From 1985 to 1990, I was a neurologist at the University of Louisville School of Medicine in Louisville, Kentucky. Living in Kentucky was a huge change for this native New Yorker, who had spent my whole life in the Boston-Washington corridor. My 5 years in Kentucky were, nonetheless, wonderful ones. Louisville is one of the…
Since the November election, there’s been a lot of talk among journalists about the way our profession overlooked and misunderstood populist, pro-Trump America. It’s a challenge for us at the Forward, as well. That is why we are launching “Red State Jews.” Our aim is to use all the platforms of the Forward — news,…
Kentucky Congressman John Yarmuth became the third Jewish House Democrat to announce he would boycott Friday’s inauguration after a spat between the incoming leader and civil rights icon John Lewis. “For the last ten weeks, President-elect Trump has continually denigrated the office of the President by using his bully pulpit for insult and ridicule,” he…
Last night I got one of those stomach-churning emails: I had made a mistake in the big feature I wrote about Jewish slaveowners in Kentucky. The mistake was this: Towards the end of the piece, I had mentioned an 1871 visit that George Armstrong Custer, the cavalry officer famous for dying at Little Bighorn, paid…
On my second day in Eastern Kentucky, I ate an Arby’s roast beef sandwich that tasted like a wet brown paper towel. That was lunch on the trail of the long-dead nightclub owner they called the Big Jew. The Big Jew used to have a dancehall near the Cumberland Gap, with slot machines and liquor…
1. Bat Shit on the Cave Floor In a forest in Kentucky there’s a hole in the ground that was once full of bat shit. The bats are mostly gone now. A bat plague hit here last year, and when you follow the sloping sidewalk down into the hole today, you step into a silent…
1 11,300 Jews live in Kentucky. 2 Henry Hyman was reportedly the first Jew to settle in Louisville, Kentucky. In 1826, he opened a tavern called the Western Coffeehouse, where he sold delicious, non-kosher food and the finest liquor in town. 3 Jewish communal life began in Kentucky in the 1830s. 4 The first Jewish…
A campaign consultant disparaged Jews during a recorded confrontation with his former client, a candidate in the Democratic primary for Kentucky state treasurer. “You are why people don’t like Jews,” Jacob Conway said to Daniel Grossberg on the recording that Grossberg provided to Insider Louisville. “You are exactly where the term ‘Jew you out of…
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