The Khazar Kingdom

Though much of the widely known history of Jewish culture in the Middle Ages concentrates on the increasing marginalization of Jews in Europe, Africa and the Arab world, there's a curious and vital chapter that takes place in Eurasia between the 6th and 11th centuries C.E. Over a vast area between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, then later extending north to modern-day Russia, a multi-ethnic group of people known as the Khazars maintained a fairly stable empire. Between one and two centuries into their rule, the Khazar royalty and nobility famously converted to Judaism and made it their official state religion. This stronghold of Jewish culture helped preserve Judaism in a time when it came very close to being swallowed up by the competing forces of Christianity and Islam.

It seems unusual considering the state of relations between different religious groups today for a medieval empire to adopt Judaism as its central faith, but in the context of international politics circa 600-1100 C.E. it was a wise, though no less intriguing, social maneuver. At the time of the Khazar's conversion (the date of which is unclear but likely occurred in the mid 600's), the solidly Christian powers of Europe were starting to conflict with the rising Muslim nations of Africa and Asia. Khazaria was located directly between the two worlds, acting as a sort of buffer between the likes of Byzantium and the Arabian Caliphate. Though Jews were certainly marginalized in that era they were still permitted to practice their religion openly in many cultures. At best they were seen as being a neutral party among monotheistic societies. As such, Judaism was a shrewd choice for the precariously positioned nobility of the Khazars.

That's not to say the Khazars were simply Jews on paper. The country's central location also served as a viable refuge for persecuted Jews on both sides of the Christian/Muslim divide. Jews from Byzantium, Persia, Arabia and other scattered locations flocked to Khazaria where they could live freely. Before the state conversion, Khazaria was fairly multicultural. Old Turkic polytheism, specifically the cults of Tengri, was still widely practiced there, as was Judaism, Islam, Eastern Orthodox Christianity and a variety of other faiths. So, Judaism already had a fairly significant presence in Khazaria by the time of the conversion.

There was also a significant economic advantage to state Judaism for the Khazars. The Khazar Empire's existence coincides with the centuries during which the Radhanite merchants operated. The Radhanites were Jewish merchants who had an extensive network of trade routes across Asia, Africa and Europe, using their neutral status as Jews to buy and sell goods between cultures that were officially in conflict. They were the great middle men of the Middle Ages, and Khazaria was a regular stop on their trade expeditions. They certainly would have had a lot of influence in the country and it would have been in their best interests to financially and politically support a Jewish state.

The Khazar Empire endured a slow but steady collapse throughout the Tenth Century C.E. thanks to a combination of over-extension, diplomatic failures and near-constant conflict with invading nomadic forces such as the Vikings of Northern Europe and the Kievan Rus. Khazaria was eventually consumed in pieces by other empires that rose in the late Middle Ages and the already multi-ethnic population ceased to have a distinct cultural identity. Still, a Jewish nation had a significant amount of influence in global politics during the unstable days of the Middle Ages and allowed a Jewish population to thrive in a territory that would eventually be the ancestral home to a slim majority of modern people of Jewish descent.

Alice Walker Changed My Life

As a white person, Black History Month isn't supposed to be about me. And isn't that the way it always goes? White people using Black History Month as an excuse to talk about themselves? But stick with me on this one.

I grew up in Anchorage, Alaska in the 1970s and 1980s. These days a full 1% of Anchorage's population is black. No doubt when I was a kid, that number was lower. Maybe one half of one percent. I remember in grade school there was one black kid (a little boy who had a rough time of it I have no doubt). To say I was ignorant of racial politics and black history would be something of an understatement.

Up until junior high, I thought of the slavery era as an unfortunate period in American history. People shouldn't own other people like pets. I was clear on that. But at the same time, I thought it probably wasn't that bad a life. People today were owned by their jobs, weren't they? People today still work in the fields, planting and harvesting crops. At least in the time of slavery, you had free room and board, right?

I have no doubt that this was a popular belief at the time, and that it is a belief which persists today. And not among chew-spitting, shotgun-toting, Rebel flag-wearing, Deep South racists, either. But among regular people living their lives all around us.

Where this belief comes from is probably a topic for another day. Here's what changed my mind: I took an English Lit class which was basically "the literature of Slavery-era America." (I forget the exact title. I do remember that we needed a permission slip to take the class. And that I forged my mother's signature on it.) Our teacher chose books which challenged us in every way. They challenged our reading aptitude, our ability to digest and discuss literature, and most of all they challenged our complacency.

