“Dark Universe,” currently playing in the planetariums at The Einstein Planetarium of the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum, the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, and the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, is a thrilling journey to the outer edges of the universe narrated by “Cosmos” super-scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson. It’s like a grown-up ride on the magic school bus, taking us into the deepest questions of who and what and where we are, with images based on data from NASA and European Space Agency missions, ground-based telescopes, supercomputer simulations, and research conducted at institutions around the globe. In other words, this is the stuff the “Big Bang Theory” guys get so excited about in between visits to the comic book store and takeout food.
Galileo shocked the people of the 17th century when he told them that the earth was not the center of the solar system. In the centuries since, we have recalibrated again and again, finding out solar system is not the center of the galaxy — there is no center — and that normal matter—the atoms that we are made of—is a tiny fraction of the mass and energy in the cosmos, less than five percent. Our notion of ourselves as primary in creation is profoundly rebutted.
Watching this film in a planetarium, we feel that we can travel through space as well as through the grand ideas Dr. Tyson describes. This brief glimpse into what we have learned and what we hope to learn next is a thrilling opportunity to expand our notions of how small we are in the great scheme of existence but also how large we are in our ability to begin to comprehend the universe and our place in it.
Prize-winning author of 15 books and Emmy Award-winner Simon Schama brings to life Jewish history and experience in a new five-part documentary series follows Schama as he travels from Russia and the Ukraine to Egypt, Israel and Spain, exploring the imprint that Jewish culture has made on the world and the drama of suffering, resilience and rebirth that has gone with it.
The series is, at the same time, a personal journey for Schama, who has been immersed in Jewish history since his postwar childhood; a meditation on its dramatic trajectory; and a macro-history of a people whose mark on the world has been out of all proportion to its modest numbers.
“If you were to remove from our collective history,” said Schama, “the contribution Jews have made to human culture, our world would be almost unrecognizable. There would be no monotheism, no written Bible, and our sense of modernity would be completely different. So the history of the Jews is everyone’s history too and what I hope people will take away from the series is that sense of connection: a weave of cultural strands over the millennia, some brilliant, some dark, but resolving into a fabric of thrilling, sometimes tragic, often exalted creativity.”
The series draws on primary sources that include the Elephantine papyri, a collection of 5th-century BC manuscripts illuminating the life of a town of Jewish soldiers and their families in ancient Egypt; the astonishing trove of documents – the Cairo Geniza – recording the world of the medieval Jews of the Mediterranean and Near East; the records of disputations between Christians and Jews in Spain; correspondence between the leader of the Arab revolt during World War I, Emir Feisal, and the leader of the Zionist movement, Chaim Weizmann.
Schama talks about the turning points of the drama with living witnesses like Aviva Rahamim, who, as a 14-year-old, walked across the Sudanese desert to try and reach Israel; Yakub Odeh, the Palestinian whose village was destroyed in the war of 1948; and Levana Shamir, whose family members were imprisoned in Egypt at the same time. He debates the meaning of new archaeological discoveries of the Biblical period with Yosef Garfinkel of the Hebrew University; the Dead Sea Scrolls with their chief curator Pnina Shor; the character of the Talmud with Leon Wieseltier, literary editor of the New Republic; the photographic record of Israel’s history with Micha Bar Am; German cultural treasures from Enlightenment Germany and the music of Felix Mendelssohn with the critic Norman Lebrecht.
The series, first broadcast in the United Kingdom on BBC in fall 2013, was acclaimed in the British press as “an astonishing achievement, a TV landmark, idiosyncratic, accessible but always authoritative.” It includes new archaeological research that is transforming our understanding of the earliest world of the Jews, and highlights evidence from the visual arts — synagogue mosaics, spectacularly illustrated Bibles, the brilliantly colorful decoration of synagogues (contrary to impressions of a monochrome religion), as well as the glorious music that carried Jewish traditions through the centuries.
Whether he’s amid the stones of 11th-century Judea, the exuberantly decorated cemeteries of Ukrainian hasidic rabbis, the parlors of Moses Mendelssohn’s Berlin or the streets of immigrant New York, Schama brings together memory and actuality, past and present, sorrows and celebrations, vindications and challenges and makes felt the beating pulse of an epic of endurance that has been like no other – a story that belongs to everyone.
