1. Mississippi’s first official Jewish religious service is believed to have occurred in the port town of Natchez in 1800. 2. Perry Nussbaum, rabbi of Congregation Beth Israel in Jackson, was heavily involved in the civil rights movement. In September 1967, the synagogue in Jackson was bombed by Ku Klux Klan members. In November of…
Here is a corollary to Marx’s great insight that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce, itself a clarification of Hegel’s sense that people and events recur: Scandal, too, will repeat itself; first as laboriously documented news, then as thinly veiled fiction. Consider the case of Bernard “Bernie” Madoff: Even the name seems…
“Do not gloat when your enemy falls; when they stumble, do not let your heart rejoice” (Proverbs, 24:17). That was easy for Solomon to say; it’s harder when your enemy is the ex-wife of a white-collar criminal who did plenty of rejoicing herself while living high on the ill-gotten hog. Who wouldn’t want to laugh…
The reputations of talk show hosts do not have a particularly long shelf life. How many people under the age of 40 recall Jack Paar? Who under 25 knows Johnny Carson? But Stephen Battaglio’s new biography, “David Susskind: A Televised Life,” makes the case for remembering an impresario who brought a brash exuberance to the…
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