The first book we read was The Color Purple by Alice Walker, and it was shocking to me. I literally had no idea that those kinds of things happened. The protagonist of the book was born into slavery in Georgia in 1909, and endures a series of misfortunes which were grueling to read. She is raped by her father, becomes pregnant at 14, has her babies taken away, is married off against her will, and things only become more difficult from there.

The story itself, Celie's tale of struggle and endurance and eventual empowerment, struck my jaded 14 year-old self as being a little cartoonish. What really struck me was the background it was set against. What I would now call "the endemic, outspoken institution of racism in the Jim Crow South" my 14 year-old self could only grapple with as "Everyone is SO MEAN!" Maybe my 14 year-old self has it more right.

When you think about Black History Month, think beyond the black people who have helped shape our history. Give a thought to the teachers and the books, too. The good ones can change lives.

On The Revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa

For over a month now, several nations in Africa and the Middle East have been experiencing an unprecedented period of unrest in the form of popular demonstrations against those nations' governments, some of them escalating to full-scale revolution. This wave began as peaceful protests in Tunisia and echoed to nearby Egypt where the people, with the support of their military, ousted long-time president Hosni Mubarak and are now in the process of re-ordering their country under the promise of improved human rights, public representation and personal freedom. Other nations have seen more turmoil and violence in their own call for change. For the past several days, the country of Libya has been on the brink of civil war, elements of its own military defecting in protest against orders of assault against civilians.

Because the countries experiencing this transformative period are predominantly Muslim and several of them have been openly hostile to Jews and to Israel for some time now, the question of if and how Jews should support the revolutions is complex.

The biggest concern Jews all over the world have had about the new governments emerging from these revolutions is that they may be more hostile to Jews and the concept of the Jewish state than the regimes of the past. Specifically in Egypt, a country that has been at peace with Israel and has not exhibited any specific antisemitism of late, the recent revolution had a strong presence from The Muslim Brotherhood, an international religious and political organization that, put simply, aims to install Quranic law as state law in the nations where it operates. It should be noted that The Muslim Brotherhood, especially its mainstream majority, is not antisemitic. Some of its goals and policies, such the reinstitution of the poll tax against non-Muslims and the reclamation of "stolen lands" from non-Muslim peoples, certainly don't support the existence of Israel or the equal treatment of Jews in countries like Egypt.

But the popular demonstrations throughout the Middle East and North Africa are not specifically Islamist movements. There is a significant voice in the secular community, centered mostly around the various youth elements in the protests, that is mostly concerned with increased representation in their governments and improved personal freedoms. These are educated, tech-savvy and equality-driven movements. While it may be difficult for Jews to support the idea of a political force that clearly does not see them as equals and in some cases sees them as the enemy, there is no question that Jews should stand behind a congregation of people who simply wish to be free and receive fair treatment. There is no ambiguity in Jewish philosophy about innocents suffering for the ambitions of destructive people around them.

Regardless of what new policies emerge from these revolutionary days, it is naive to approach the demonstrations without acknowledging the inevitability of violence in them. Even in Egypt, where the de-seating of Hosni Mubarak was bloodless, there were clashes in the streets between protesters and Mubarak's supporters. In places like Libya and Bahrain, bloodshed has already become a regular part of the process. It is a terrible thing to witness war and an absolute sin to pray for it, but when war is a reality the only truly Jewish thing to do is support the healers and peacemakers. Should there be a call from institutions such as Doctors Without Boarders for donations to relieve those hurt and displaced by the fighting in the Middle East and North Africa, please consider acts of tzedakah through them.

Hello Language of Love Part 2

So why the Rosetta Stone Course, what makes this so unique? I want you to think about two things.  The first is what are some other ways you have gone about learning a language. I mentioned before that classes can be expensive, and we can pretty much rule out at this point the language learning done before college level courses, unless you are one of the lucky few that was able to retain the knowledge that you learned.  A lot of the issues with learning that way is that you are already learning from a teacher that is not a native of that country, does that that make them a bad teacher? No not at all, but they may not be able to guide you to the most accurate pronunciation. The other part of learning through classes, is that you are learning by English translation.  That means you have to learn double the amount to speak a new language.  You are trying to associate the word with the English word and that is just too much for your brain to retain.  Another negative to learning in a class setting is the fact that a teacher can not keep up with each individual.  They have a scheduled plan they must stick with and whether or not you are falling behind there isn't a lot of options besides tutoring sessions. Tutoring sessions can be very very costly.