To enter the contest, send an email to moviemom@moviemom.com with “Story of the Jews” in the subject line and tell me your favorite Jewish author, performer, musician, or holiday. Don’t forget your address! (US addresses only.) I will pick a winner at random on May 14. Good luck and mazel tov!
My parents taught me that you automatically lose an argument if you (1) fail to state the other side’s views in a manner they approve or (2) fail to attribute to the other side the same good intentions you assume for your own. Focus on the Family’s faux documentary “Irreplaceable” fails on both grounds. It probably also violates one of the Commandments as well, the one prohibiting the bearing of false witness.
I’m in favor of strong, loving families with responsible parents. You’re in favor of strong. loving, families with responsible parents. It is safe to say that there is just about no one who is not in favor of strong, loving families with responsible parents. It is about the least controversial position imaginable. But this film uses the rhetoric of support for family as a thin and increasingly cynical and specious cover for a pernicious agenda disguised as a “conversation.” It’s so smug, constricted, and phony that it does not even qualify as one-sided.
The unctuous tones of the participants are intended to convey concern. But the false humility is merely an attempt to distract the audience from a poisonous message. Though some vague generalities acknowledge that in some cases marriages cannot be made safe and spouses must leave, the real message is that there is only one kind of family and everything else is unstable for its members and for culture and society. If it had any faith in its positions, Focus on the Family would accurately explain the views of those who embrace a variety of family structures and roles, allowing each family to find what is best for them. Instead it slants and distorts those messages because it knows it has no effective arguments to make honestly. It relies on innuendo and the basest slur to keep its base too scared to be anything but compliant.
The “experts” in the film tell us that the problem is that we are getting cultural messages about valuing self, possessions, and pleasure over the family. Those are serious questions and worth exploring. But they fall back on an imagined war between faith and culture without any exploration of why the faith community has failed to communicate its message more effectively or how the faith community or society as a whole could provide more support for families in need. There is no place in the world of these experts for families that do not fit into their one-size-fits-all vision of mother, father, children all living together. Is it possible for strong, loving, intact families with gay parents to raise happy, healthy children? For single parents and blended families to raise happy, healthy, children? Are fathers today more deeply involved in their children’s lives than in the falsely idealized vision of the mid-20th century promoted here? Statistics say yes, but you would not know that from this film. If indeed that era was so ideal, why did the overwhelming majority of those who grew up that way advocate with such passion for alternatives?
Those who wish to persuade others can best do so by building a bridge to establish a common foundation, making it clear that what connects us is more important than what separates us. Or, as they have done here, they can build a moat around their shrinking base, reinforcing the condescending sense of superiority of their own little group by telling them that only their answers work for everyone and playing into their worst fears and stereotypes.
One of the “experts” in this film tells us, “If anyone says they can fix the world, run.” Yet that is just what they do here, imagining that once there was a heavenly era of intact families living out God’s plan without acknowledging that the mid-century “ideal” was neither universal nor considered ideal by those living in it. The dissatisfactions that model engendered led to a cultural upheaval that created its own problems, but none so grave to lead to a widespread call for a return to stultifying, rigidly conformist norms. While commentators in this film make vague concessions to those whose situations are so intolerable that the marriage cannot survive, the essential condescension, arrogance, and total absence of grace or compassion is its primary message.
With this cynical, meretricious and hypocritical film, Focus on the Family has dug a moat and burned the drawbridge. It purports to be about the importance of fathers taking responsibility for their children (again, something everyone agrees on, but you would not know that from this film). It purports to be about forgiveness, something else everyone agrees on, but it engages in the most immoral tactics by demonizing anyone who does not meet its standards.
I am happy for the person in the film who is glad his mother stayed with his father even after he went to jail for stealing money but that does not mean that it would be right for all spouses. And it does not mean I will forgive Focus on the Family for this shoddy, hateful, and dishonest film.
Parents should know that this is a dishonest film that attempts to hide its biased agenda.
Family discussion: What families do you admire and why? What can you to do help your family be stronger?
