In these times when families are being heartlessly separated, I cannot help but think of my maternal great-grandmother Alice (Goldman) Sherman. In 1920, she escaped with her four children, among them my grandmother Jennie, from a village they called “Yumpelah,” near Kiev. My great-aunt Dora would later tell my mother that she witnessed firing squads…
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Those of us who love Yiddish are often naturally drawn to objects of a previous era. No surprise, then, that many of us have boxes of old stuff stashed away in the attic or closet, related either to our own past or to that of a relative…
In the season premiere of the PBS’ show “Finding Your Roots,” hosted by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Larry David and Senator Bernie Sanders are told of their respective ancestries. David gained acclaim in 2015 for doing a “spot-on” impression of the senator, a performance made easier by the widely remarked-upon fact that David shares Sanders’…
Judaism hasn’t always been an important part of my life. Over the years my Jewish Identity has changed more times than the Minnesota Vikings have changed quarterbacks. There was the Hebrew School phase, the Bar Mitzvah phase (aka the glory days), the summer camp phase (not really something you phase out of), among others. Admittedly,…
The kapos at Mauthausen beat Reb Isser ben Avrum so savagely he could no longer stand straight. Sustaining other permanent injuries to his nose and left eye, he was, incredibly enough, one of the more fortunate ones. He arrived in America in the early 1950s and began life anew, remarrying and raising a second family….
This week marks the 63rd anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark Supreme Court case that declared segregated schools, even if they had similar resources, were “inherently” unequal because separating children by race caused serious adverse effects. Shockingly, more than six decades later, New York City has the most racially divided schools in…
This article originally appeared in The Forward on July 4, 1997. The first tattoo, speculates Peter Trachtenberg, was the mark of God placed on Cain “lest anyone finding him kill him.” In other words, muses the author of “7 Tattoos,” “From the very beginning tattoos were associated with wrongdoing.” but that was not their only…
In the late 19th century, my grandfather Jacob and his brothers left their Russian shtetl to seek a new life in South Africa. The rigors of pioneer life were not to Jacob’s liking; he returned to Russia, married my grandmother and immigrated to America. His brothers remained in South Africa, where they prospered and multiplied…
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