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In today’s edition:
- Food tells the U.S. immigrant story
- High-schoolers need plans, not phones
- Feds reeeeaaaally don’t want to go back to the office
- Israel might at last end the ultra-Orthodox’s big scam
Immigrant food
Before we get too bogged down with the presidential debate (more on that tomorrow, and the next day … and probably after the weekend, too), let’s talk about food. First up: manoushe, which is definitely not pizza.
A few months ago, Jason Rezaian embarked on a tour of immigrant-owned restaurants in the D.C. area. He’s the son of an immigrant father (and of a first-generation American mom) himself, so he knows how central food is to the immigrant experience. In fact, if there’s one key to understanding the story of people coming to America, it’s probably what they eat — and then feed their new fellow countrymen.
The first stop in his series is Z&Z, a Palestinian bakery in suburban Maryland that makes manoushe, the airy flatbread that existed in the Levant “long before anyone in Italy thought to put tomato and cheese atop dough,” Jason writes.
Brothers Danny and Johnny Dubbaneh opened the place in 2021 — in the same storefront where their grandfather once operated a fried chicken restaurant. Back then, he had to smuggle falafel onto the menu. Today, the brothers’ clientele has a much worldlier palate; za’atar is no stranger.
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Still, in a lovely interview that touches on fusion cuisines, his first manoushe and the foods he still misses, Danny Dubbaneh admits the challenges of owning a restaurant in a sentence that may as well be describing the immigrant experience writ large: “You don’t know how to solve a problem until you encounter it, and that’s what we have been doing.”
Phone/plans
Rahm Emanuel might be the U.S. ambassador to Japan, but his heart is still in Chicago. In an op-ed on the persistent issue of high school dropout rates, he suggests the rest of the country look to a plan the city implemented in 2017, when he was mayor.
“Learn. Plan. Succeed.” required every senior to present some sort of post-graduation plan — a college acceptance letter, a job offer, confirmation of military enlistment — before earning their diploma.
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Graduation rates have steadily risen since the program began, and college enrollment saw a jump, too. That’s because “Chicago is preparing every student for life after high school while in high school,” Emanuel writes, at a time when many other jurisdictions are pruning away graduation requirements.
The op-ed gives more detail on the program and how it might serve other areas, but my favorite bit is this very Rahm Emanuel line: “Some people might think that the U.S. ambassador to Japan should stay in his lane. I never have, and it’s too late to change now.”
Meanwhile, Los Angeles has banned cellphones in schools — not just their use in class, but the devices altogether. The Editorial Board heartily approves.
It’s a dramatic move, but the problem was dire. The board reports on certain schools having to remove bathroom mirrors because students kept slipping out of class to film TikToks in front of them.
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Schools will need to do some tweaking on exactly how to operationalize the ban, including how to deal with emergencies — allow “dumbphones,” perhaps? — but L.A.’s decision will give a huge boost to classroom and social learning alike.
Chaser: Is the whole smartphone panic dumb? Are warning labels on social media a good idea? Amanda Ripley, Molly Roberts and Ted Johnson discuss these questions and more on the latest “Impromptu” podcast.
From Marc Fisher’s column about how federal workers are going back to the office … any year now.
The executive branch is trying to get the feds back into their expensive cubicles. Legislators have introduced an act to require trips to the office. I hear even Neil Gorsuch has offered to organize a carpool.
Yet the most powerful of America’s checks and balances, it turns out, belongs to the remote worker who doesn’t want to move more than six steps from the fridge. Cut to downtown D.C., where Marc reports wandering “past shuttered storefronts along empty sidewalks, especially on Mondays and Fridays … and Tuesdays and Thursdays. Wednesdays aren’t great, either.”
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Are workers really responsible for solving mayors’ retail problems? Or for making sure their butts in seats justify taxpayers’ rent money? Shouldn’t we be thinking bigger?
More politics
For decades, Israel’s ultra-Orthodox population has been running what Ruth Marcus calls a “two-part scam”: Their men get exempted from compulsory military service, while they and their institutions get beaucoup public money for religious study.
This is because, according to the chief Sephardic rabbi, without these institutions, “the army would not be successful. … The soldiers only succeed thanks to those learning Torah.” Ruth marvels at the chutzpah.
Israel’s high court unanimously ruled this week that the setup lacks legal justification. It has done this before, but in each instance, the ultra-Orthodox have finagled a deferral, sometimes threatening to leave Israel if they don’t get their way. This time, however, Ruth thinks the pressures of the Israel-Gaza war might actually make the ruling stick — perhaps one silver lining to the awful conflict.
Smartest, fastest
- New York Rep. Jamaal Bowman was a Democratic Trump, Dana Milbank writes. Now he’s gone — and thank goodness the left still knows when to say: Stop.
- Former reporter Howard Blum writes that delay after delay in the case of a quadruple murder of Idaho students has made healing impossible.
- Russian warships have been spotted conducting exercises off Cuba. Former CIA general counsel Jeffrey Smith hopes Russia still remembers the understanding that ended the 1962 missile crisis.
It’s a goodbye. It’s a haiku. It’s … The Bye-Ku.
Ultra-Orthodox
Need a new plan for post-grad
Migration, maybe?
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Have your own newsy haiku? Email it to me, along with any questions/comments/ambiguities. See you tomorrow!
