Harold Brackman
ARTICLES BY: Harold Brackman
What Louis Armstrong Said About African-Americans and Jews in Music
Mutual indebtedness -- and reciprocal “gift giving” -- are at the core of the relationships between African-Americans and Jews. In the realm of popular music,...
Why Are Jews Seen as ‘White’?
As critics have noted, American Jews today are often characterized as "white" when talking about race. Not only is this narrative inaccurate -- it's also...
Blaming Jews for Everything — and the ‘Big Lie’ About the Election
Jews are “the father of all wars.” From The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, to Henry Ford’s The International Jew, to right-wing prophet David...
Adolf Hitler and the ‘Real’ Nietzsche
“No Hitler, no Holocaust.” Is it also true: “No Nietzsche, no Hitler”? Adolf Hitler was born in 1889 -- the same year that German philosopher Friedrich...
Lincoln’s Jewish Chiropodist and Spy: Issachar Zacharie
E. Lawrence Abel has written a timely, scholarly biography of Issachar Zacharie (various spellings), a mostly-forgotten Jewish figure from the American Civil War era. The lines...
David Riesman and American Assimilation
Today, David Riesman is mostly remembered for his celebrated The Lonely Crowd (1950). American Jewish life was hardly mentioned. Yet the book is inflected by Riesman’s...
The Story of Philadelphia’s First Jewish Doctor
Sometimes, the biographies of individuals and cities intersect in ironic ways. A case in point is Dr. David Nassy, a leader of Dutch Suriname’s Sephardic...
Reverend King and Rabbi Heschel — Spiritual Brothers and Souls
In 1968 in Chicago, two prophetic visionaries -- Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel -- had their first summit. As Reverend King...
Again Today, American Jews Face ‘Times That Try Our Souls’
I was taught in graduate school that the US was “the exceptional nation” by virtue of a stable, democratic political system, a dynamic economy offering...
Waldo Frank and Jewish Friendship With Minorities
Waldo Frank grew up on New York’s affluent Upper West Side before moving to pre-World War I Europe, and then returning to New York in...
The Troubled History of Christians and Jewish Book Burning in Europe
In 1242, King Louis IX of France -- subsequently made a saint for his “good deed” -- ordered the burning of 24 cartloads of copies...
When Jews Helped Triumph Over Anti-Black Racism
On Easter Sunday, April 9, 1939, Jewish immigrant impresario Sol Hurok teamed with African-American contralto Marian Anderson to score a victory over prejudice. On the steps...
Religion as Indispensable to the Social Order
Notable “New York Jewish intellectuals” such as Irving Kristol (father of Bill Kristol), Norman Podhoretz (father of John Podhoretz), Sidney Hook, Philip Rahv, and Daniel...
Remembering a Jewish Anthropologist — and a Spy
Franz Boas was the archetypal anthropologist as truth teller. Boas’ antithesis -- the anthropologist as a spy without a conscience -- was Mark Zborowski. His two...
