeral?

Lots of new haircuts, same old angst. A fine return, on balance, though one criticism. Katy Perry? On the Soundtrack? Josh Schwartz, I expected better of you.