Sitting on an important strategic port to the Levant, Acre is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in Israel. The name comes from the Greek Ake, meaning “cure”. The port has historically been a hub of trade, which brings money, which “cures” pretty much all your problems..
Acre is 95% Arabs — mostly Jewish Arabs, but also a lot of Muslims — but nobody gives a fuck anyways because Jews and Muslims here GET ALONG (it’s the rest of Israelis that they can’t stand..)
If you are on the West Coast and you are craving Judaica — don’t hold back! Go to the former University of Judaism — located nearby the famed Getty Center in Bel Air — the largest West Coast home of Judaica
U of J was founded in 1947 by Dr. Mordecai Kaplan, a Jewish thinker and philosopher whose goal was to create an institution representing the diversity of Judaic expression in the United States
The parking lot is lightly guarded, so head there late night, smoke a cigarette, take in the hilltop view of the San Fernando Valley, and get freaky with your girlfriend in the back seat.. (I do it all the time)
On the Prinsengracht canal in Amsterdam stands the hiding place of the Frank family — they hid for 2 ½ years of the Holocaust before being discovered, after an employee snitched to the S.S.
The building front was a storefront & spice mill owned by Anne’s father before the Nazis decreed that Jews could no longer own property
Anne — a brilliant little girl who wrote about literature, lesbianism and languor in her masterful Diary of a Young Girl — hid there from age 13 to 16 before being killed in March 1945 in the Bergen Belsen concentration camp; of her whole family, only her father, Otto Frank, survived to publish the diary
According to its charter the Anti Defamation League (ADL) “fights anti-Semitism and all forms of bigotry, defends democratic ideals and protects civil rights for all”
Critics (the Anti Anti Defamation League) charge that the ADL has lost sight of its broader humanitarian goals and has morphed into an organization that exists solely to support Israeli policy!
Ariel Sharon, husband, father, prime minister, lover of cheeseburgers, suffered a massive stroke in May of 2006 that and left him in a coma. Doctors say he’s in a permanent vegetative state, but his family’s decided to keep him on life support indefinitely (c.f. Schiavo)
If Sharon begins to stir, it will be reported everywhere, but for those who need their Sharon coma news in REAL TIME, follow the Sheba Medical Center’s twitter feed for updates
Behold, the Beating Heart of “Little Israel” (aka Encino) — and the place to meet the hottest chicks the San Fernando Valley has to offer..
Located near my parents' house, Aroma Cafe is the reason why I am secretly happy that the Israelis and Palestinians cannot negotiate peace (all the tanned, sexy Israeli girls are moving to the Valley!)
There’s a fire pit.. (cozy..)
Arbeit Macht Frei (“Work Makes You Free”) was the slogan greeting newcomers to The Mecca of Evil where Jews were literally “worked to death” making munitions and other supplies for the Nazi Army.
After the implementation of the “Final Solution” (Hitler’s decision to kill all Jews, rather than simply using them for slave labor), all “unfit” Jews were transferred to the neighboring Birkenau camp to be gassed to death in communal showers.
As the great Jewish philosopher — and surviving Auschwitz inmate — Primo Levi put it:
It was the very discomfort, the blows, the cold, the thirst that kept us aloft in the coid of bottomless despair…It was not the will to live, nor a conscious resignation…we were but a common sample of humanity
As Primo — as well as the rapper Fabolous — recognize, Auschwitz was not simply a “Jewish tragedy”, but a tragedy for all mankind
Designed by Heinrich Himmler — leader of the S.S. and planner of the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” — Birkenau was not designed to work Jews to death (the strategy of Auschwitz I), but rather to gas them to death en masse.
Himmler had severe moral reservations about the Final Solution — to convince himself of the necessity of exterminating the Jews, he would come up with slogans. If the slogan calmed him, he would have it passed on to Nazi SS troops; one of his favorite slogans was:
These are battles which future generations will not have to fight again
Yet the Birkenau camp was rather flimsy; most of the original structures have withered away, and some were “refurbished” as a “set” to film Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List..
