I feel like I’m about as square as can be. And yet, I understand that the gestalt of Jewish, gay, black, community-leader-me is simply unmetabolizable to some Jews. The package in which I exist defies the physics of some mainstream Jewish community assumptions — even among those who share the history of oppression. But what…
White supremacists have committed about 83 percent of extremist-related murders in the United States in the last decade, according to a new Anti-Defamation League report. The report, released Monday, also found that most of those murders were perpetrated for non-ideological reasons. In addition, a slight majority of the shootouts between extremists of any kind and…
We’ve all been talking about Michael Oren’s audacious new book “Ally” and his . But Michael Oren is hardly the only Israeli citizen making enemies out of the President of the United States. Take Judy Nir Moses, the wife of Israeli Minister of Interior Silvan Shalom. She’s a media personality, part of a weekly talk…
A prominent Jewish Charlestonian’s inspiring response to the racist massacre at the Emanuel AME church has circulated widely over the last days. Robert Rosen writes that “Charlestonians do not believe in hate, lawlessness, racism or violence.” The city “has from its birth in 1670 had the greatest respect for all religions and all places of…
The grim-faced look of President Obama as he addressed the nation after the attack on a Charleston church seemed not only to reflect his personal pain. It encapsulated the resignation of a man who thought he would not have to minister again on these occasions, would not have to continually remind us that the toxic…
Have you ever thought about making demands about your taxi driver’s ethnicity or religion? “Hello, car service, I’d like my driver white and Christian, please?” No, you would never. Because that would be, well, racist, right? Apparently, Cinema City — a movie theater complex in Jerusalem — was doing exactly that. For months. A bunch of…
Israel has erred in its treatment of Ethiopian immigrants, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin said at a state ceremony in memory of the Ethiopian Jews who died on their way to Israel. Sunday’s Mount Herzl ceremony, which takes place annually on Jerusalem Day, commemorates the 4,000 Ethiopian Jews who died on the way as they walked…
I’ve been following the growing buzz — generally and in the Forward specifically — around Jewishness, white privilege, and “Ashkenormativity.” As a Yiddishist with an anti-racist agenda, I have a vested interest in understanding Ashkenazi identity in a way that yields a Jewish community that is both inclusive and capable of working across identity boundaries…
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