The popular Shalom Sesame DVD series has announced a Shalom Sesame DVD Club. Grover the Muppet and Anneliese van der Pol (That’s So Raven, Broadway’s Beauty and the Beast) travel to Israel to meet new people and learn new things in this 12-part DVD series co-produced bySesame Workshop, the nonprofit educational organization behind Sesame Street, and Israel ’s Channel HOP! Each 30-minute, live-action and animated DVD focuses on storylines drawn from Jewish cultural traditions, highlighting lessons on Hebrew letters and words, unique sites in Israel , and Jewish values. Through Sesame Street characters, celebrities and stories, viewers learn about Jewish traditions, culture and holidays. Guest appearances by celebrity talent include Debra Messing, Achinoam Nini, Mira Awad, Jake Gyllenhaal, Christina Applegate and Greg Kinnear.
The club is free and members can opt for purchasing the entire DVD series or single titles for a 15% discount , in a single shipment or on a monthly basis.
Shalom Sesame’s “Chanukah the Missing Menorah” episode on PBS this December. The 12 DVDs in the series are: “Welcome to Israel,” “Chanukah: The Missing Menorah,” Shabbat Shalom, Grover!,” “Grover Plants a Tree,” “Mitzvah on the Street,” “Be Happy, It’s Purim!,” “It’s Passover, Grover!,” “Grover Learns Hebrew,” “Countdown to Shavuot,” “The Sticky Shofar,” “Monsters in the Sukkah,” and “Adventures in Israel.” Each Shalom Sesame DVD includes over 20 minutes of bonus extras including trailers, sneak peeks of all titles, Grover’s Video Player (music videos), sing-alongs and Karaoke of favorite tunes like “Aleph Bet Song,” “Rosh Hashanah Hannah” (a spoof of Hannah Montana) and the famous “Rubber Duckie” song (in Hebrew) among others. A highlight of Grover’s Video Player on Adventures in Israel is “There Must Be Another Way” by Achinoam Nini, Mira Awad and Shalom Sesame friends – the song that represented Israel in the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest in Hebrew, Arabic and English.
After documentary filmmaker Arnon Goldfinger’s grandmother died at age 97 in Israel, he brought a film crew to her apartment where she and his grandfather lived from the time they immigrated to what was then called Palestine just before World War II. He was fascinated by their home, which seventy years later looked as though it had been transplanted from their birthplace in Germany. The books on the shelves were in German. They always spoke German in their home. Most of their lives were lived in Israel, but they lived as though they were still in Berlin.
Goldfinger thought he would learn something about his grandparents as the family sorted through their belongings. But he could never have imagined what he would find or where it would take him. His grandmother had saved issues of one of the most virulently anti-Semitic newspapers distributed in Nazi Germany. This discovery led to a journey that illuminated one of the strangest friendships imaginable, represented by an artifact that is almost unthinkable — a coin with a Jewish star on one side and a Nazi swastika on the other. The movie also focuses on the strain this inquiry put on Goldfinger’s relationship with his mother, who was almost as passionate about not finding out the answers to his questions as Goldfinger was about seeking them.
I spoke to Goldfinger when he was in Washington, D.C. to show the film, which opens tomorrow.
What did you think you were going to film?
To be honest, I just wanted to be there with the camera and document the world I knew was going to disappear very quickly. I thought it would be an even quicker process. I knew this flat all my life and I had an ambivalent feeling toward it. On the one hand, I had an attraction to this world, to this culture, to those books, to the secrets, the mystery. On the other hand, as an Israeli it was so foreign, so German, so connected to the tragic happenings in the Holocaust. It was only later I had an idea to make a film, but even then the idea was just something very short. People would ask, “What can you learn about someone from what they leave behind?” This shows you can learn a lot.
What does your mother think about the movie?
I was very afraid of course. Our relationship was close before and if it would stay like that, it would be fine. But I was surprised. It brought us closer. She was very supportive of the film. After the first screening, when she first saw it, she said she saw it was important for her, too. When her friends saw the film, they said to her, “We didn’t know, either. We didn’t ask.” She felt that she was not alone.
Why was your mother reluctant to know more?
She was really raised in a German house. I remember as a kid, hearing her argue with her parents in German. But when she went out of the flat, she was in Tel Aviv, the Mediterranean combined with bohemian, a place of vibrance. She lived two lives. But like all of the people of her age, she wanted to leave the past behind her, as you see when you look at her flat, not even any dust from the past. Your house is the place you want to live in. And she wanted to live with with barriers to all the historical items. Before I made the film I thought it was her character. But now I understand it’s a barrier from all the pain and sorrow.
You met with Edda, the daughter of the Nazi couple who were your grandparents’ friends. Tell me something about your impressions.
They were lovely people, very friendly, welcoming, warm. That made it harder. If they were nasty it would have been easier for me. During my research I would think, “Maybe it’s not possible, maybe it’s not right” that this friendship existed between my grandparents and the Nazis. If I called someone out of the blue and said “My grandparents knew your parents, I would not recognize one name.” But the way she recognized it so immediately, the way she knew and was so glad to hear from me in such an open way and with such memories — I don’t remember even one gift my parents’ friends gave me — but for her, she remembered so much.