Beautiful voice
Vivacious writer/director/star of the heartwarming Jewish classic Yentl
Big nose (which she won’t operate for fear of effect on her voice.. and also because big noses are sexy on THIN girls)
Major bitch (if you are invited to her house, she makes you sign a contract saying you won’t take photos for paparazzi!)
What I’m trying to say is: Streisand is my Dream Girl (if only she were 30 years younger!)
Amsterdam’s Portugese Synagogue — a testament to the widespread migration of European Jews to the famously tolerant city in the 1600’s — is (in)famous for having excommunicated the greatest Portugo-Dutch-Jewish Thinker of All Time: Baruch Spinoza.
Did you even know that Jews excommunicate people?! I always thought that was a “Catholic thang”..
Spinoza was excommunicated for writing the Ethics, one of the first European philosophical works to contemplate ethics in a universe where G-d does not exist!
Spinoza was a lens grinder — like the old-school version of Lens Crafters — which might explain his skewed vision. He eventually died of inhaling too much ground lens dust
Bethlehem was the birthplace of Jesus of Nazareth — he is G-d Turned Flesh for Christians, a Prophet and Wise Rabbi (“teacher”) for the Jews, and a Model for Abdominal Muscles to all men.
The town was also the seat of King David’s mythic Jewish Kingdom, described in the Old Testament.
The Arabic name of the town — Bayt Laḥm (literally “House of Meat”) might refer to the flesh burned in countless wars for possession of the city, or to the Christian belief that Jesus was a personification of the Lord.
Countless armies and tribes have sacked the shit out of the city: The Samaritans, the Byzantine emperor Justinian I, the Arab Caliphate of Omar, the Crusaders (they even killed their fellow Christians in the city!), Saladin (the sultan of Egypt and Syria), the Ottomans, the British, and finally..
..who REALLY owns it these days is a mystery, quite frankly
The Irish love all God’s children! No—only the ones who accept guilt as their personal Saviour. So leave it to a mick, James Joyce, to have written the greatest Jew in all English literature, Leopold Bloom.
On June 16, 1904, a chambermaid named Nora Barnacle went mad down on James Joyce, Joyce came—twice!—and thus the beleaguered interwar classic Portnoy’s Complaint was born. Too “highbrow” for pre-Modern mail-order book clubs, and too “ethnic” for the Borscht Belt circuit, the novel languished in and out of print until the American comedy writer Mel Brooks adapted several of its sequences for his 1968 musical Springtime for Hitler, which he later retitled The Producers.
And I said LOL lolololololol
Named after Louis Brandeis, the first Jewish Supreme Court Justice, Brandeis University is the Jewiest university in America
Among the better-known graduates are political activists Abbie Hoffman and Angela Davis, hack columnist Thomas Friedman, novelist Ha Jin, political theorist Michael Walzer, actress Debra Messing (Grace from Will and Grace), and author Mitch Albom (whose mu$e, Morrie Schwarz, was a sociology professor there)
Back in the mid-twentieth century, when America’s Wars were still premeditated and Coke still cost but a trick and a dime, the Brill Building became a second home to some New York’s most beloved Jew songwriting teams. Have you ever heard of any of them? No, but you’ve heard of the Sixties—and the Sixties sang those Jew songs! They sang the hell out of ‘em, on network specials and AM radio!
Will you ever really Live, when the fighting stops? Nora Ephron says she has something on her mp3 player headphones that will change your life
The Rothschilds — the richest, O.G.est European Jewish family — purchased this snobby Bordeaux winery from REAL French people with “de” names in the 19th Century
The “House of Rothschild” made a fortune in a little-known historic profession called “investment banking”; nowadays, they get divorces and sniff cocaine and do other things rich people do
Aged Château Lafite is the most expensive red wine in the world
The Coen Brothers are like Woody Allen for peeps who got tired of other ethnicities reclaiming him as their own. Sometime in the late Eighties they decided to embrace the Coen Bros and therefore keep the best inside jokes for themselves and the Tribe.
