February 9: Alice Walker and Mel Leventhal
Alice Walker, whose many accomplishments include a Pulitzer Prize for her novel, The Color Purple (1982), was born in a sharecropping family in Georgia on this date in 1944. In 1967, Walker married the...
View ArticleDecember 31: Civil Union and Civil Divorce
Glen Rosengarten, the founder of Food Emporium Supermarkets, entered into a civil union in Vermont with Peter Downes on this date in 2000 — and then sought to dissolve the union in his home state of...
View ArticleMegaphone: Jacob Bender, a Jew Among American Muslims
Interviewed by Mitchell Abidor from the Winter 2013-14 issue of Jewish Currents When Jacob Bender was named the director of the Philadelphia office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)...
View ArticleFebruary 4: Evan Wolfson and Freedom to Marry
Evan Wolfson, founder and executive director of Freedom to Marry, a leading same-sex marriage advocacy group, was born in Brooklyn on this date in 1957. A graduate of Harvard Law, Wolfson worked for...
View ArticleBlack Liberation and Jewish Identity
An Editorial from the Spring, 2014 issue of Jewish Currents The exploitation and oppression of African Americans have been defining features of our country’s history since the first black slaves were...
View ArticleMississippi Freedom Summer: Voices of the Volunteers
1. Heather Booth If we organize, we can change the world. I learned this lesson powerfully from my experience with the Mississippi Summer Project in 1964. I was 18, a white Chicago student, joining...
View ArticleMississippi Freedom Summer — Fifty Years Later, Part One
The Old Jim Crow, the New Jim Crow by the Jewish Currents Editorial Board From the Spring, 2014 issue of Jewish Currents. Photos, unless otherwise indicated, by Mark Levy, from the Queens College/CUNY...
View ArticleMississippi Freedom Summer: More Voices of the Volunteers
For other voices, click here. 3. Mark Levy When I speak to students about why I went to Mississippi during “Freedom Summer ’64” to fight for civil rights, I tell them the first and most significant...
View ArticleMississippi Freedom Summer — Fifty Years Later, Part Two
by the Editorial Board To read Part One, click here. From the Spring, 2014 issue of Jewish Currents. Photos, unless otherwise indicated, by Mark Levy, from the Queens College/CUNY Civil Rights Archive....
View ArticleMississippi Freedom Summer: More Voices of the Volunteers
For other voices, click here. 5. Elizabeth Aaronsohn I went down to Mississippi as a Freedom School teacher. My first location was in Ruleville, where I stayed for a while with Mrs. Hamer herself. Then...
View ArticleMississippi Freedom Summer — Fifty Years Later, Part Three
by the Editorial Board To read Part One, click here. To read Part Two, click here. From the Spring, 2014 issue of Jewish Currents. Photos, unless otherwise indicated, by Mark Levy, from the Queens...
View ArticleAugust 4: The Earthen Dam
On this date in 1964, the bodies of civil rights workers Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, and James Chaney were dug up from an earthen dam, forty-four days after their murder by Ku Klux Klansmen on...
View ArticleWhy Reparations Now?
Ta-Nehisi Coates Makes “The Case for Reparations” in The Atlantic — But Our Blogger Respectfully Disagrees by Bennett Muraskin SLAVERY ENDED IN 1865. Jim Crow about a century later. Civil rights...
View ArticleSeptember 7: Ronnie Gilbert
Ronnie Gilbert, who brought vocal power and womanly soul to The Weavers, was born in New York City on this date in 1926. The group formed in the 1940s and had a hit in 1950 covering Leadbelly’s...
View ArticleThe Interpretation of Suffering: Post-Holocaust Germans and Jews
by George Salamon Reviewed in this essay: The Temptation of Despair, Tales of the 1940s, by Werner Sollors. Harvard University Press, 2014, 400 pages. “In those days I prayed for Hitler. I was still...
View ArticleSeptember 27: Will Maslow
Will Maslow, executive director of the American Jewish Congress from 1960 to 1972, at the height of its civil rights involvements, was born in the Ukraine on this date in 1907. During World War II,...
View ArticleGranz & Gillespie – A Duo for Democracy
by Gary Ferdman THIS NOVEMBER MARKS the 50th anniversary of the presidential campaign of a candidate who was an advocate for nuclear arms control and an unwavering and outspoken supporter of civil...
View ArticleO My America: Eight Themes for Khanike Gelt
by Lawrence Bush KHANIKE GELT — SMALL GIFTS OF MONEY — HAS ROOTS IN DAYS OF JEWISH POVERTY when children rarely had a penny of their own. It was also a means of paying kheyder teachers and helping them...
View ArticleWhere Is Heschel? “Selma” and the Black-Jewish Alliance
by Al Vorspan THE MOVIE SELMA MOVED ME VERY DEEPLY, and I was impressed with the superb acting (especially MLK} and brilliant writing. But I was also troubled that this movie (so clearly on the side of...
View ArticleSeeing “Selma” in Tel Aviv
by Hillel Schenker THERE IS SOMETHING profoundly moving about seeing Selma in Tel Aviv. Although the events described in the movie took place in Alabama in 1965, they clearly resonate with the Israeli...
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