|
9b3cc78
|
On my desk is an appeal from the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia. It asks me to become a sponsor and donor of this soon-to-be-opened institution, while an accompanying leaflet has enticing photographs of Bob Dylan, Betty Friedan, Sandy Koufax, Irving Berlin, Estee Lauder, Barbra Streisand, Albert Einstein, and Isaac Bashevis Singer. There is something faintly about this, as there is in the habit of those Jewish papers that annually list Jewish prize-winners from the Nobel to the Oscars. (It is apparently true that the London once reported the result of a footrace under the headline 'Goldstein Fifteenth.') However, I think I may send a contribution. Other small 'races' have come from unpromising and hazardous beginnings to achieve great things--no Roman would have believed that the brutish inhabitants of the British Isles could ever amount to much--and other small 'races,' too, like Gypsies and Armenians, have outlived determined attempts to eradicate and exterminate them. But there is something about the , both of the Jews and their persecutors, that does seem to merit a museum of its own.
|
|
american-jews
armenian-genocide
armenians
barbra-streisand
betty-friedan
britons
estee-lauder
gypsies
irving-berlin
isaac-bashevis-singer
philadelphia
sandy-koufax
romans
bob-dylan
british-isles
bigotry
united-states
race
antisemitism
jews
|
Christopher Hitchens |