Ramadan, Islam's holiest month with its dawn-to-dusk fasting, begins this weekend. Though most Muslim clerics urge believers to limit watching television to avoid worldly distractions, viewership this month throughout the Arab world typically surges by as much as 80%. While Saudis watch an average of three hours of TV a day, daily viewing during Ramadan is more than five hours.

What the 400 million Arabs in 22 Middle Eastern and North African countries will see this year when they turn on their TVs will differ from the usual fare. Despite the region's fixation on the war in Gaza, none of the new series premiering during Ramadan focuses on Israel or the Palestinians.

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Dec. 7, as most members of the so-called "greatest generation" know, is the day that Franklin Roosevelt declared would "live in infamy" when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, belatedly drawing America into World War II. Similarly, most Americans, even those too young to have seen the Twin Towers collapse or smelled the stench of burning metal and flesh, know that Islamic terrorists changed history on Sept. 11 by killing over 3,000 people in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Within Israel and for Jews everywhere, Oct. 7 will long be remembered as the day that Hamas and other Palestinian enthusiasts slaughtered 1,200 Israelis and took 251 people hostage in coordinated incursions from Gaza.

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Though Hurricanes Helene and Milton killed at least 24 people in Florida, caused over an estimated $50 billion worth of damage to homes and infrastructure, and left millions of residents without water and power, Palm Beach, one of the state's wealthiest enclaves, escaped the giant storms' wrath. Yet all is not well in Paradise South, home to some of the nation's wealthiest citizens.

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Frank Jordan sipped a glass of pinot noir in John's Grill, one of San Francisco's most historic haunts, known to Dashiell Hammett fans as the place where his fictional detective Sam Spade dined on lamb chops, potatoes, and tomatoes after acquiring the prized Maltese Falcon. As Jordan contemplated the future of San Francisco, the city where he was born 89 years ago and rose to become police chief and a one-term mayor between 1992 and 1996, he could barely be heard over the din of the packed restaurant.

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Remarkable films and plays about mankind's most heinous genocide tend to come in clusters. If the Holocaust itself is stark and unchanging, every generation forges its own connection to that history, in its own distinct emotional register.

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