Malkie Schwartz stands in front of the Institute of Southern Jewish Life in Jackson, Mississippi. Turn off Highway I-55 N at Frontage Road in Jackson, Mississippi and you’ll come across a non-descript squat brown building. Inside is a trove of Jewish learning. The Institute of Southern Jewish Life (ISJL) delivers rabbinic services, educational programs and…
Malkie Schwartz stands in front of the Institute of Southern Jewish Life in Jackson, Mississippi. Turn off Highway I-55 N at Frontage Road in Jackson, Mississippi and you’ll come across a non-descript squat brown building. Inside is a trove of Jewish learning. The Institute of Southern Jewish Life (ISJL) delivers rabbinic services, educational programs and…
For much of America, the 50th anniversary of the Mississippi civil rights workers’ murders on June 21 was a moment for quiet reflection. The lessons are familiar, but it’s useful to be reminded now and then: how far we’ve come in a half-century, the price that was paid, the tasks that remain and our stubborn…
Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, known for his defiance of federal church-state separation laws, is under fire for arguing in a speech that the First Amendment only protects religions that worship “the God of the Holy Scriptures,” by which he appeared to mean Christianity. The amendment’s mention of “religion,” Moore said, was meant to denote…
A few years ago, I sat on a panel about Israel/Palestine with two of my friends at a local liberal arts college: a Methodist minister and a Palestinian Muslim. The moderator did not control the panel or the crowd, and the evening got hijacked by anger and emotion. In Mississippi we are passionate about Israel….
Legal abortion could become a thing of the past in a handful of states if anti-choice efforts are successful. Note that I don’t say abortion will become a thing of the past, because the need for abortion will persist, but safe and legal abortion will be outlawed as a spate of new state-level laws curtail…
In 1964, two young Jewish New Yorkers, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwermer, along with black native Mississippian James Chaney, were brutally murdered by members of the Ku Klux Klan. The men were on their way to investigate the arson of a church in the tiny town of Philadelphia, close to the Alabama border, when they…
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