In three centuries of Southern Jewish life in the Big Easy, no easy way to be Jewish
Nicholas Lemann’s ‘Returning’ is a sprawling family history of the limits of assimilation
Southern Jews
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Fast Forward Arson at Jackson synagogue jolts Institute of Southern Jewish Life, but its mission persists
Serving 70 congregations across the South, the nonprofit takes stock of its legacy after the fire
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Books Why Jews were like everyone else — only more so — during slavery and the Civil War
Richard Kreitner’s ‘Fear No Pharoah’ takes an unflinching look at how Jews reckoned with America’s founding sin
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Culture The ‘poet laureate of Southern Jewry’ has died. Here’s how I remember him.
A gradualist and an optimist, Eli Evans argued that I was holding Southern Jews to an unfair standard
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Fast Forward Senators Jon Ossoff and Ted Cruz team up to investigate old lynchings
In an unlikely pairing, Jon Ossoff, the Jewish Democratic senator from Georgia, introduced bipartisan legislation with Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas to investigate unsolved racially-motivated murders from the Civil Rights era. Building on a 2018 law, the legislation would extend the term of the Civil Rights Cold Case Records Review Board to 2027 and…
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News At the new Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience, seder plates and slave receipts
At the new Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience, there’s an ornate Torah crown from a synagogue in Port Gibson, Mississippi, dating back to the 1850s. Walk a few more steps, and there’s a bill of sale for a 12-year-old enslaved girl to a Southern Jewish family in Arkansas. Yes: growing up Jewish in the…
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News This Torah Was Dropped Off At A Va. Thrift Store Can You Help Us Find Where It Came From?
A couple hundred bucks can get you a variety of things on Goodwill’s online store: Tory Burch boots; a metal detector; a Burberry duffle; a collection of Furbies. Oh, and a Torah. Until Tuesday, you could bid for a scroll — sacred, if tattered — at ShopGoodwill.com. First listed at $200, bidders quickly pushed the…
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Culture Should We Say Kaddish For The South?
For whatever reason, I have attended only one funeral in my life, and it was for a Holocaust survivor. After liberation, Gilbert Metz made his way to Natchez, Mississippi, of all places, and soon to New Orleans and Tulane University, an education he paid for by window washing. He served with distinction in the Korean…
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In Case You Missed It
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Books In three centuries of Southern Jewish life in the Big Easy, no easy way to be Jewish
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Yiddish „קיין שוועדיש רעדט מען נישט!“ — אַ ייִדיש־טאָג בײַם לונדער אוניװערסיטעט ‘No speaking Swedish here!’ — Yiddish Day in Lund University
די 30 אָנטייל־נעמערס זענען געקומען פֿון גאַנץ שװעדן, נאָרװעגיע, פֿינלאַנד און אַנדערע אייראָפּעיִשע לענדער.
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Opinion We’re forgetting the lessons of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire
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Theater Roald Dahl’s monstrous views have a seat at the table today
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