In the summer of 1954, Elvis Presley released his first single. He had one problem: He couldn’t play it. The aspiring 19-year-old singer was living with his parents at 462 Alabama Avenue in Memphis, Tennessee. With rent at $50 a month, his family was too poor to afford a record player. So, as he often…
Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) easily survived a primary election challenge, making it likely he will continue to represent Tennessee’s 9th Congressional District. Cohen defeated challenger Ricky Wilkins by a more than 2-to-1 margin in Thursday’s primary, winning 66 percent of the vote to Wilkins’ 33 percent, according to vote totals compiled by The Associated Press….
Jews pop up in unexpected places in Memphis, Tennessee. Here are six things that surprised us in the Blues City. 1) Joseph Is Stalking Us The biblical Joseph is stalking us in the South. We first came across him in Alabama, when we drove through Dothan, a town with a fledgling Jewish community. The town’s…
A former hotel security guard was sentenced to four years in prison for defacing a Memphis Jewish school’s Torah scroll and prayer books. Justin Shawn Baker, 25, was sentenced Tuesday in Madison County Circuit Court, according to the Jackson Sun. Baker pleaded guilty earlier this month, admitting in court to violating the civil rights of…
Democrat Steve Cohen, the first Jewish congressman to represent a district in Tennessee, has lost a key constituency, the small Jewish community in Memphis, after the borders of his district were redrawn. Cohen’s Ninth District has been reshaped in a way that cut him off from most of the Jews living in Memphis. Even Cohen’s…
“Take a bite, and if you don’t like it, spit it out!” said the veteran BBQ judge to my left as I eased into a folding chair, the smell of kosher brisket and ribs hovering over a packed parking lot of an Orthodox synagogue in Memphis on Sunday. Before a recent move to Memphis, I…
The team on our left decorated its booth with a bull’s head with tefillin wrapped around the horns. The team on our right was anchored by a 6 foot 4 guy named Roger who helped us pass the night with tales of cooking “whole hogs”. My team, representing the borough of Brooklyn in Alabama —…
Every August, the parking lot of the Mid-South’s oldest Orthodox congregation fills with BBQ smoke. Forty-two teams from as far away as New York gather here to set up tents and spend most of a Sunday barbequing brisket, ribs, and beans as part of the annual Anshei Sphard-Beth El Emeth (ASBEE) Kosher BBQ Contest and…
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