The second thing I want you to think about is the way you learned how to speak English, or your native language if English is not your first language.  There was no translation, there was no teacher, there was no need for any of that because you learned naturally. Rosetta Stone is based on this natural learning. You will not see any need for English Translation. You learn through a process called dynamic immersion.  From the very first lesson, you are shown images, a picture of say a boy or a girl, and you will see the word above (I have been doing Italian language courses) so Bambino, and Bambina. You will then hear the word spoken to you by a native speaker of that language. On the next portion you will have two blank pictures at the bottom of the screen and you will then select which one is the right image when the word is spoken.  If you think about it this is exactly how we learned as a child. We saw mom, we heard her called mom, and eventually we learned to call her mom.  There is no excuses with this type of learning, because you have already proved that you can do it.

Love Stories in the Torah

There has long been a debate in academic circles about when the concept of romantic love was popularized. While there's no doubt that the emotions associated with infatuation and attraction precede the social constructs meant to formalize romantic behavior, it certainly becomes harder to find depictions of romantic love the farther back in the history of storytelling we look. There are plenty of pairings described in the Torah, though few of them directly describe the emotions those figures feel for one another. Prototypical couples like Adam and Eve or Abraham and Sarah are described in rather matter-of-fact language that can make their relationships seem cold and merely functional, a means to procreate and achieve material security. This isn't to say that passion and affection are absent from the Torah. As with everything else in those texts, every description and omission has meaning. Plainly, if the Torah describes the feelings two of its figures have for one another, there's a lesson to be learned from them.

The first emotionally striking moment of romance in the Torah is the meeting of Isaac and Rebecca. In general, Rebecca is depicted as a stunning individual and in an interesting turn she's more or less the protagonist of her portion of Genesis. Isaac's primary role in adulthood is to never set foot outside the Holy Land, unlike the wanderers who precede and succeed him. So, Isaac is incapable of leaving home to seek a wife. It was up to Eliezer, one of the family's servants, to find Isaac a wife in Abraham's birthplace. The passages that follow linger on Rebecca with more descriptive language than is typical for the texts of the earlier books of the Torah. Though Rebecca's life is still largely dependent on the conventions of her time, she still shows an uncommon sense of grace and self-consciousness throughout her story. When she rides into Canaan with Eliezer, there is a subtle, beautiful moment when Isaac sees her from afar and is drawn to her without knowing who she is. Their meeting saves their eventual union from being utilitarian. However understated, there's still a sense of true admiration and affection between Isaac and Rebecca.

Later in the Torah, Moses meets his first wife, Zipporah, after he has fled Egypt for killing a man in defense of a Hebrew slave. He reaches the region of Midian (present-day Saudi Arabia) where he defends a group of women tending to their family's flock of sheep when they are accosted by another group of shepherds. In a moment that foreshadows the role Moses will play for the freed Israelites later in the book, he helps the women water their flock and asks nothing in return. One of those women was Zipporah, whose father Jethro invites Moses to stay with the family and manage the livestock. While this may not seem terribly romantic in the modern context, a sense of destiny pervades the entire story. Zipporah (who would later save Moses's life) is not some prize for his bravery, she is the person he is fated, against all odds, to meet and marry. To use modern parlance, Moses and Zipporah seem to be soulmates.

Of course, the most grand, elaborate depiction of love in a Toritic text is the poem The Song of Songs, found in the supplemental writings. It is unique in that it focuses primarily on a young woman, but it is especially stirring for its intense romanticism. The poem makes the affection the speaker feels into an allegory for the wonders of whole nations, as well as using the purity of love as a point of contrast with the opulence of politics. Whereas in earlier stories of the Torah love is depicted as a necessary step in the lives of important people, in The Song of Songs love is nothing short of the greatest expression of freedom.