They, too, sing America off-key, with seemingly limitless range that spans from Coen Brothers genre spoof to Coen Brothers one-off. A Serious Man is (supposa-bly) based on their misspent Youth in St. Louis Park telling fellow St. Louis Park ex-pat Senator Alan Franken (D-SNL) to get off their parents' manicured lawn. Then they all smoked a joint together and listened to the new Minneapolis sound, Prince.
Who’s your favorite Coen brother? Mine is Steve Buscemi. (Sorry, girls, he’s married!)
Commentary used to be the treasured newsmagazine of Jewish Fiscal Conservatives before the Neocons turned it into a propaganda rag encouraging Americans to spend billions of dollars on blowing stuff up
The magazine self-describes as “General, but Jewish”
My parents' synagogue subscribed, so I would always sit outside and read it since I don’t care for religion, yet consider myself culturally Jewish
The camp whose organization became the model for all other camps, Dachau (along with Auschwitz) has come to represent the Nazi Holocaust in the popular imagination
When American troops liberated Dachau in 1945, they were so horrified by the cruelty, they killed 30-50 camp guards after they’d surrendered
Post WWII, Dachau continued to operate until 1960, first as a US Army internment camp for SS types, then as refugee housing, and finally as an American military post with its own elementary school
Victim organizations gradually prevailed and Dachau became a histrorical / memorial site
Great place to float if you don’t mind your asshole burning; if you rub the salt on your face it magically “de-ages” you..
The Dead Sea Scrolls — which are basically a copy of the O.G. Torah — were found in the Northwestern corner around the ruins of the ancient settlement of Khirbet Qumran
Sandy Koufax of the Dodgers, the greatest Jewish athlete of all time, was also a pioneer in personal branding. By sitting out Game 1 of the 1965 World Series in LA for Yom Kippur, he guaranteed himself a welcome place at any Seder in America for the rest of his life
Koufax was born “Sanford Braun” in Borough Hall, Brooklyn. His parents divorced when he was 3, and his mom remarried a guy named Irving Koufax when Sandy was 9. I wonder if he was awkwardly forced to take his stepdad’s name, or if he just really liked him..
Started as a Yiddish socialist daily newspaper in 1897 called Forverts, it’s now a weekly news magazine in with separate English and Yiddish editions with a more center-left orientation
The Forward’s building, located on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, is fronted by relief portraits of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Ferdinand Lasalle
Kafka was born in the weirdo city of Prague. His distant, disapproving father (to whom he addressed his famous letter) was a successful butcher. From the letter:
Dearest Father,
You asked me recently why I maintain that I am afraid of you. As usual, I was unable to think of any answer to your question, partly for the very reason that I am afraid of you…
The OG couch where Jews could openly kvetch about their weak erections and Shiksa fantasies
Freud was an ‘ambivalent’ Jew. His father was orthodox, then abruptly quit observing when Sigmund was seven. On his 9th birthday, Sigmund’s father gave him a bible inscribed with his wishes that his son study ancient Jewish texts.
Sigmund’s first fiancée, Martha Bernays, came from a distinguished Rabbinical family. The two argued about what type of wedding to have; she wanted a traditional wedding, and he wanted to just run down to City Hall.
Freud also felt that his Jewish name held him back professionally. From a letter to a friend:
In my opinion, we as Jews, if we want to cooperate with other people must develop a little masochism and be prepared to endure a certain amount of injustice. There is no other way. You may be sure that if I were called Oberhuber my new ideas would, despite all the other factors, have met with far less resistance
Not to be confused with Crest Whitening Strips, the Gaza Strip is a little strip of land hemmed in by borders with Egypt, Israel, and the Mediterranean Sea. 1.5 million Palestinians live in densely populated Gaza, most of whom are refugees from the 1948 war and their descendants
These used to be known as the “Syrian Heights” before 1967, when Israel — provoked by Arabs and Cold War actors alike — kicked the shit out of Syria and every other Arab country in the 6 Day War
Israel offered to give them back for peace! But Syria said “no” (eventually getting their ass kicked again in the 1973 Yom Kippur War)
SYRIA: notice a pattern here?
ps I think we should re-change the name to “Golden Heights” (it’s such a pleasant place — and there’s a waterfall!)
