"Top 100 in Finance Magazine" Honors Andrea Baumann Lustig

"Top 100 in Finance Magazine" recently included Andrea Baumann Lustig. A profile with details about her business and civic involvement can be found here.

Redwood Media Group publishes The Top 100 Magazine, with editions covering finance, doctors, attorney, real estate, finance, women and 40 Under 40.

NY Times' T Magazine Profiles Richard Greenberg

The New York Times' T Magazine profiled Richard Greenberg in its March 3 issue, ahead of the April revival of Greenberg's 2002 baseball-themed play "Take Me Out" at the Second Stage Theater. Titled "The Bard of American Privilege," the article reviews Greenberg's career and devotion to craft, along comparisons of him to Noël Coward.  The article reflects,

Indeed, in an era when some playwrights have become as famous as the actors in their casts, when the experience of going to the theater, the whole Instagram-the-Playbill moment of it all, is often just as motivating to ticket buyers as the play itself, Greenberg remains one of the few dramatists who’s remained relevant simply for what he’s put on the page. 

Class Scores Triple Play in Feb. PAW

Two articles in the February 12 issue of the Princeton Alumni Weekly and a February 6 podcast highlighted members of the Class of 1980. Covered in the editorial triple play were:

• Nicholas Garrison, in "This is a Sacred Place," about his commission as the architect for the Statue of Liberty Museum on Liberty Island. 
• Robert Klitzman, in "Next-Gen Reproduction," building off his new book, Designing Babies: How Technology Is Changing the Ways We Create Children (Oxford University Press), In the book, he explores many facets of assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs), from egg donation to gene editing.
• Peter Yawitz, speaking on the Feb. 6 PAWcast, "On Navigating Workplace Culture." He is the author of the new book Flip Flops and Microwaved Fish: Navigating the Dos and Don’ts of Workplace Culture, which gives advice on communicating with your coworkers, dressing the part in an office environment, and preparing for difficult conversations with your boss. 

Peter Yawitz on Book Tour for New Publication

 Peter Yawitz spoke about his book, Flip-Flops & Microwaved Fish: Navigating the Dos and Don’ts of Workplace Culture, recently at an event sponsored by the Princeton Club of Chicago.  He reported, "It was wonderful to have local ‘80ers Mary Prescott, Jeff Sharp, and Ted Fishman in the audience.  AN Upcoming event at the Princeton Club of NY is on April 7 and others soon to be scheduled at the Princeton Club of New England, Tokyo and others."

Left to right: Peter Yawitz, Mary Prescott, Jeff Sharp, Ted Fishman

David Bledsoe Digs into the Curse of the Washington Nationals

David Bledsoe will publish an e-book next month delving into the sources and extent of the playoffs curse afflicting the Washington Nationals, extending back into its days as the Montreal Expos. Titled Black Thursday, Blue Monday: In Search of the Curse of the Washington Nationals: A Baseball Whodunit, Bledsoe and the book were subject of a lengthy feature in the Washington Post on April 18. The article starts,

With the Washington Nationals protecting a one-run lead over the Chicago Cubs in the fifth inning of Game 5 of the 2017 National League Division Series, Manager Dusty Baker summoned his ace, Max Scherzer, from the bullpen for a rare relief appearance. No one could have predicted what would transpire over the next three outs at Nationals Park — a sequence of outcomes never witnessed in nearly 3 million half-innings of recorded history — but baseball fan David Bledsoe already had an idea how the game would end.

“I knew [the Nationals] were going to lose,” the 60-year-old Bledsoe, who watched Game 5 from the comfort of his Alexandria home, said in a phone interview this week. “There was no possibility they were going to win that game. It just had that supernatural air to it.”

Black Thursday, Blue Monday is the first book for Bledsoe, a lawyer in the Washington area who grew up in South Carolina. His grandfather turned him into a baseball fan by listening to Milo Hamilton announce the Braves games (Joe Torre was his favorite player).  Bledsoe attended the Nationals’ first opening day at RFK Stadium in 2005, and has been at virtually every opening day since.  He believes the designated hitter is an abomination, and likely unconstitutional. 

In discussing the book, Bledsoe notes some painful history, as covered in the Post article. In their last playoff appearance in 2018, with the Nats leading by a single run in Game 5, Max Scherzer, perhaps the best pitcher in baseball, suffered a meltdown unprecedented in the history of baseball, becoming the answer to an absurd trivia question in the process.

He asks, how to explain this bizarre history of failure for this powerhouse team?  There can only be one possible explanation.  They’re cursed. 

