September 19, 2006

New fault lines are complicating the already daunting challenge of recovering from last October’s killer earthquake in the Himalayan foothills of northern Pakistan. As tens of thousands of survivors brace for the coming winter, relief groups are caught in a religious squeeze play that makes recovery and reconstruction even more difficult.

I am among those Israelis who are ready, in principle, for almost any concession that would end our conflict with the Palestinians. In the late 1990s I undertook, as a religious Jew, a journey of prayer and meditation into Islam and Christianity in the Holy Land in an attempt to discover a common language of devotion with my neighbors. That journey took me into mosques and pilgrimage sites in the Galilee, the West Bank and Gaza.

The first act of the satirical comedy Little Miss Sunshine has an affable scattershot loopiness. Frank (Steve Carell), an English professor hospitalized after a suicide attempt (he broke down upon losing his male grad-student lover to an academic rival), is released into the hands of his sister, Sheryl (Toni Collette).