Fighting Anti-Semitism

When I wrote my piece on Mikey Weinstein and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), I was driven by the fact that I am a son of two intelligent parents who in one way or another have fought bigotry all their lives.

My mother grew up in College Park, Georgia, later moving to Forest Park where she met my father at some dance at Fort McPherson where my father was stationed—the start of two hard-working, liberal minds raising four kids and working to make a better world.

When my mother was a child (1940s), she and her family would often visit recreational-park lakes in the area and she was struck once by a park sign reading "Gentiles Only." So, she asked her mother what a gentile is.

     Back then it wasn’t just the "coloreds" and whites who were segregated; it was also the Jews and the gentiles.

Later, the Protestant-turned Catholic-turned agnostic learned about Leo Frank—a Jewish lynching victim in early 20th-century Georgia— black taxis (that she rode to the consternation of concerned neighbors) and the sickness of segregation and stupidity.

Hate and bigotry stuck with her, more precisely fighting hate and bigotry stuck with her. Me too.

Next time, some idiot says anything about Jews, blacks, Latinos, my humble advice is that we rain on the ignorant prick.