For news relating to Jewish Goldman Sachs financial manipulation conspiracies, go to Jew Watch, the “scholarly library of facts about domestic & worldwide Zionist criminality” (WARNING: the site design is awful)
Haifa is Israel’s San Francisco, except with a more attractive population..
On the water, breezy, chillaxed — no wonder the Ballers of the Bah'ai faith chose to locate their international base (The Baha'i World Center) here!
The primary workplace of The Weightiest Intellect of Modern Judaism is in Yale University’s Whitney Humanities Center (location of the Film Studies major, i.e. a great place to scope out brainy hipster chicks..)
Professor Bloom is known for his analyses of Shakespeare (who was not technically Jewish — although he may have secretly helped translate the Torah to English.)
Lately, however, he has moved his literary analysis into theology, returning to close readings of the Kabbalah and other Jewish themes from his earlier work
Epicenter of “The Dersh” aka Alan Dershowitz, THE meme Jewish Lawyer of America!
Dershowitz has taken on the defense of O.J. Simpson, Israel, abolition of the death penalty and countless other losing battles
He also wrote a book on Chutzpah (if you don’t know what that word means, hope this helps: writing a book about Chutzpah IS an example of chutzpah!)
Albert Einstein’s ashes were scattered here in a peculiarly unJewish burial ritual
Einstein himself described his religious views as “Jew, with a Spinozan concept of G-d”; towards the end of his life, he began to explore the “5th Dimension” — a mystic/Cabbalistic concept
All Jews are ballers, but nobody spends as much on a Bar Mitzvah as the Iranian Jews of Great Neck..
The suburb — quasi-fictionalized in The Great Gatsby under the moniker “West Egg” — has become an Iranian Jewish playground. Beef with the Great Neck Zoning Board over the center’s “weirdo design” is reminiscent of the West Coast, Beverly Hills Iranian Jews' zoning struggles to build colossal “McMansions”
Jerry Seinfeld’s TV address was 129 W. 81st Street. Though it was depicted as a bustling midtown-Manhattany street, it’s really a quiet, pretty, tree-lined street full of brownstones (what’s the deal with brownstones!?)
This is where Jerry really lived in his pre-TV, standup comic days
The Essence of Chutzpah delivered in blog form
JTS is a college of Jewish education associated with Columbia University and the Conservative movement
At JTS, you can get an BA, MA, or PhD in Jewish Studies, or even more fun, you can study to become a Rabbi or a Cantor!
According to tradition, Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism) is so complicated that you are only allowed to approach it after the age of 40. A strong background in Jewish Law (which you can only learn at an Accredited Jewish Law School™) is a must!
The Los Angeles center is ballin out because Madonna::Kabbalah as Tom Cruise::Scientology
The oldest deli in New York (1888), and the location of the famous “I’ll have what she’s having” scene in When Harry Met Sally. The sandwich meat is veerrrrry thick (hand cut) and sandwiches run more than $10, but people seem to like it (always a long wait)
The Khazars — Turkic nomads practicing a Shamanistic religion — were introduced to Judaism when settling near the modern city of Atil by the Greek Jews of the Black Sea.
During the 8th or 9th century, the Khaganate adopted Judaism as the state religion; the Khazars have been known as Jewish protectors ever since.
Why did these nomads convert? Because they KNOW WASSUP!
