With the rise in American hate groups, the Washington Post reports on one Georgia town’s struggle with a massive Ku Klux Klan banner that appeared on the side of a building on Main Street one morning last month. Dahlonega, a charming former gold mining spot an hour north of Atlanta, rallied against the sign, the…
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…
Since the November election, there’s been a lot of talk among journalists about the way our profession overlooked and misunderstood populist, pro-Trump America. It’s a challenge for us at the Forward, as well. That is why we are launching “Red State Jews.” Our aim is to use all the platforms of the Forward — news,…
A friend from Georgia once joked to me, “Everyone down here celebrates Christmas, even if you don’t celebrate Christmas.” The meaning of a Christmas tree in a Jewish home is different in a rural Southern town than it is in a Northern industrialized city. The story of Jewish assimilation and acceptance in the South has…
To get to Camp Ramah Darom in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, you drive up Interstate 85, North, out of Atlanta, the nearest big city, for almost an hour. Just a little past Peachtree Corners, you turn onto old U.S. Route 23. From there it’s 35 minutes or so, deep into the mountains,…
— An attorney who is running against a sitting Jewish-Hispanic judge in Georgia apologized for turning religion into a criterion for the office. Roderick Bridges apologized on Saturday to DeKalb County State Court Judge Dax Lopez for campaign literature that listed Bridges as Christian with a thumbs up sign, and Lopez as Jewish with a…
It’s a simple gravestone, a small, ground-level marker identical to the four stones beside it. Nothing about the inscription, “Semper Idem” —“ Always the same” — hints at the significance of this 31-year-old man’s untimely death. But here, at the edge of Mount Carmel Cemetery, in New York City, 100 feet from traffic streaming by…
A controversial Savannah rabbi may retain his pulpit for another three years, despite the synagogue board’s recommendation that his contract not be renewed. Savannah’s Congregation Agudath Achim voted 132 to 53, with two abstentions, to keep Rabbi Ruven Barkan in a secret ballot held October 19. As the Forward reported in July, several families left…
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