Packing SUX.

Hooray for Erin and bf and internets! Hooray for Hambone.

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Hooray for Erin and the BF and for Hambone finding his people.

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Interesting. The newest American Girl doll is Jewish. [link] Looks interesting, and even managed to not offend Abe Foxman, who's offended by pretty much everything in the world. I kind of wish they'd picked an earlier time period than 1914, though -- the first Jewish community in what would become the US was in New Amsterdam in 1653, but I can think of barely any popular culture depictions of Jews in America before about 1880.

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My guess, Hil, is that they chose that time period to coincide with the rise of the union organizations. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire was in 1911, so I wouldn't be surprised to see something similar occur in one of the subsequent books. Or to have her father risk his job with involvement in a union.

It's definitely interesting. I suspect Abby may want one for her birthday.

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I skipped! SLNRLBF is here! His flight was non eventful and with no delays !YAY! Yesterday while I was at work he put new memory into my desktop and made dinner for my aunt and I. It was very good!

Then last night we had a wonderfully amazing dinner at this small local place I've never been to before. It's only open for dinner Friday and Saturday (and lunch Tues-Sat) and the owner/chef made our wondeful dinner and came out to make sure everyone was enjoying things. (We beat the rush so it was only us and a four top). The dessert was the best, Peach Crisp topped with ice cream made in house. YUM!

Now SLNRLBF is trying to see if he can put in a new video card, and it looks like the answer maybe no...that my desktop is too old.

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Yeah, they do mention the labor movements in the article. I guess I just feel like this has been done so many times before. (What I'd love to see would be a story about a Jewish kid in the south or midwest in the 1870s or earlier. Because there were plenty of Jews there then, and those stories are almost never told.)

There's an anecdote in Joan Nathan's Jewish Cooking in America cookbook about a Jewish Union soldier during the Civil War, who was in a small southern town during Passover, and had almost nothing that he could eat. While walking around town, he noticed a little Jewish boy sitting on a front porch eating matzo, and asked if he could have a piece. The boy ran into the house shouting, "Mama! There's a damn Yankee Jew out here!" The mother came and gave him some food.

Actually, what I'd love to see, though not necessarily as a children's book, would be something that somehow involved Asser Levy. [link] One of my favorite Jewish American historical figures, and he'd practically never mentioned anywhere.

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Yeah, I get what you're saying, Hil and you make a great point, however, given they're trying to reach mainstream girls across the U.S., they were probably trying for the largest possible frame of reference rather than something more limited. (Meaning it's far easier to find references to the immigrant Jews in NY in the early 20th century than almost anything else and it sounds as if they stayed away from most of the stereotypes.)

For me, I would have loved to have seen a 1950s Jewish girl growing up on a resort in the Catskills. Imagine the characters she would have encountered there-- all the Borscht Belt comedians that came through.

Or like you said, a Jewish kid in the south-- the congregation that Lewis' family belonged to in Pensacola was one of the oldest in the South, having been established in the 1880s, I believe.

And I remember that anecdote in Jewish Cooking in America-- I love her cookbooks for that reason.

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Hil, have you read Maan Meyers? The earliest (chronological) of their historical mysteries feature Sephardi in New Amsterdam.

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What I'd love to see would be a story about a Jewish kid in the south or midwest in the 1870s or earlier

Not Jewish, so not as versed in its history in America, and being from NY, I was a bit shocked to learn the rest of the country had so little Jewish communities.

That said, I learned of the Gothic Synagogue in Savannah [link] The story told to me is, the original plans for the synagogue were lost, and the congregation borrowed plans from a church that was recently built 6 blocks away. So on the same square, you had 2 very similar buildings (not mentioned on their history page).

The other Jewish in the south story was recently learned. When we were doing the play on the Book of Genesis, I was quite surprised to learn there was a large Jewish population here in Dallas. Apparently migrated from Houston, for the longest time, they ran pawn shops, general stores, etc. Apparently the pawns shops flourished as a form of banking for the railroad workers. Then, after WWII, another wave came here, survivng the holocaust. [link]

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Gothic Synagogue

Woah.

I'm probably not the person to know, but I thought that synagogues were supposed to be modest. And without stained glass art.

Cool.

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