When my grandparents gave me a Star of David necklace in elementary school, they did not mention Israel. A few years later, they told me about my family members who survived and died in the Holocaust, and the Star of David they were required to wear on their clothing. Still, no utterance of the Jewish…
Stephanie Goldfarb is a social worker at the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago and also the winner of “America’s Best Cook” on the Food Network and proprietor of Seven Species Supper Club, a bimonthly dinner at her home in Edgewater. As a member of both Chicago’s Jewish and LGBTQ communities, she was upset by the…
What do The Israel Project and the Chicago Dyke March organizers have in common, Peter Beinart asks in his response to my op-ed published on Tuesday. Nothing — that’s the short and only answer to his latest slanderous assault on the integrity of my organization. We, at TIP, are a nonpartisan, centrist, umbrella organization that…
To the Chicago Dyke March organizers: “Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?” The House Un-American Committee (HUAC) routinely asked that question. The history of McCarthy-era witch-hunts shows that political litmus tests and coerced loyalty oaths serve to clean house, to delegitimize and expel undesirables. Not surprisingly, HUAC…
Here’s a Chicago fun fact: You know that statue on East Wacker Drive at Lake Street, right in front of the river, of George Washington with two random colonial guys? Well, the one on the right is Haym Salomon, a Polish-born Jew who funded Washington’s army by negotiating foreign loans at rock-bottom interest rates and…
There are a few things that everyone can agree on about what transpired at the Chicago Dyke March last Saturday. Somewhere along the two-mile parade route through the Little Village neighborhood, a discussion began between a group of queer Palestinians and three Jewish women carrying rainbow flags with blue Stars of David in the middle…
The Chicago Dyke March is supposed to be an especially inclusive gathering of progressives. Shockingly, Jews carrying rainbow flags with the Star of David were asked to leave. One Dyke March collective member told the Windy City Times the women were told to leave because the flags “made people feel unsafe,” that the march was…
NEW YORK (JTA) — For years, Laurie Grauer had waved a rainbow flag emblazoned with a Jewish star at the Chicago Dyke March, sometimes marching near activists waving Palestinian flags. It had never been a problem. But this year, Grauer was confronted by the LGBT parade’s organizers, questioned about her support for Israel and asked…
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