The Red Sox had the Curse of the Bambino.  The Cubs had the Billy Goat Curse.  So what is the curse of the Nationals?  Calling his book "a a non-fiction murder mystery," Bledsoe poses the fateful question: Who killed the Nats?

Richard Koret Publishes Book on Freud's Last Work, "Moses and Monotheism"

Richard Koret has turned a passion that dates back to his senior thesis into a new book, Heroic Fraud: How Sigmund Freud Got Away with Literary Murder, now available on Amazon. According to the book's website:

The book presents a kind of criminal case history of Moses and Monotheism, contending that Freud dissembled this much-criticized work in a kind of literary code. Most critics believe that this perplexing work — which claimed that Moses was an Egyptian killed by Hebrews — was a symptom of senility and Jewish self-hatred.

HEROIC FRAUD contends that Freud composed his final book so that its true meaning could only be understood by readers familiar with psychoanalysis. By tracing the many “Freudian slips” in the text and other symptomatic expression, one can decipher his latent intent much as a psychoanalyst might interpret the garbled manifest content of a dream.

Properly interpreted, the book is not hostile to the Jews but rather to their contemporary enemies, showing the root causes of anti-Semitism, conclusions too provocative to be outspoken at the time. Even now, his long-concealed ideas and conclusions are bound to arouse controversy and opposition.

Koret says the idea for the book has its roots in his senior project in the religion department. He produced a rock 'n' roll musical called Life: A Biblical Serial, that debuted to less than rave reviews from the department. He was allowed to write a supplemental paper to go with it, and that was "A Freudian Interpretation of Joseph's Dreams," referring to the biblical story of Joseph and his dream interpretations in Egypt. Sigmund Freud had himself written about Joseph and the later Jews in Egypt in his last book, Moses and Monotheism. Freud wrote the book when he was ill with cancer in the 1930s and under pressure from the growing anti-semitism in Europe.


Koret later lived in Israel, and the idea of whether Freud had laced that last book, which critics called his worst, with secret meanings meant for future generations stayed in his mind. Koret researched the book in Vienna and decided to publish it on his own rather than wait for an academic press to accept it.

The book has a strong, if understated Princeton connection, thanks to Freud's friendship with German author Thomas Mann, the 1929 Nobel laureate in literature. Mann's personalities and writings, especially his series of novels on Joseph and his brothers, appear throughout the book. Mann lived in Princeton at 65 Stockton Street from about 1939 to 1942 and lectured at the university.

Heroic Fraud analyzes the first two chapters of Moses and Monotheism, with a sequel appearing this spring covering the last two chapters.

John Wetmore Testifies Before Maryland Legislature Hearing

On November 14, John Wetmore, producer of the cable TV series Perils for Pedestrians, testified before Maryland's Joint House and Senate Priorities Hearing. His comments dealt with the Maryland Transportation Authority, which owns and operates the toll roads and toll bridges in Maryland. One of those is the U.S. 301 Bridge over the Potomac River 50 miles south of Washington. Built in 1940, the narrow two-lane bridge is considered obsolete and will be replaced with a four-lane bridge. In 2008, the laws governing the MD Transportation Authority were modified to empower the head of the Authority to allow pedestrians and bicyclists on Authority facilities. This led in 2012 to the selection of a four-lane design that included a barrier-separated ped-bike path. However, the 2008 law did not require that the Authority accommodate peds and bikes, and the Hogan administration lacks a firm commitment to peds and bikes. The minor legal patch in 2008 has turned out to be inadequate, and a more comprehensive reform of the Maryland Transportation Authority is needed for this and future projects.

Senators and Delegates:

I would like to touch briefly on two topics tonight.

First, it has been half a century since the last major legislation governing the Maryland Transportation Authority. It is time to take a close look at the Authority to see if it meets the needs of the 21st Century.

In its current form, the Maryland Transportation Authority is concerned about only two things: moving automobiles and paying bondholders. It is stuck in a 1960s world where transportation agencies ignored their impact on the community and ignored the needs of pedestrians and bicyclists.

This outdated approach to transportation is very obvious with the replacement U.S. 301 Bridge over the Potomac. In a modern agency, a barrier-separated bicycle and pedestrian path would be a fundamental part of the bridge, and would be automatically included in the Scope of Work, as it was in the alternative selected in 2012. It is scandalous that the bike-ped path was downgraded to just a disposable option by the current administration.

