A new generation has taken up the banner and found creative ways to make Yiddish relevant, injecting the language into concerts, lectures, poetry, theater and podcasts.
American Jews active in peace groups have recently began making sure they have another item on their checklist before leaving for the Holy Land: a phone number of a civil rights lawyer.
"Why does he always go to other countries?” she asks while chewing a pistachio. I stroke her head and say, “Don’t eat and talk at the same time, pumpkin, you can choke.” She swallows silently, then immediately asks, “Daddy, if you build buildings, what do you need a gun for?”
By the time Prohibition began, Jews did make up a significant portion of the alcohol industry—most often in the whiskey business, working as distillers or distributors. But a smaller cohort of Jews also made their mark as cocktail bartenders.
Standing next to David Duke and Richard Spencer last August in Charlottesville, I couldn't imagine what America would look like a year later. I was surrounded by neo-Nazis and alt-right activists shouting anti-Semitic slurs—at least one with a large swastika tattooed on his back
In 1985, I was a cub reporter at the City News Bureau of Chicago. I was sometimes assigned to cover the Nation of Islam, which was headquartered a neighborhood or so away from my South Side apartment.
This past spring, Trayon White Sr., a Washington, DC city councilmember, sparked an outcry by blaming a late season snowfall on the Rothschilds, the famous Jewish banking dynasty, who, he explained, control “the climate to create natural disasters they can pay for to own the cities.”