The Lemon Tree

Listen Up
In 1998, journalist Sandy Tolan broadcast this award-winning radio documentary, The Lemon Tree (38:30), dealing with an Israeli (Dalia) and a Palestinian (Bashir) who come to share the same house (one with a lemon tree in the backyard).

Bashir Al-Khairi (buh-SHEER al-HAY-ree), an Arab, was six when his family was driven out of his stone home in Ramle, in old Palestine, during the war with Israel in July 1948. Dalia Eshkenazi, a Jew, was ten months old when her family arrived from Bulgaria in November 1948, and moved into an old stone home in Ramle. Nineteen years later, after the Six Day War, Bashir went to visit his old home. He rang the bell. Dalia answered.

In May 2006, Tolan published a book version of his story, and gave this extended radio interview (25:03) updating his story.

Write Now

• There’s an old saying about never discussing politics or religion at the dinner table – a rule that suggests the importance of separating ideology and beliefs from ordinary human interaction. What do you think of such advice?
• Some of the life’s biggest problems come from two people wanting one thing that cannot be readily shared – think of the famous biblical story of Solomon trying to divide a baby between two mothers. Is there a political lesson here as well?
• One of the themes of “The Lemon Tree” is the value or the limits of dialogue – just how far talk will carry one in resolving a dispute. What is your sense of this matter: when to continue versus when to end a dialogue?

Read On

• More from Wikipedia on the town of Ramle (or Ramla)

UFO's

Listen Up

• Steven Spielberg's 2005 film, The War of the Worlds is one of many reworkings of H. G. Wells' classic novel from 1898. A an earlier film version from 1953 appeared during a wave of intense interest in sci-fi movies in America – a topic discussed in this NPR report (7:32).

• The modern interest in UFO’s is often traced back to June 24, 1947, and a “creditable” report by a Washington state businessman Kenneth Arnold about spying a host of bright objects in the night sky. This historical radio report (27:57) from CBS news and its famed correspondent, Edward R. Murrow, dates from 1950, that is, from the early days of the Cold War and America’s concern with the Soviet Union, international communism, and atomic bombs.
• In 1938, actor Orson Welles struck fear into much of the country when he broadcast this radio play version of The War of the World (51:24).

Write Now

• What are your thoughts on fear as a universal part of the human condition, and especially the differences between individual fear (when one person is afraid) and group fear (when one’s social group as a whole feels threatened)?
• What strikes you as old-fashioned about the 1950 CBS radio broadcast; what, if anything, seems more contemporary?

Read On

• More from Wikipedia.com on UFO’s and the Orson Welles 1939 radio broadcast
• You can read Welles’s radio script.