What about her father, the man who was your grandparents’ friend while having an important role in the Nazi party?
I found much more about him than what is in the film. It was important to say that he did not live the Nazi party. He was involved in anti-Semitic propaganda. But he wanted to stay in contact with Jews. I found all kinds of other things about him, nothing that would change your mind, no smoking gun, but you could ask yourself, “Did he have an alternative?” The way to describe what happened was this. Nobody knew what Hitler wanted, but everybody knew if they did something Hitler did not want, it’s the end. It was a classic regime of terror. There’s a book called Alone in Berlin that described life in the war. It’s horrible. I am a Jew; I don’t so much identify with them, but still I can understand and ask the question, “Could he do something?” If you look at his career, you won’t find him in the concentration camps. He is in the headquarters, spying, thinking. For me, it’s enough.
One of the most shocking moments for me was when Edda told me that she knew my family had lost someone in the concentration camps. She did not have the details right. She thought it was my grandfather’s mother, not my grandmother’s mother. She’s a little mistaken with the details but it shows that she and therefore her parents knew some of what happened. That means my grandparents were sitting over there in the garden where we were, discussing the death of someone from their family with a man who was a Nazi. Did they ask him if he received their letter asking for help? Did he tell them he could not help them? There were a lot of lies over there.
My favorite character in the movie was your grandmother’s friend. What a beautiful face. I felt I knew your grandmother by seeing her friend.
She was my grandmother’s closest friend and like an aunt to me. When I first approached her, she did not want to be filmed. She was the only one, and I could not understand why. It took me almost a year to persuade her. But she said, “I will give you half an hour, but you come alone.” I told her I had to bring a cameraman and a sound man, and she said, “No, no, no.” In the end, it was only me and the cameraman. I figured she would see it is not threatening and she would let me stay longer. The cameraman said, “Be careful. Remember who you are dealing with. Ask the questions you want in the beginning not as usual at the end.” After 32 minutes she told me it is enough. Three months later she passed away. Her daughter was so happy that I captured her in her beauty. There’s such elegance in those characters.
Why did your grandmother keep the Der Angriff newspapers even though they were filled with anti-Semitic propaganda?
There was something emotional about it, a memory from a very, very important event in their life. The idea was to keep an eye on the Nazi and push him to include more Zionist material in his story. There may be a possibility my grandfather even edited the article. It was something very vivid at the time and maybe she forgot about it. She never opened it again. Maybe she forgot about it.
The film is telling an amazing story about a Nazi and a Jew, but really it is a movie about family, what you know about your family, what you want to know, what you can know. Those questions anyone can identify with, especially in America, a place of immigrants. Some people who see the movie tell me, “I want to ask my parents more about our history.” And some say, “I need to get rid of a lot of the things in my house!”
Your main character’s internal and external struggle is exemplified by his name: Sanskrit Aaron Zukerman. How do his feelings about his name tell us about him?
Poor Sanskrit. The battle lines of his life were decided at birth. His Jewish mother is a yoga practitioner and named him after her favorite thing, Sanskrit, the ancient Indian language used in yoga practice. Now in his teens, Sanskrit attends a religious school in Los Angeles because his grandfather left money in a trust for him to get a Jewish education. So Sanskrit is caught in the intersection of family tradition and contemporary life. The teachers at his Jewish school call him by his middle name “Aaron” because it’s familiar to them. Outside of school people call him “Sanskrit”. In a real sense, my hero doesn’t know who he is—Sanskrit or Aaron—and it’s the journey of this novel for him to find out.
Why did you decide to tell the story in the first person? What can you do in that voice that you cannot do any other way?
The first person narrator brings you directly into a character’s thinking process, and with my characters, that’s usually a funny and embarrassing ride. At one point in Since You Left Me, Sanskrit is hiding behind an expensive gift basket while his parents fight, and he has a realization and says, “My family is less painful when viewed through cellophane and foreign chocolate.” That’s the kind of experience you only get in first person.
Also because Sanskrit is on a spiritual journey of sorts, the first person allows me to reveal the twists and turns of his thinking in an immediate and exciting way. We are on the journey with him, understanding what he understands, and experiencing his revelations in real time.
Sanskrit has experienced a lot of loss and disappointment. How has that affected his view of the world?
He’s jaded at sixteen and wondering if God exists. It’s a classic situation—Life doesn’t go your way, and you start to wonder if there’s anyone or anything in charge. As things get more out of control in his life, Sanskrit does what many of us do, he tries harder to make it work out the way he thinks it should be. For example, his mother is threatening to leave the family because she believes she’s found her true love (in India of all places), and Sanskrit’s determined to find a way to make her stay. It’s a dilemma I understand from my own life. When should I apply my will and effort to change a situation, and when should I relax, let go, and accept things as they are? It’s not always easy to know.
What made you decide to write a story set in a religious school? What are some of the most significant struggles teenagers have with spirituality?
