Antisemitism & Bigotry

Lithuania’s Past and Present

In my last blog post, I recounted the background of Yiddish linguist Dovid Katz, who has been reporting on troubling manifestations of ...

The Shameful Distinction of Lithuania

I first came across the writings of Dovid Katz while researching what happened to my relatives in Lithuania in the ...

How My Memoir Convinced the NY Post to Advocate for Israel’s Destruction

My recently-published memoir,  What Do You Buy the Children of the Terrorist Who Tried to Kill Your Wife? , chronicles ...

LivingSocial’s Antisemitic Halloween Party

Soo looks like I will never again be perusing LivingSocial for a teeth-whitening deal ever again. The popular flash-sale website ...

The Hobby Lobby Hanukkah Hubbub

This week, my Facebook news-feed is filled with outrage about the fact that Hobby Lobby won’t carry Hanukkah decorations. Many ...

How Judaism Became the Foundation of My Memoir

The one thing that has really shocked me about my new book is how Jewish it is.I’m a nonobservant Jew, ...

The Golden Child

Recently, one of my writing students turned in a story featuring an adorable, vulnerable child whose blue eyes were “wide ...

Blessings & Curses: Moments of Misunderstanding

“Jews are dogs, killers of Christ!”The shouts came from an irate woman as I was walking into one of our ...

No Middle Range

“Jews don’t have a middle range,” I said to my friend and colleague. He was telling me about his experience ...

“The Guthrie Incident”: An Episode of Anti-Semitism in Oklahoma

The idea of a Jewish conspiracy to control the world has long been a canard of anti-Semites. Its most infamous ...

Albert Einstein: A Highly Committed Jew

Albert Einstein may have been the most famous Jew of the 20th century. His biographer Walter Isaacson described that “when he ...

Joseph Jacobs: Fighting Anti-Semitism, Genetically

In Legacy: A Genetic History of the Jewish People, Harry Ostrer wrote about a series of scientists who contributed to ...