September 14, 2007

100 Years Ago in the forward

The Forward has learned of a planned attack on any and all progressive Jews by hooligans and criminals. The attack is scheduled for Yom Kippur, when many freethinking Jews meet in their clubhouses for nonreligious holiday events. Similar attacks occurred last year, though word on the street now is that pimps, pickpockets, gamblers and other criminals will follow, surround and beat anyone who wears a Workmen’s Circle pin (or any other symbol of the freethinking left). With certain Yiddish newspapers instigating against progressive Jews, and the police refusing to get involved, it can be expected that there will be major attacks on the streets of New York this Yom Kippur.

75 Years Ago in the forward

On a visit to Koenigsberg, German Defense Minister von Schleicher announced this week that Germany plans to strengthen both its army and navy because of fears that Poland will attack. This is the first time that an announcement had been made declaring an intention to increase Germany’s armed forces. Up to this point, von Schleicher had only requested of the Allies that Germany be permitted equal rights vis-à-vis its armed forces. Also this week, Germany put forth a similar ultimatum to the government of France, saying that the country requires an army on par with all other armies.

Like any other peoples, Jews love to tell riddles. Among them, there are a number that deal specifically with food issues:

What is pointy and slippery, and when eaten, you have to have more?
Kreplach.

Which food is first treyf, then pareve, and, finally, fleyshik?

An egg. (It’s treyf when it’s sitting under a hen, pareve as an egg and then fleyshik when it hatches.)

In oyvn shteyste, in mol tsegeyste, vi heyste? (In oven you stand, you melt in the mouth, what are you called?)
Kugel.

50 Years Ago in the forward

When Binyamin Zelewski, a waiter on the Haifa-based ship that had just docked in New York, was told that someone from the Red Cross was on the line for him from Montreal, he thought his shipmates were playing a joke on him. The voice on the other end told him to sit down and that his parents were there. As far as Zelewski knew, he didn’t have any parents; he grew up in an orphanage in Paris. In fact, he didn’t even know he was Jewish until some runaway Jews who were holed up with the peasants he was working for in the countryside during World War II happened to see him naked. Convinced that he was a Jew, he went to work for the Resistance and immigrated to Israel after the war. His parents, Moyshe and Zlate, survived the Warsaw Ghetto and a number of concentration camps and then immigrated to Canada after the war. They continued to look for him, and thanks to the Red Cross they found their only surviving son.

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