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…
Driving west on I-10 out of New Orleans, you plunge almost immediately into a world made more of water than of land. First you cross the Bonnet Carre Spillway, which channels overflowing river water into Lake Pontchartrain. Later, in Baton Rouge, you rattle 175 feet above the Mississippi on a rickety cantilever bridge. And then,…
This article originally appeared in Yiddish in the Forverts. The Jewish community of Charleston, South Carolina, wants everyone to know that Florida isn’t the only state where Jewish couples can enjoy their golden years basking in warm weather and Jewish community. Last week, Charleston’s modern Orthodox synagogue, Brith Sholom Beth Israel, hosted more than 40…
