Sunday, July 01, 2018

Suit Up Roundup

The latest wedding prep item to be checked off the list is my wedding suit. I like it. It's snazzy. Still have to pick it up post-alterations, though.

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Anil Kalhan explains what was evident to anyone paying attention: John Roberts didn't "overturn" Korematsu in Trump v. Hawaii -- he renamed it.

What do you call a Jewish Indian fusion food truck? Nu Deli. I love this more than I can express (semi-related: I picked up The Last Jews of Karala: The 2,000-Year History of India's Forgotten Jewish Community at a bookstore the other day. So far, so good.).

Right now, we're seeing growing recognition of the full diversity of the Jewish community. That's good. But it also means reckoning seriously with the fact that the Jewish community has not always been welcoming of our full diversity. Hey Alma hosted a roundtable discussion with six Jews of Color that's definitely worth a read. Sandra Lawson and Donna Cephas write of racism they've experienced within the Jewish community. And the Baltimore Jewish Times just ran a profile on Mendel Davis, son of an African-American Chabad Rabbi.

Nobody expects the National Review to defend the Spanish Inquisition!

An interesting blast from the past: the Jewish Current reprints an exchange between Rabbi Joachim Prinz and an antisemitic Christian pastor who heard him speak at an army base in Abilene, Texas. It is striking reading, precisely because the pastor's arguments come couched in language we'd recognize today: he condemns Nazism, acknowledges the existence of some good Jews, speaks in unfailingly polite terms -- but nonetheless makes sweeping generalizations against the faith as a whole to justify his bigotry. It's well worth reading not because of how alien it is, but because of how little the language of "civil" bigotry has changed over the past seventy years.

JTA profiles Alma Hernandez, a 25-year old Mexican-American Jewish women running for a seat in the Arizona House of Representatives. (She's also being targeted by David Duke, which is possibly the least surprising thing imaginable).

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