If you like this, try: “A Family is a Family is a Family”
It was a very great pleasure to talk to writer/star Priest Tyaire about his new play, “Mrs. Independent,” currently on tour and opening in Washington D.C.’s Warner Theater May 8-11 for Mother’s Day next weekend.
Can a woman still be submissive to her husband and allow him to lead her household if she is the primary breadwinner? Does the role reverse? These are the questions explored in Priest Tyaire’s critically acclaimed stage play, “Mrs. Independent.” While Trey, maintains an honest and respectable salary of $40,000 a year as a head mechanic, his wife, Carleena, climbs the corporate ladder as an attorney and advances to a six figure salary. This creates not only a financial imbalance but also raises a question of Trey’s intellectual compatibility in Carleena’s mind and pushes their once equally yoked marriage further off course. With such a significant gap in their salaries it becomes increasingly impossible for Trey to satisfy his wife and this leads to a downward spiral of emotional and spiritual conflicts in their relationship. The play stars Robin Givens, Christopher Williams, Shirley Murdock, Tony Grant, and Trisha Mann-Grant, along with Tyaire himself as the husband trying to understand what it means to be a man in this relationship.
Tyaire is often referred to as “the new Tyler Perry,” because he was inspired to start writing because of his own struggles, because he writes and stars in his own plays, and because he has attracted a devoted audience primarily made up of African-American women. Tyaire spoke to me about what got him started and the messages he hopes to send with his writing.
You were trained as an electrician. Why did you start to write?
In 2006 my mother was diagnosed with cancer and the Lord laid it on our spirit to write about her. That show sold out. We did 24 tours, over 90% seats filled. Still, my father told me it was time to go back to being an electrician. But the Lord kept changing my path and he understood that. Before he passed, he apologized for discouraging me. But he was just trying to protect me.
My first play was a tribute to my mother. It was called “Tears of a Teenage Mother.”
In the show, a girl does not want to tell her mother she is pregnant, and she almost dies. A young lady brought a group of teenagers to the show. One of them ran out of the show. She was pregnant and did not know how to tell anyone. I hope my plays will help people have those difficult conversations they do not know how to begin.
I wanted to write about my father next, so my next play was “Torn Between Two Fathers.”
With no background in writing, how did you begin?
I bought every Tyler Perry DVD, listened to the backstage commentary, and learned everything I could about blocking, sets, pacing. When I was growing up, I did not think it was manly to go to plays with my mother. But she took me to Mama I Want to Sing and I was so touched by it. I love to get a phone call from a guy asking, “What do I wear to a play?” I know he will find out that he will connect to the story and want to come back to see more.
And you also became an actor. How was that?
The funny thing is, I’m shy. People say that is hard to believe. As long as I feel the audience is with me, as soon as I hear the first laugh, I’m good. I know you’re not supposed to break the fourth wall and interact with the audience, but we do it all the time. I always try to include the audience in, make it an experience. That’s our mantra: “not just entertain but experience.”
Tell me about this new play.
In “Mrs. Independent,” the woman is the breadwinner and the man has insecurities behind it. It’s always a topic of discussion. There is a mother who pushes them but it is not bashing anyone, women or men. It is uplifting. But bring your tissues — you are going to cry. And you are going to church.
Do you pray before the show?
Always. We have someone I call our prayer warrior. She gets us going. And you will always see God throughout my work. I’ve been through so much I felt like Job at times: “God said you can do what you want to him but you can’t kill him.” I needed to make sure it was God’s voice and not my own. God will test you and push you. God gives everyone a gift, but just like it says on Christmas, the batteries are not included. You have to provide your own.
“Dark Universe,” currently playing in the planetariums at The Einstein Planetarium of the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum, the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, and the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, is a thrilling journey to the outer edges of the universe narrated by “Cosmos” super-scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson. It’s like a grown-up ride on the magic school bus, taking us into the deepest questions of who and what and where we are, with images based on data from NASA and European Space Agency missions, ground-based telescopes, supercomputer simulations, and research conducted at institutions around the globe. In other words, this is the stuff the “Big Bang Theory” guys get so excited about in between visits to the comic book store and takeout food.
to give away. The 
and I was so touched by it. I love to get a phone call from a guy asking, “What do I wear to a play?” I know he will find out that he will connect to the story and want to come back to see more.