An Existentialist Guide to Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day. The holiday derived from one of the saint's feasts to commemorate the life and martyrdom of a Roman Christian about whom even the church of his contemporaries knew nothing. Yes, Valentinus the Presbyter is just some random fellow the Catholic Church lumped in with other random fellows who were notable only for being clergy in a time and place when it was unpopular to be monotheist in general. It wasn't until the late 15th century CE that anyone attempted to ascribe a story to Valentine, so somebody shoehorned in an account of how the guy got nabbed by Roman authorities for secretly helping young Christians get married. Seeing as the same document, The Nuremberg Chronicle, tries to fit Bible stories into official world history, we can assume that its authors had motives other than the preservation of historical fact in mind. From there, Valentine's story got tossed around the various channels of suspect history and religious tradition until people started to market romantic products to impressionable youths under the guise of religious virtue. All this in mind, it's still no picnic to be alone on Valentine's Day. Even if the official holiday of love has a dubious origin, people choose to make it real and so it invades our lives yearly. But don't worry, you bachelors and bachelorettes. The truth is, we're all alone. Fundamentally.

Really, the whole exercise of Valentine's Day is a desperate scramble to prove to ourselves that we aren't essentially isolated creatures. It's all a bunch of rituals designed to amplify the already pointless endeavor of courtship and the search for human unity. Restaurants are full of people who called ahead, some of them weeks in advance, to assure they could get a table for two. Yes, as if sharing a table somehow brings two lives together. Never mind that lovers are seated in two separate chairs, that the table has to be big enough to accommodate not just two separate place settings, but indeed a certain amount of unused space so those place settings don't touch. Does that not, then, make each of them more alone? If the total space occupied by two people is more than the sum of the space they each occupy alone, does that not mean that their so-called "unity" in fact contains a void?

This is true beyond the dinner table as well. A bed shared by two people is bigger than two beds occupied by individuals. A home occupied by two people becomes cluttered with more possessions than two separate, single-occupant homes. Indeed, two lives simply never truly combine. If to love another was to be truly connected to that other, would not the sum of the space occupied by the two lovers be less than the sum of their individual spaces?

So, this exercise called Valentine's Day is not, as it purports, a celebration of the end of loneliness, but an ever-more-intense demonstration of the supreme loneliness inherent to sapience. Lovers are forced to communicate their affection in symbols, gestures and plain language. If love brought two people closer to one another, if it penetrated the walls of their loneliness, would these symbols, gestures and words really be necessary?

No, love does not make us less alone, it simply gives us something new to talk about. Even when we dream of a lover, it is not the lover in our dream but an imaginary simulacrum representing one's own hopelessly inaccurate perceptions of that person. We love not the individual but the projection of the individual onto our own consciousnesses. We love metaphors and imaginary friends, however anchored to physical bodies. We cannot truly know a lover's thoughts lest they communicate them, but we also cannot know if they're being honest about those thoughts or expressing them accurately with the imperfect vessel of language.

As you approach this Valentine's Day, oh lonely individuals of this uncaring world, try to take some solace in the fact that the lovers who surround you are no less alone than you. If anything, they are struggling against the subconscious certainty that they are alone because they fear the lightless room that is the realization of personal isolation. You are already in that room and yet you are not consumed or driven mad by the darkness. You are in a far saner, more comfortable place than the couples around you.

Judaism and Tattoos

It's reasonably well known that Judaism forbids tattoos, though few people know why this law was originally instituted and why tattoos still don't make much philosophical sense today. Like many things in Judaism, the reason as stated in the Torah doesn't necessarily connect with a relevant, modern mindset, at least not directly. This doesn't mean the rule is outdated, exactly. Let's take a closer look at the prohibition of tattoos in Judaism.

The Torah is rather plain about tattooing. In a passage in Leviticus it states in as few words as possible that the skin of Jews is not to be tattooed for any reason. It doesn't explicitly explain why, though it's clear by reading the rest of the portion that tattoos are forbidden because they were associated with polytheistic cults of the ancient world. Specifically, they were associated with the most violent cults that practiced, among other things, intentional scarification and human sacrifice. These acts were then just as they are now so counter to Jewish values that any association with them is unthinkable.

Of course, idol-worshiping cults of human sacrifice haven't been part of any society surrounding Jews in a very long time. Tattoo art certainly hasn't been associated with such groups in a very long time. Granted, tattoos in Western society haven't been entirely socially acceptable for more than a generation at this point, but the continued Jewish prohibition of tattoos no longer really comes from how society in general views them.