The Khazars themselves don’t buy the whole conversion thingy, but rather claim to be the lost 13th Tribe of the original Israelites
This New York suburb is the Hasidicest Place on Earth! Named after founder Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum (“Kiryas” is Hebrew for “town of”) who dreamed of an organized Hasidic village in the United States
Teitelbaum’s original community was located in Williamsburg, Brooklyn (but he decided it was getting “too hipster” there..)
The village has the highest poverty rate in the nation; more than 2/3 of residents live below the federal poverty line and 40% receive food stamps. This is because Hasidic Jews realize that all the things money can buy are total bullshit
Based on an interpretation of Talmudic Law, Kiryas Joel couples make love through a hole in a sheet, which is basically the kinkiest thing I’ve ever heard..
Before creating Seinfeld, Larry David, then a standup comic, lived in midtown in a big apartment building on 43rd Street and 10th Avenue. His real-life sandwich-borrowing neighbor was a guy named Kenny Kramer
Meme felafel place located in the Marais — Paris' former Jewish quarter (“pletzl” in Franco-Yiddish), now where the gay guys and fashion models live.
It’s located on the Rue des Rosiers, a street built during the Bourbon monarchy and the former thoroughfare of the neighborhood.
Since everyone who lives in the Marais is thin, you’ll never see any French people in here.. but you will hear some overweight American college girls on Semester Abroad say “J'adooore votre fallafel!” while the Arab guys in the kitchen grunt.
The name means “The Ace of Felafel” (tastes more like the “Ass of Felafel” to me..)
Your great-grandmother Rebecca Rubin came to the L.E.S. tenements after her family emigrated from the shtetl in Russia. She is now for sale in the American Girl catalog. Good business sense in that one
New Knick Amar'e Stoudemire recently discovered that he is Jewish! Or, sort of. His agent, Happy Walters (real name) clarifies:
He’s not Jewish, it’s all getting blown a little bit out of proportion. His mother says there’s some Jewish blood on her side, but Amar'e is just a total student of history and had been planning a trip to Israel for awhile. Is it possible that he’s Jewish? Maybe. We’re going to do some research, but I don’t know where that will go
Verdict: JEWISH
The Birthplace of Moses Maimonides — one of the great Sephardic theologues of Spain’s Golden Age — is located in the “Jewish Quarter” of the city of Cordoba.
Of course, Cordoba is mainly known for it’s pork-and-cheese bocadillos and no Jew has gone there in the past 500 years except during Semester Abroad and/or post-retirement travel.. but whatever..
The great rabbi and philosopher’s principal works include the Mishne Torah and Guide for the Perplexed (which was basically a medieval version of Judaism For Dummies..)
NASCENT HIPSTER MEME: getting “madd fucked up” off Manischewitz
Since 1987, Manischewitz' wine division (headquartered in Naples, NY) has been the property of a company called Constellation Brands
Chico, Harpo, Groucho, Gummo, and Zeppo Marx grew up on East 93rd Street in Manhattan. Are they still funny? You have to be in a “historical” mood..
Masada, a hill in the South of Israel overlooking the Dead Sea, was the site of the final holdout by Jewish rebels after the Roman Empire’s first invasion. As the Roman Empire surrounded the Sicarii rebels, they began killing one another (to avoid the Torah’s interdiction of suicide) in order to deprive the Romans of the satisfaction of killing them (such a Jewish thing to do!)
The account of the siege of Masada (from the Hebrew word for “fortress”) comes to us from the writings Josephus, a Roman historian informed of the events by two women who survived the suicide by hiding inside a cistern along with their children
“Chocolate by the bald man”
Alarmingly successful international franchise (there are 7 locations in Melbourne alone!) started in Tel Aviv by Max Fichtmann and Oded Brenner
Also known as Mt. Horeb, this is where God gave Moses the Ten Commandments (allegedly!)
Mount Sinai Hospital, established in 1852, was actually the second Jewish hospital in the United States, not the first. Number two is like first in neurotic Jewish pride-math, though, no? We’re so good at math—you know, as a people? Aren’t we, Mom? Aren’t you even proud of us for earning an M.D., Mom? We try and try so hard!