The legislature needs to conduct an in-depth investigation into the Maryland Transportation Authority and explore what legislation is needed to ensure that the Authority meets the current needs of Maryland’s citizens.

Second, there are still many missing sidewalks along state roads in Montgomery County. For example, there is no sidewalk on either side of 16th Street (MD 390) where it meets Georgia Avenue (MD 97). There is no sidewalk on the west side of 16th Street from Lyttonsville Road to Spring Street.

In four years, the Purple Line will open, and residents of Montgomery Hills and the apartments along 16th Street will want to walk to the Woodside Station on 16th Street. Will they be able to walk there on opening day? Only if we get serious about building sidewalks now. There is no time to waste.

Thank you for your attention.

Cynthia Lazaroff's 38 Minutes of Dread Expectation

Cynthia Lazaroff has written a long, relentless and horrifying essay for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, titled "Dawn of a New Armageddon," about her experience this past January of living in Hawaii when a false text alarm went out about an incoming ballistic missile attack with the dread words "this is not a drill."

Lazaroff, a filmmaker and founder of U.S.-Russian exchange initiatives, recounts the terror of the 38 minutes before the announcement was recalled as a false alarm, through waves of incomprehension, phone calls, searches for shelter, thoughts of preparations left undone. She weaves throughout a historical overview of U.S.-Soviet disarmament efforts and the ramping up of nuclear tensions in a multilateral world, with a focus on Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev (whom she recently interviewed as part of a documentary on escalating nuclear threats) and their meetings in the 1980s.

The personal impressions and hurried decisions race along as the clock ticks, literally. Lazaroff writes,

I phone our close friends Prajna and Greg. They don’t know anything. They haven’t yet checked their cell phones. It takes a moment for it all to sink in.

"How long do we have if it’s real?” my friends ask, relying on me for an answer I can’t give them. “It depends on where it’s coming from,” I reply. “If it’s North Korea, I think we have about 25 minutes. If it’s Russia, we might have 25 to 30 minutes or so from launch, but that’s if it’s land-based from Western Russia to New York or Washington. If it’s from a Russian sub, it could be just a few minutes. We don’t know.”

“How long ago did Tom get the message?” Greg asks. Tom checks his cell phone. “About seven or eight minutes ago,” he answers. We are all calculating — maybe 20 or 15 or how many minutes left until … flash, blast wave, death.

Her article demands to be read and pondered.

A Cross-Border Princeton Wedding: From Atlanta to Mumbai

Winston Weinmann sent in the following item:

Last summer Winston Weinmann's daughter Ginny Weinmann '12 got married to Sagar Vijay '13 - twice - first in Atlanta, then a month later in Mumbai India. Ginny is now doing Cambridge University's 12 month MBA program in Englad, while Sagar finishes his Ph.D. in theoretical physics at MIT in "the other Cambridge".

Classmates at the Atlanta Wedding included Bill Stevenson, Jim Tausche, Brink Brinkley, and John Williams. Other Princetonians included Tim Dodson '81, Kathryn Brokaw '82, Winston's sister Mary Virginia Coffman '86 and her husband Peter Coffman '87, Marty Franchot '77, Amelia Baker '79, and a host from the classes of 2012 and 2013. Adam Goldstein '81 joined us for the rehearsal dinner the night before the wedding. The ceremony was held in our front yard, with elaborate rain plans, thankfully unused.

On the way to India, Winston, wife Brooke, and two of our children spent six days in the Maldives, where Winston's youngest brother, George, has been running an airline. On a commuter flight from the international airport to our resort, south of the equator, the archipelagoes and islands of the Maldives look other-worldly.

We then moved to Mumbai for the wedding festivities. These included elaborate mehndi (henna) decorations on the women (and a few of the guys) over a couple of days, and an all-day ceremony starting at 7 am. No elephants, but but plenty of pageantry. We were told that the form of a Hindu wedding is dependent on three things: where the family is from, their caste, and which Hindi god the guru the family looks to had his affiliation. In our case this was Tamil Nadu, Brahmin, and Vishnu.

Both Winston and Brooke had important roles to play in the Indian ceremony. Winston had the privilege of having Ginny sit on his lap for about a half an hour while he repeated phrases in Sanskrit whispered to him by one of the priests. We were told he was more or less intelligible. A section of the ceremony took place outside, where the groom "decides" to give up on marriage and gets ready to go off to be a monk, carrying an umbrella and a few other necessaries. Winston got to "convince" him of Ginny's charms, this time repeating phrases in Tamil. Experience with the Triangle Club would have been handy.