For Jews, tattoos have come to be associated with something far more sinister than the ancient cults of sacrifice. In the Nazi concentration camps of the Holocaust, prisoners had their institutional serial numbers tattooed on their arms. It was part of the initial round of humiliations visited upon anyone unlucky enough to find themselves in the likes of Auschwitz, Dachau and Bergen-Belsen. The tattoos came after people will transported to the camps in cattle cars, their possessions taken, their heads shaved while they were stripped naked and examined by doctors as if they were livestock. The tattoo was a brand, a very real way of individuals' names being stolen in a systematic attempt to dehumanize them. For nearly a century now, a tattoo to a Jew has been a symbol of physical and spiritual genocide.

Though even if modern Jews decide that choosing a tattoo rather than having one given to them is a symbolic act of individualism and freedom, it's still not in keeping with Jewish philosophy. Even without the association of the Holocaust, tattoos are things of permanence. They are static while everything else changes. Judaism is a philosophy of growth and change, of the natural cycles of life and the humility of accepting that nothing in this world lasts forever. To get a tattoo is to tacitly claim that what one wants today is what one will always want, that what one believes today is what one will always believe. In a sense, it is a vow, a promise, things a Jew is not supposed to make because to be human is to be fallible and so there is no vow a person can keep with complete certainty.

Sex in Judaism

Sex is a frequent topic of debate where religion is concerned and as a result religion has come to be associated with a sex-negative attitude. While there are many religions that do have what some would consider an oppressive view on sex, Judaism is not among them. In fact, Jewish sexual laws are rather progressive even by today's standards and were incredibly forward-thinking for the time in which they were established. Sex in Judaism still revolves around the concept of marriage, but there are several reasons for that beyond the inherent conservatism of that perspective. Mostly, Judaic sex laws aim to create as much harmony and equality between couples as possible.

To understand the Jewish perspective of sex one must first understand the concepts of Yetzer Tov and Yetzer Ra. These terms translate, respectively, as "impulse of good" and "impulse of bad". Desires that fall into one category or the other are not considered inherently good or bad, merely compelled either by selfishness or the good of others. Desires that originate in natural urges, such as hunger, thirst and the desire for sex, are under Yetzer Ra because they inherently involve the immediate urges of the individual. These desires can be balanced by appealing to Yetzer Tov, saving them from being selfish and potentially harmful. Just as it would be sinful to hoard food all for one's self, it is sinful to engage in sex with no regard for the desires of one's partner.

This is why sex in Judaism is limited to marriage. A Jewish marriage is, by all accounts, a legal partnership. It is based on a signed, witnessed agreement. As such, a married couple have certain obligations to the health and happiness of one another, including sexual gratification. Both in the Torah and later expanded in the Talmud there are rules about how often a married couple is obligated to have sex with one another independent of any attempt to procreate. The majority of the burden of this obligation is traditionally placed on the husband. He is actually bound by law to meet the sexual needs of his wife as she expresses them. Furthermore, he is strictly forbidden to ever force his wife to engage in any kind of sexual behavior.

By the same token, both parties in a Jewish marriage are not permitted to use sex or the lack thereof as a form of manipulation. It is a sin to withhold sex from one's partner or to compel it as currency or punishment. The Talmudic sages even created a rough framework for how frequently a man is obligated to have sex with his wife based on the travel and freedom related to his occupation.

Loving sex between a married couple in Judaism is considered a great mitzvah because it strengthens the bond between the couple and celebrates one of the pleasures of being alive. It is especially encouraged on the sabbath and other holidays. This is because sex is viewed as an act of creation, even when it doesn't or can't produce a child. The creative act is instead the creation of joy, love and cooperation.

Tu B'Shvat and Jewish Environmentalism

Last week the Jewish holiday Tu B'Shvat took place. Tu B'Shvat (a term meaning "the 15th day of the month of Shvat") is a festival centering around agriculture, though in the modern day it is mostly concerned with the care of trees. For this reason it has recently been referred to as Jewish or Israeli Arbor Day. This modern interpretation is rather tangential to the original purpose of Tu B'Shvat, though in many ways it continues in the spirit of the holiday.