Well, if you graduated from Mount Sinai School of Medicine between 1968 and the assimilation of Monica Lewinsky into polite society, your degree was actually conferred by N.Y.Jews! That means it’s twice as authentic: Two teams of Jewish researchers ended polio in N.Y.U. labs, and we still tell our Children the stories of how F.D.R. felt about our people after Salk and Sabin taught him how to walk again. Pretty much every disease ever invented was named after a Mount Sinai researcher: Crohn’s! Tay-Sachs! Asbestos! (Irving Selikoff.)
Their moms must have been so proud?
In addition to converting to Judaism and marrying a white woman, Sammy Davis Jr. also took a lot of flack from the black community for appearing in a photo in the Oval Office embracing Richard Nixon
Just like Lisa “Left Eye” Lopez, Sammy lost his left eye in a car accident. One day on a golf course with Jack Benny, he was asked what his handicap was. “Handicap?” he asked. “Talk about handicap — I’m a one-eyed Negro Jew!”
Everyone knows the story. After the tenth plague, the slaying of the Egyptians' first born sons, Pharaoh finally said enough is enough and let the Jewish slaves go free. They got a little head start, Pharaoh changed his mind, and the chase was on
The Jews got to the Red Sea and were like “Shit!” Moses put his stick in the ground, and God parted the sea. The Jews ran across, the Egyptians followed and were killed when God put the sea back together right on top of their heads
Oskar Schindler was a guy who owned factories and employed a bunch of Jewish laborers. He was tight with elite Nazi society for a while, but when he witnessed a massacre of Jews — some of whom were his employees — in Krakow in 1943, he did a lot of things to protect his Jews (rent the movie, OK?). He died penniless
There’s never been a Jewish President — BUT — there have been several Jewish Justices of the Supreme Court! (they are more powerful anyways..)
These days, fully a third of the court is Jewish! Elana Kagan, Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsberg (aka “Rutabega G”) are holding it down (2 more and we could institute Talmudic law!)
Louis Brandeis, the High Court’s “O.G. Jew”, was one of the founders of the make-believe “Right to Privacy”
Then there was old “Bozo Cardozo” — Decider of Palsgraf (aka “ballsgrab”) — but he was more famous for his cases as an Appeals Court justice in New York than any SCOTUS rulings..
The Jewish community of South Palm Beach (Boca Raton and Delray Beach) is the tenth largest Jewish community in the country, 128,000 Jews strong as of the 2000 Census
America’s Meme Jewish Director avoided religious topics in his early films before melodramatizing the Holocaust in Schindler’s List (personally, I was making out with my girlfriend through the whole movie..)
Spielberg lives in a humongous house with a security fence, which helped him avoid getting buttraped by a stalker in 1998
The lone surviving matzo factory on the Lower East Side. Streit’s has been in the family for 5 generations: if you visit the factory, chances are you’ll meet one of the Streits
Do you want to meet thin, Jewish girls who are shopping in L.A.?
Then go to The Grove shopping center and hang out right next to the Anthropologie.
If no girls are biting, you can always head to the Farmer’s Market next door for a “Taco of Defeat” (or simply walk over to The Grove’s Kosher hot dog stand!)
You think Congress is contentious? This is an entire political body composed of Jews — Israeli Jews no less. Word is that the Labor and Likud Parties can’t even agree on which kind of cream cheese to get for the weekly Knesset Bagel Brunch. Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu was apparently overheard screaming “No lox cream cheese! How will Hamas fear me if I have a giant piece of salmon between my teeth?!”
Established in 1654, Congregation Shearith Israel (aka “The Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue”) is the oldest Jewish congregation in the United States
It now sits in a majestic building on the Upper West Side, but it hasn’t always been there! Until 1730, the congregation was just a congregation with a cemetery but no permanent synagogue
Joy Behar and Barbara Walters are OBVIOUSLY Jewish, but what about Whoopi? Is she Jewish or not?