Several Princetonians were able to join us in Mumbai: Amelia Baker '79, Brink Brinkley and his family-including his youngest daughter Sumner '21, and Pat O'Connell '74 (in photo with Ginny & Sagar), as well as Amy Leenhouts Tait's son Alex Tate '12, and Mitch Nahmias '12.

After the Mumbai visit we took a 13 day trip in northern India with most of the guests who'd come from the U.S. The common tourist route is Dehli, Agra (the Taj Mahal), and Jaipur, the "golden triangle", which we did on the first 7 days. We can highly recommend also visiting Jodhpur, where we stayed at the maharaja's Umaid Bhawan Palace, one wing of which is still occupied by the royal family, and Udaipur, built around a lake. Both cities offer as much to see, do, and shop as the first three, with a less tourist-oriented feel.

Steven Strogatz's Wide-Ranging Q&A in Business Insider

Business Insider republished a long and enjoyable with Cornell math professor Steven Strogatz on January 4. Titled "An Ivy League professor explains chaos theory, the prisoner's dilemma, and why math isn't really boring," the interview ranges far and wide. Strogatz's answers and length and elegant, complete with charts, and almost impossible to fairly excerpt, so just follow the link and read it. 

Janice Weiner Running for Iowa State Senate

Recently retired after a 26-year career as a political officer in the U.S. State Department, Janice Weiner is running for the Democratic nomination for the Iowa State Senate. She's seeking to represent the 37th Distict, which includes here home town of Coralville. The incumbent is retiring.

Her campaign site on Facebook provides details on her background:

After a post-graduate fellowship at an international law institute in Munich, Janice practiced law in Palo Alto CA before joining the U.S. State Department in November 1987. Her first posting was in East Berlin, both before and after the Berlin Wall fell – an experience that combined totalitarianism with a grassroots, peaceful revolution - dual lessons that Janice never forgot. She then served in Brussels, Belgium, and Ankara, Turkey, where she won awards as Embassy human rights officer during the height of the PKK insurgency, forging relationships with many who risked their lives to defend human rights. 

Subsequent posts included Washington; Warsaw, Poland; Toronto, Canada; Ankara, Turkey as political counselor; Mexico City as embassy press attaché; and Düsseldorf, Germany as Consul General. Her final posting was in the bureau of legislative affairs at the State Department, liaising with Capitol Hill. After retiring from the Foreign Service, Janice worked for the American Foreign Service Association (AFSA), the bargaining unit and professional association of the Foreign Service. She moved back to Iowa in 2015 with her younger daughter, who will graduate from West High this spring.

The New Yorker's Richard Broday Analyzes New Louis C.K. Movie

The New Yorker film critic Richard Brody takes a very tough line on the new and still-unreleased film by the comedian Louis C.K. The New York debut of the film, "I Love You, Daddy," was cancelled after the New York Times published about C.K.'s harassment of women. Brody had seen the film and wrote a detailed analysis of it in his blog for the magazine. He wrote,

On Friday morning, the film distributor The Orchard announced that it was cancelling the release of Louis C.K.’s new movie, “I Love You, Daddy,” in light of a Times story, published on Thursday, in which five women described C.K.’s past sexual misconduct. (In a statement released after the Times story came out, C.K. acknowledged that the allegations are true.) The decision to cancel the release of the film is welcome; ”I Love You Daddy”—which Louis C.K. directed, edited, wrote, and stars in—is a disgusting movie that should never have been acquired for distribution in the first place. 

Peter Elkind Joins ProPublica to Cover Trump's Administration and Business

After 20 years at Fortune Magazine, writer Peter Elkind is joining ProPublica as a senior reporter covering the Trump Administration and President Trump's business activities. ProPublica, which describes itself as an independent and nonprofit newroom producing investigative journalism in the public interest, made the announcement on July 6, 2017. Elkind is joining ProPublica with another writer for Fortune, Nick Varchaver. A ProPublica statement said,

Elkind most recently worked at Fortune, where he was a writer for 20 years. His work there included investigations into how Apple CEO Steve Jobs concealed his bout with pancreatic cancer; how Tesla chief Elon Musk played states against each other to win an epic $1.4-billion economic-development package; and how a cyber-invasion brought Sony Pictures to its knees – and why Sony should have seen it coming. Before Fortune, Elkind worked at Texas Monthly and the Dallas Observer. 

In recent months, Elkind has contributed stories to ProPublica about former FBI director James Comey’s handling and misstatements about the Clinton email investigation in congressional testimony, and a former nurse and suspected serial killer of babies who Texas authorities are trying to keep behind bars. 

