One Purim, I stood on a street corner and asked passersby if they were Jewish and wanted to hear the Megillah. I met a boy who told me that his mother is Jewish but he was raised Catholic. He had never seen a Megillah scroll in his entire life. That’s why we ask. This past…
‘Are Jews white?” is, no doubt, the strangest controversy spawned by “Wonder Woman,” the new hit movie starring Israeli actress Gal Gadot. It’s a debate that I, as a Russian-born American Jew, find both surreal (probably because it would have never occurred to me to regard myself as nonwhite) and disturbing. Partly, that’s because the…
There are a lot of things going on in actor Daryl Deino’s American Spectator article from last week, entitled “Anne Frank’s ‘Privilege’?!” In the conservative publication, Deino recounts a disturbing conversation he overheard among a group of 20-somethings in a Glendale, California Starbucks: One of the kids sported a buzz cut, scruffy beard, tattoos all…
Updated February 3, after the Forward had spoken directly with Bari Reiner. I hoped not. Really I did. I hoped, when I saw that a woman named Bari Reiner had told an Associated Press journalist that she found it offensive to have “white privilege” as the topic of an essay contest in her Connecticut town,…
“No dogs, radios, bicycles or picnics.” This enigmatic list posted on a series of wrought iron fences made clear — though without explanation — what items were once barred from the “Backs” in Cambridge, England. Honoring this proscription was the small cost of using the private meadows owned by the colleges next to the river…
In the National Review, Ericka Andersen makes an important, timely point about the expression “white privilege,” and to a privilege meme she’s seen on social media, calling out Trump supporters for theirs: “For a good many white people in the U.S.,” notes Andersen, “‘privilege’ is not a word they relate to.” Andersen acknowledges “the very…
After synagogue on Friday, I went out to dinner. Over rigatoni with eggplant and kale salad, my mom and her friends talked about the nightmare of Donald Trump’s election. “This is horrific,” they said over and over, rehashing this hateful thing he’s said and that horrible thing he’s done and imagining just how awful it…
There should be a conversation in the Jewish community about the conversation that is being had about us. If you’ve missed it, here’s what it sounds like. On the hard left, populated largely by fans of Bernie Sanders, the Jews are too powerful, too privileged and too white to deserve any protections against bigotry, ad…
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