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
A gradualist and an optimist, Eli Evans argued that I was holding Southern Jews to an unfair standard
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…
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…
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…
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…
It was a Friday night in mid-August, and about a dozen Jews, most under 30, congregated around a coffee table in Nashville. Almost all had moved to the city in the past three years. We opened up instrument cases and passed around egg shakers. Someone started strumming guitar. “Lecha dodi, lekrat kala…” When I was…
I make the treyf groceries first. (In New Orleans, you “make” groceries; you don’t buy them.) Traffic inches along North Broad Street, everyone eager to start the weekend. The sun is a ripe satsuma hanging above the Mississippi, and the Superdome reflects the purple sky. I have several stops to make before I even start…
Like so many in the American Jewish community, Rabbi Elizabeth Bahar of Temple B’nai Sholom in Huntsville, Alabama, was “very surprised” and deeply disappointed by the presidential election result November 8, 2016. But not by the results in her home state. “I knew Trump was going to win Alabama,” Bahar said. In fact, Alabama is…
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