In addition to his magazine work, Elkind co-authored the national bestseller The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron and has written two other books, Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer and The Death Shift: The True Story of Nurse Genene Jones and the Texas Baby Murders. A 2005 documentary based on the Enron book was nominated for an Academy Award.

Eve Beglarian Honored by Herb Alpert Award in the Arts

Composer Eve Beglarian was honored in May as a recipient of the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, as the honoree in the music category. The program provides an unrestricted $75,000 grant, given to "risk-taking mid-career artists" in dance, film/video, music, theater and the visual arts. The description of her work says:

Composer Eve Beglarian draws her inspiration from a great many things: from a warning siren in Plaquemine, Louisiana and Beethoven’s “Missa Solemnis,” to the hand pumps she encountered at the beginning of her four-month-long “one-person WPA project,” traveling down the Mississippi. In 2001, using found texts as inspiration, she began, “A Book of Days,” one piece for every day of the year. Currently numbering more than 120 compositions, they are available for free on the web and by email subscription. Collaboration – with choreographers, poets, visual artists, filmmakers, theatre directors, and rural communities – is at the core of her practice. Her latest work, “Lighten Up,” an evening-length multi-media event made with people who have been struck in mid-life by visions, premieres in Spring 2018.

John Rogers Talks Investment Strategies on Consuelo Mack's "Wealthtrack" program

John Rogers, the founder, CEO and chief investment officer of Ariel Investments, recently sat down for a half-hour discussion with financial journalist Consuelo Mack on her "Wealthtrack" program aired on June 14, 2017 on PBS. It in, Rogers discussed his "slow, steady and contrarian approach" to successful investing.

It should be noted that the Ariel website features photos of turtles, so the visual message is definitely consistent with Rogers' investment strategy.

Steven Lieberman Representing Journalist in Tweet Assault Case

Steven Lieberman, member the intellectual property law firm of Rothwell Figg, has been all over the news lately as the pro bono attorney for Newsweek writer Kurt Eichenwald, In December, Eichenwald received a tweet of a .gif that deliberately induced an epileptic episode in him. The tweet followed an appearance by Eichenwald on the Tucker Carlson show on the Fox Network.

Earlier this month, a suspect in Maryland was arrested on charges of cyberstalking for sending the file to Eichenwald. Newsweek reported the details here.

The New York Times and other publications have quoted Lieberman in their articles about the arrest in the groundbreaking case. Rothwell Figg summarized the coverage and case here.

Peter Yawitz, Brenda Bazan Join Forces in Newworq Consulting Firm

Peter Yawitz and Brenda Bazan have merged their consulting practices to form Newworq, LLC, a firm focused on advising clients on challenges relating to: 

• Business model: market share, brand integrity, profitability
• Execution model: quality, satisfaction, productivity
• Culture model:  leadership, communication, capabilities

 With three managing partners, Newworq specifically consults on brand protection, business turnarounds, workforce design and custom sales.

Besides Yawitz and Bazan, Newworq's third managing partner is Shaunna Black, a member of the Women in Technology Hall of Fame.

Yawitz has taught management communication at Columbia Business School, the MIT Sloan School of Management, the Tuck School at Dartmouth and Babson University.  He is about to launch SomeoneElsesDad.com, which will give millennials advice on how to be effective at work.

Bazan  spent 25 years at IBM in jobs focused on transforming the traditional sales and marketing model. After leaving IBM, she founded three companies that targeted helping founders start and grow their businesses.

Black led global operations and manufacturing at Texas Instruments, Dongbu HiTek Korea, and Oryon Technology. She has expertise in business strategy, greenfield construction and startup, operations and maintenance, manufacturing, and technology ramp and transfer. She's a graduate of New Mexico State University and the University of Texas at Austin.

With New Play and Book, Richard Greenberg is in the Spotlight

Richard Greenberg has had a busy fall. In October he published a book of essays, "Rules for Others to Live By," December saw the debut of his latest play, "The Babylon Line," Variety's review called the play "one of those modest little gems that contains sparks of white light if you look hard enough."

Lincoln Center Theatre's website describes the play thusly:

Levittown, 1967. It’s the first night of adult-ed Creative Writing class in a classroom at the local high school. The teacher, Aaron Port, lives in Greenwich Village and reverse commutes once a week on the Long Island Rail Road’s Babylon line to Wantagh. His students are a mixed bag: Frieda Cohen, Anna Cantor and Midge Braverman, housewives all, embrace each other on arrival, and update their running checklists on each other’s kids, husbands and lawns. Their opening gambit is to tell Aaron in no uncertain terms that they are only there because French Cooking and Flower Arranging are full. The two men in the class, Jack Hassenpflug and Marc Adams keep mostly to themselves. 

