Jack Nusan Porter arrived in America in 1946 as a baby son of poor immigrants. In Wisconsin, he found prosperity, tolerance — and a great state to grow up Jewish.
Wisconsin has cheeseheads. It also has Golda Meir, who was born in Milwaukee, Harry Houdini and ‘Laverne and Shirley.’
For a month before and a month after the September 11 terrorist attacks, I was the southernmost rabbi in the continental United States or, as my brother liked to say, the “Key Vester Rebbe.”My memories of those days resurfaced recently when I read “Drag Queens at the 801 Cabaret” (University of Chicago Press, 2003), by two University