I don’t know what struggle teens have, only the struggles I had as a teen. My novel Food, Girls, and Other Things I Can’t Have was based on my experience being overweight in high school. And Since You Left Me is based on some of my spiritual struggles in high school and also as an adult. When I was young, I went to Hebrew School once a week on Saturdays and I was bar mitzvahed, but I had no real relationship to something greater than myself. Frankly I didn’t think I needed it. I thought being smart, talented, and hardworking would get me where I wanted to go in life. I didn’t think I needed help from God, and I didn’t understand the idea that we might ask God what he wanted from our lives, rather than deciding for ourselves what we want or what might feel good. It’s what Rick Warren calls The Purpose Driven Life. As with many people, my own spiritual journey grew out of hardship. In my case it was an eating disorder that nearly took me out. At 28 years old I was in serious trouble, and I had to find a new way to live in the world. I tell the story in some detail in my memoir Hungry: Lessons Learned on the Journey from Fat to Thin.
Your characters often have to deal with parents who behave more like children than their kids. As a writer, what possibilities and themes does that present to you?
It’s true that kids in my novels are often struggling with absent or neglectful parents. Sadly, I have some experience with that—parents who were doing the best they knew how, but who weren’t always there for my brother and I. Often in a novel I’ll take a kernel of my own experience and magnify it for dramatic effect. I also feel it’s an author’s job to understand and have compassion for every character. In Since You Left Me, Sanskrit’s mother is incredibly selfish, a fact that has inspired many readers to write me letters and tell me about their own kooky parents. But as the author, I really understand why this mother does what she does. She tells her children, “How can I love you if I don’t have love in my own life?” It’s twisted logic, but it makes sense in a way. I can imagine a character neglecting her own children while chasing love, thinking all the while she’s doing something positive for her family.
As for the theme, you might say that Since You Left Me is about the moment when we realize our parents are just people, and they are fallible. How do we deal with that realization and what it means for our lives?
Why does Sanskrit have such a hard time trusting or being honest with the people around him?
I think he’s been hurt. By his parents’ divorce. By his mother’s self-involvement. By the feeling that he’s different from the kids in his school, in particular his best friend Herschel who seems to live a faith-based life very easily, while it’s an enormous struggle for Sanskrit. He’s also hurt because the love of his life in second grade seems to have forgotten that he exists. When you get hurt, it becomes hard to trust people and believe that things will work out for the best. This is where faith comes in for many people. Without faith, it’s just you battling your past experiences that have conditioned you to deal with the world in a certain way. But with faith, I think healing is possible. Faith and therapy. I’m a big believer in both things.
What inspires you?
I’m very inspired by music. I listen to music when I write, probably 4-6 hours of it a day. I have mixes on Pandora, Spotify, Songza. I listen to everything from indie rock, to punk, to international hip hop, to jazz, to religious music. I’m all over the map. I have enormous respect for musicians and the joy their work has brought me.
What makes you laugh?
Girls on HBO. Not being a girl in my 20s, I thought I would hate it. To the contrary, I think Lena Dunham is brilliant, and I love her voice, the frankness and humor with which she captures her characters’ lives. And of course Judd Apatow, her fellow executive producer, has a lot to do with that, too. I think it’s an amazing collaboration.
Do you have an e-reader or do you still prefer books on paper?
I’m all digital, and I get some flack about it from book lovers. I understand their appreciation of the physical book, and I share it. But as I’ve grown towards middle age, my vision has gotten worse, and e-books have become a godsend. So I guess I’m in the camp of people for whom e-readers are an accessibility device and not just a luxury item. I’m looking forward to further innovations that will capture more of the artistry of book design (internal and external) in the digital form. I think Kindle’s new “Publisher Font” setting is a step in the right direction. Readers can now opt to read an e-book in the font the publisher has selected for the work. It seems a small thing, but it’s a very important decision that publishers, authors, and designers make. It communicates the story of the book on an unconscious level, and sadly, it’s one of the many things that had gotten lost in the rush to the digital format.
that described life in the war. It’s horrible. I am a Jew; I don’t so much identify with them, but still I can understand and ask the question, “Could he do something?” If you look at his career, you won’t find him in the concentration camps. He is in the headquarters, spying, thinking. For me, it’s enough.
newspapers even though they were filled with anti-Semitic propaganda?
. He was kind enough to give me another interview about his new book, 
. Once again his hero is an unhappy teenage boy who feels isolated (and who shares his author’s initials).
was based on my experience being overweight in high school. And 
. As with many people, my own spiritual journey grew out of hardship. In my case it was an eating disorder that nearly took me out. At 28 years old I was in serious trouble, and I had to find a new way to live in the world. I tell the story in some detail in my memoir 
.
on HBO. Not being a girl in my 20s, I thought I would hate it. To the contrary, I think Lena Dunham is brilliant, and I love her voice, the frankness and humor with which she captures her characters’ lives. And of course Judd Apatow, her fellow executive producer, has a lot to do with that, too. I think it’s an amazing collaboration.