One final student, Joan Dellamond, rushes in late – but she actually does intend to be there. She is a housewife, but not like the others. Living on Long Island with no kids, she cannot be in the same conversation with those women. Nor does she seem to want to be. And yet, she does seek connection. Maybe this class will bring her, and Aaron, something that neither quite expects.

Greenberg did a fair amount of publicity around the play, For example, the Forward newspaper ran a lengthy Q&A on December 2, titled, "Tony-Winning Playwright Richard Greenberg Talks Baseball, Movies, Ferrante and Obscurity." One excerpt from the interview, conducted by writer Adam Langer:

AL: Are you going to be in rehearsal on election night?

RG: I don’t know. I think it might be a dress rehearsal. I remember being in a dress rehearsal the day after Obama got elected and all anyone was talking about was the cues. The show does go on, doesn’t it?

AL: It’s kind of a lovely world to live in.

RG: I guess. It has its exigencies. I remember doing a play at Lincoln Center. I was doing two plays during 9/11 and one of them was at Lincoln Center. Someone determined that Lincoln Center was number five on the terrorist hit list. I don’t know who came up with that list. But I remember feeling very, very secure there in that theater.

Robert Silverman Taking Part on new Muslim-Jewish Initiative

Six months after becoming the first director of Muslim-Jewish Relations at the AJC (American Jewish Committee), Robert Silverman has been playing a leading role in a related initiative that began in the weeks after the 2016 presidential election. According to a November 14 press release:

The Muslim-Jewish Advisory Council, a new national group of leading Muslim and Jewish Americans, was launched this month at a meeting convened by the American Jewish Committee (AJC) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA).

The Council brings together recognized business, political, and religious leaders in the Jewish and Muslim American communities to jointly advocate on issues of common concern. Stanley Bergman, CEO of Henry Schein, and Farooq Kathwari, President and CEO of Ethan Allen, are the Council’s co-chairs.

At the group’s inaugural meeting, the Muslim and Jewish participants met for two hours to get to know one another, discuss the Council’s mission, and identify and agree on a domestic policy agenda. Among the Council’s initial action items are:

• The Council will highlight the contributions of Muslims and Jews to American society, and aim to celebrate their contributions in the best traditions of American democracy.
• The Council will develop a coordinated strategy to address anti-Muslim bigotry and anti-Semitism in the U.S.
• The Council will work to protect and expand the rights of religious minorities in the U.S., as enshrined in the Constitution, so they may practice their faiths in full freedom and security.

Articles about the Council in the religious and secular press often quoted Silverman, who joined the AJC after a career in the State Department. An article in the November 16 issue of the New York Jewish Week said,

“The election rhetoric no doubt increased some people’s motivation in joining this council,” which was planned and began meeting before the election, said Robert Silverman, a career foreign service officer in the State Department who was named the AJC’s first director of Muslim-Jewish Relations six months ago. “But the underlying need to have such a group is longstanding and overdue, and is not directly related to the elections.” . . . 

The council, which calls itself the first-such major national organization that brings together prominent members of both religious communities, will concentrate on drafting and supporting enforcement of legislation in such areas as “reasonable accommodation” of religious practice, prevention of religious discrimination in the workplace, support for refugee immigration and enforcement of existing hate crime laws.

“The priorities are still being worked out,” said Silverman. He added that the council will also work to combat negative stereotypes that members of each religious group hold about the other. He said the “leaders of the two communities … are intrigued by the possibilities of working with this other community whom they don’t know very well.”

Rich Greenberg's New Play, "The Babylon Line," to Debut in December

Playwright Rich Greenberg's new play, "The Babylon Line," will have its off-Broadway premiere on December 5 at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater in New York. Previews begin. Josh Radnor, Broadway star seen on TV in "How I Met Your Mother," has the lead role.

According to Broadway.com,

In addition to Radnor, the cast will feature Tony winners Randy Graff and Frank Wood, Elizabeth Reaser, Maddie Corman, Julie Halston and Michael Oberholtzer. Set in 1967, The Babylon Line follows a writer (played by Radnor) in Greenwich Village who teaches a creative writing class in Levittown. As he leads his students, one pupil (played by Reaser) revives his abandoned artistic endeavors.