Tu B'Shvat is one of four New Year celebrations outlined in the Talmud. Aside from Rosh Hashana, the civil new year, there is an ancient political new year ("the new year of kings and festivals"), a new year for livestock management, and the calendrical/agricultural new year of Tu B'Shvat. In the days of the Temple in Jerusalem, those new year festivals for livestock and agriculture were important in determining the periods of tithing the products of the land. There was a system of resource distribution as described in the Torah and Talmud that fed the priestly caste (who were not permitted to own wealth-producing holdings themselves) as well as the poor who had no resources of their own.

In the simplest terms, Tu B'Shvat was the calendrical mark of the agricultural "before" and "after" points of the harvest season. Fruit-bearing trees were not supposed to be harvested within the first three years of their planting as a measure to encourage responsible, long-term farming. Tu B'Shvat was the official year-mark of the season, so harvesting of trees was permitted after Tu B'Shvat of the fourth year, though the fourth year harvest was always used for the tithes. This controlled the influx of produce to Jerusalem and regulated the way ancient Israelites farmed their land.

After the destruction of the Second Temple by the Roman Empire, Jews had no means of efficiently regulating the land they cultivated because they had no central city for clergy and their population was distributed throughout the world. While Jews could still observe the three-year rule about fruit-bearing trees, the tithing practices ceased to be relevant. Tu B'Shvat has since evolved into an observance related to trees in general, whether as symbols of life and prosperity or as literal things of natural beauty.

Tu B'Shvat took on new meaning in 1890 when Rabbi Zeev Yavetz took his congregation to the relatively new agricultural colony of Zikhron Ya'akov in the Haifa district of Israel. Rabbi Yavetz and his students planted trees there on Tu B'Shvat as a way to give religious significance to the afforestation effort in Israel, a cornerstone of the Zionist movement to make Israel a productive, self-sustaining nation. This custom spread in popularity throughout the 20th century and today Tu B'Shvat is celebrated internationally with the planting of trees. What began as an ancient method of managing agricultural production has transformed into a creative observance of modern environmentalism. This sentiment is in keeping with the Jewish philosophy of tikun olam and is a fine demonstration of the power of community.

Martin Luther King Jr. and the Jewish Community

Today in America we celebrate the life and works of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the most iconic civil rights leader of our nation in the 20th century. Though Dr. King is remembered for his stirring speeches and his tireless, grassroots campaigning efforts to demand equality and social justice in America and throughout the world, his real power was in his ability to forge alliances between people who had never worked together before. King was ever-mindful of his political actions and how exactly to create ripples through the media and through whole communities. This is how Dr. King's civil rights movement came to include the American Jewish community.

Jews have always been involved in American civil rights, from the epistolary discourse between Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise and Abraham Lincoln, to the Suffragist efforts of Gertrude Weil and Ernestine Rose, to the modern-day defenders of the ACLU. In the 1960's Jews became allies of African-American citizens seeking an end to discrimination under the law and in common practice. Up until his life was tragically cut short in 1968, some of Dr. Martin Luther King's most prominent, vocal supporters among white Americans were Jews.

Though Jews had been involved with African-American rights to some extent previously, the event that thrust American Jews and blacks into the same fight for equality was the 1958 bombing of Temple-Hebrew Benevolent Congregation, a synagogue in Atlanta, Georgia. The attack was in response to the presence of Jewish supporters in integration efforts in the South. Shortly after the attack, Dr. King openly forged a partnership with Rabbi Jacob Rothschild of THBC. Rothschild became one of the most prominent white supporters of African-American rights in the nation. Seven years later, Rabbi Rothschild organized a banquet at the Dinkler Plaza Hotel to honor Dr. King's recent receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize. It was the first racially integrated banquet in the American South and it was attended by over 1400 people.

Dr. King also found a staunch ally in the famed Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, a leader not only in the Jewish community but a vocal supporter of equality across the globe. Of the plight of black Americans Rabbi Heschel once said, "How can we love our neighbor when we flee from him and leave him abandoned, congested in the neglected ghettos of the inner city?"

Most famously, Rabbi Heschel marched beside Martin Luther King Jr., quite literally, in the Selma to Montgomery demonstration of March 1965. The demonstration was in response to violence against black voters attempting to register in the state of Alabama. This was no mere symbolic gesture. The march took three attempts, the first two ending in outright assault on the demonstrators, and the 51-mile hike lasted for five straight days. Jewish supporters of the American civil rights movement were not just writers and orators, they were among the many who put themselves in harm's way to achieve justice.

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