VERDICT: NOT JEWISH!
Whoopi Goldberg was born Caryn Elaine Johnson. She chose the name Whoopi after the Whoopee Cushion, and picked Goldberg because her mother thought you need a Jewish sounding name to make it in Hollywood
This Colonial-style Orthodox synagogue of Newport, Rhode Island is The Nation’s Oldest Synagogue
The building’s “West"work faces East (towards Jerusalem), which shows that the Jews of the United States have had a hippy granola-stream since time immemorial
Said George Washington of the synagogue:
May the children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and figtree (sic), and there shall be none to make him afraid
Awwwww!!!
The synagogue is named for Judah Touro — a New Orleans merchant who made a fortune by selling liquor and pimping hoes
Home of the Spanish Inquisition, a 100-year effort of the Spanish monarchy to steal the Jews' wealth and kick them out of the country. Jews were given a choice of leaving the country without their possessions — OR — being burned alive at the auto de fe
Although the Inquisition did not ONLY target Jews (Italian astronomer Galileo was famously put on trial), the Jew-aspect stepped up with the expulsion of the Jews of Andalusia in 1483 under watch of Tomás de Torquemada, Inquisidor General of Aragón (the Jews tried to Torquemout of it.. but he wouldn’t listen)
By 1492, Spain was “Jew-free”; most of them fled to North Africa — Morocco was quite welcoming at the time — although some Spanish Jews traveled all the way to the Middle East, settling in Iran, Iraq and Arab countries
To make sure the Jews STAY away, Spain made its “National Food” the pork-and-cheese Bocadillo..
Theodor Herzl was willing to locate “Zion” (or whatever he called it) in Uganda — a plan presented at the “6th Zionist Congress” in order to win British support for a Jewish state
Decades later, the notion would inspire Nazi Adolph Eichmann to flirt with the idea of moving the Jews to Madagascar, an uninhabited African island
While Herzl was willing to move to Uganda, he preferred to keep Israel where it has always been, even though it seems like a terrible idea (empirically-speaking)
Then again, if Israel had moved to Uganda, the Hora would look waaaay different..
The chic Berlin suburb and hunting ground that hosted The Wannsee Conference — a meeting of Nazi senior officials in 1942 where “The Final Solution” (euphemism for the mass murder of all Europe’s Jews in coordinated death camps, such as Auschwitz-Birkeneau, was planned.
In the course of the meeting, Chancellor Heydrich — head of the “Jewish Question” — presented a plan, presumably approved by Adolf Hitler, for the deportation of the Jewish population of Europe to German-occupied areas in eastern Europe, where they would build roads for the Nazi Army.
Instead, as Soviet forces gradually pushed back the German lines, most of the Jews of German-occupied Europe were sent to extermination camps, or (in the case of Russia’s jews) murdered by the so-called Einsatzgruppe commandos.
The sad part is Wannsee has a really nice lake! How can you decide to do such terrible things when there’s a pleasant lake nearby?!
The word “ghetto” comes from ghetor — an old Venetian word for “slag” — in the Middle Ages, Venice was the 1st European city to segregate it’s Jews (this means Venetian Jews were the 1st-ever “ghetto fabulous” community!)
However, the Ghetto of Warsaw, Poland was largest one in Nazi-occupied Europe. Closed to the outside world by walls topped with barbed wire, the ghetto was extremely crowded. It held 400K people, or 30% of Warsaw’s population, while it only took up 2.4% of Warsaw’s total space
100,000 died of starvation, disease, and shooting before the Nazis started shipping 250K occupants to Treblinka for extermination
Upon Nazi occupation of Poland in 1939, Jews in cities were ordered to move to a designated Jewish “ghetto”
The Warsaw Ghetto — the biggest, nastiest one of them all — witnessed the only organized Jewish resistance to the Nazis: 1,000 fighters who didn’t stand a chance started fucking up Nazi police vehicles!
The uprising helped foment a general Polish uprising, which the Square was built to commemorate (since Polish people are hella-Antisemitic, the Jewish action STARTING the Uprising is not mentioned on the monument!)
It is shameful that the Ghetto Uprising — in which 8,000 non-combatant Jews were killed and 50,000 sent to a death camp — is one of the only instances of armed Jewish resistance against the Nazis. Why didn’t we fight back?
Thankfully, the thug-ass Israeli army (not to mention Sandy Koufax, the “Bear Jew” of Inglorious Basterds, and Drake!) have ameliorated Jews' “thug image”, (hopefully) assuring that the Holocaust never repeats itself
At the foot of the “Temple Mount” — the hill in East Jerusalem where the ancient Jews built 2 temples (destroyed by the Babylonians and the Romans, respectively) — only the Western Wall remains standing.
HINT: Guys! STOP BUILDING THE TEMPLE IN THE SAME PLACE EVERY TIME! (location, location, location!)
An argument over this silly little thing launched the 2nd Intifadah based on who had rights to the (inaccessible) underground-part of the wall.
Jews from all over the world visit the wall to wail (hence the nickname: the “Wailing Wall”); Jewish teenagers on Birthright like to write notes listing their “crushes” and stick them in the chinks, too..
Woody grew up in the upscale Brooklyn suburb of Midwood (it got a little rough during the Dinkins years, but now it’s gentrified like a mofo) that was — at the time — a center for New York’s middle-class Jewish population.
Portraits of family-life in the Allens' Midwood household — an unhappy place, filled with fighting and hatred coming from Woody’s parents — are presented in several of Allen’s films, most notably his masterpiece, Annie Hall.
Nowadays, Greeks, Turks, Indians and Koreans outnumber Jews in the neighborhood. But in the 1920s, the neighborhood attracted a lot of Jewish artists drawn to the presence of the budding movie industry (Warner Bros. Studios were originally located in Midwood, before moving to a far-flung, sunny place known as “Hollywoodland” in 1939..)
The biggest Jewish Cemetery in the world (with roughly 350,000 bodies buried in a 360,000 sq.mt. space) was located in Salonica, Greece. It housed tombs from the 3rd century CE to 1942
Destroyed during WW2 by Greek collaborationist authorities, traces can still be found in Aristotle Salonica University that was built on top during the ‘50s. Remains still visible include 3rd century CE cubicle tombs, tombstones scattered all over the campus and many tombstones in the Jewish Museum of Salonica
Salonica itself was the most important city of the Balkans and housed a Jewish majority from 1492 to 1943, nicknamed “Irvaem Be Israel” (Mother of Israel) Whether concerning salonican author of Leha Dodi fame Shlomo Halevi Alkabetz or David Ben Gurion visiting Salonica in the ‘20s to witness a real Jewish city, the city remained the most vibrant Sephardic community in the world until the Holocaust wiped out most of Greece’s Jewish population
Weighing in at 267 pounds and measuring 30 inches in diameter, the world’s largest matzo ball was created in Tea Neck, New Jersey and transported to Noah’s Ark Deli on Manhattan’s Lower East Side (in a 100 gallon jug) for unveiling
The matzo ball was made to raise money an orphanage in Israel. The ball itself was eventually cut up into lots of small peaces and taken to the Good Companions Senior Center nearby
On the precipice of a Historic peace accord with the Palestinians, the Greatest Israeli Prime Minister of All Time was shot by a Jewish extremist. (Jewish!)
The peace plan Rabin had hammered out (amidst the hampering of shifty-eyed Arafat) later fell apart over the rights to inaccessible underground ruins in the middle of a ghetto (wtf?!)
Back in the era before Whole Foods aka “The Hoaf”, meeting places for Conscious hunter-gathering were limited to a few specialty food stores like Zabar’s, a New York institution that is really nothing like a Jewish deli and more like a warehouse of deli ingredient stuff.
The New York grocery was immortalized by Electric Six in the mid-2000s novelty hit “Zabar”
