Their names: Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum.

Percentage of state population that is Jewish: 3.4.

Where that ranks: Fifth out of 50. (Can you guess the top four? Answer after the jump.)

Jewish issues? Not hugely, and there isn’t much disagreement: At the most recent debate, Romney gave his Israel spiel, and Gingrich responded, “Gov. Romney is exactly right.” Of course, there is Romney’s Great Kosher Food Nursing Home Scandal, which actually is neither great nor scandalous nor Romney’s.

Who’s going to win? Mitt Romney, almost certainly.

Does it matter? Yes. Newt needs this one, bad.

Open or closed primary? Closed.

So, your Democratic grandmother isn’t going to accidentally vote for Ron Paul? No butterfly-ballot concerns.

Proportional or winner-take-all? Winner-take-all. That’s why Santorum long ago gave up and Paul didn’t waste much time (since he is all about accumulating delegates over the long haul).

Number of delegates to the Republican National Convention: 50.

Number of delegates to the Republican National Convention it would have if it hadn’t moved up its primary against party rules: 100.

Democracy! Sigh.

(The Democratic Party did the exact same thing, right? Yes. They’re both hypocrites.)

What’s next? Nevada, February.

So, more Jews! Yup.

Percentage-wise, the leaders are New York (8.4), New Jersey (5.7), Massachusetts (4.2), and the great state of Maryland (4.1).

But if it does end up being Gingrich, it will be in no small part thanks to Sheldon Adelson, the richest Jew in the world (as he has boasted) and an extremely hawkish supporter of Israel. And this is quite important.

Earlier this month, Adelson materially aided Gingrich and politically helped him by changing the narrative when he donated $5 million to a pro-Gingrich group, well over half of which was spent in South Carolina. Now, there is no limit on how much Adelson can give Gingrich: ever since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, individuals face no cap on how much money they can supply to technically unaffiliated Super PACs. Two things might restrict Adelson. One is outsize use of political capital (his actual capital extends into the multibillions), but Adelson need be less worried, as he has already gotten his money’s worth with his initial “statement.” The other thing might be expectation of a poor return on his investment. Here it’s worth noting that Adelson seems to expect, should Gingrich reclaim the mantle of power (indeed, I can report that money does buy influence in politics) is, shall we say, extremely robust support for the Jewish state. In Connie Bruck’s profile, Adelson is portrayed as basically a single-issue guy. And it’s notable that the only political sentiment Adelson has publicly articulated in recent weeks was to echo Gingrich’s earlier remark about the Palestinians being an “invented” people. If you were a cynic, you might even suggest that Gingrich made that controversial remark precisely in order to wake up his old friend Shelly.

Meanwhile, we now enter Florida. Like South Carolina, it’s pretty close to must-win for Gingrich; Romney has an extremely easy post-Florida schedule. And Romney will be aided by the literally hundreds of thousands of absentee and early ballots that have already been filed, most before the game-changing South Carolina results.

But still: Florida! Old Jews! Jews made up all of 0 percent of the South Carolina Republican primary electorate, according to exit polls, but in Florida you can be sure they will crack positive numbers. Shmuel Rosner has an interesting post suggesting that Jewish Republicans most concerned with defeating President Obama tend to go for Romney over Gingrich. And Florida’s is the first contest open only to registered Republican voters; and its sheer size and diversity also favor Romney. But Gingrich remains, for now, by far the most intriguing subplot (especially since Rep. Ron Paul finished a disappointing for him/encouraging for us fourth place in South Carolina). And the Jewish/Israel/Adelson angle in turn remains Gingrich’s most intriguing subplot.

Exit Poll Tells Story Behind Gingrich Win [NYT]
After South Carolina, The Road Ahead Gets Tougher for Newt Gingrich [The Daily Beast]
Factor: Who’s Better for Israel, Romney or Gingrich? [Jewish Journal Rosner’s Domain]
Related: Brass Ring [New Yorker]
Earlier: Adelson Joins Gingrich’s Anti-Mitt Crusade

Miami-based radio producer Trina Sargalski trailed Betty on one of her Sunday-morning shifts and sent us this dispatch. [Running time: 7:13.]

When my grandfather went to Jerusalem for the first time, in 1968, he was given the grand tour of the city, but after just two hours, he’d had enough. “Take me to see cows,” he said to the guide, or at least that’s the family legend.

I am the inheritor of a strange and somewhat obscure legacy. I come from a long line of Jewish cattle dealers. Our family history has been tied up with cows since at least the 19th century. In fading family photographs, you can see cows as well as ancestors. In my own childhood snapshots, I am smiling, hair cropped and parted, boots high, a calf sucking on my fingers.

I grew up in Hollywood, Florida, an affluent, largely Jewish suburb of Fort Lauderdale. My father still resides for most of the week on the family farm that my grandfather founded in Okeechobee, a two-hour drive away. When I was a child, my father came home one night a week and then again, for weekends, usually a few minutes before the sun set on Friday. Some 4,000 cows live on my family’s farm. There is much to do and the days are always long. But before my father leaves the house each morning in darkness, he makes sure to put on tefillin and say the shacharit prayers. He is, as far as I know, the only full-time Orthodox Jewish farmer in the United States.

Growing up, my friends were the daughters of cardiologists who took their children to Disney World. My summers were spent in the hot Florida sun, milking cows, sorting through tool sheds, cleaning calf cages, chasing after wayward heifers, and seeking the small comforts of air conditioning in my father’s Ford F-150.

****

In Germany, Jewish cattle dealers abounded. Considered the de facto bankers of the countryside, they were particularly targeted by the Nazi propaganda machine. My grandfather, born in 1907, had been groomed to take over the family’s prosperous cattle business, based in Ellingen, a small town in Bavaria, which had branches throughout the region. Then Hitler came to power.

My grandfather escaped in 1938, and, after a few years in Cuba, he found refuge in Miami. When it came time to stake out his American dream, my grandfather turned to what he knew best. Though Bavaria is a long way away from Florida, Holsteins are Holsteins and farmers everywhere speak the same language. When he arrived in Miami, the area surrounding the city was still farm country. With an old pick-up truck, he slowly built a business buying and selling cows throughout the state. Around 1945, he decided to deviate slightly from the family tradition; he began to produce and sell milk, rather than just buy and sell livestock. It was a gradual process, and for a while, he did both simultaneously, establishing his first farm in Miami Springs, where the international airport is now located. “Cattle dealing was in his blood,” my father told me. “He was good at it, he loved it, and he could have made a very good living if he had continued.” But he made an intentional decision to shed his cattle-dealer past, a decision I learned more about when I visited his German hometown last summer.

***

I had been to Germany twice before: as a college student on a research grant, and later, as a journalist covering a conference in Berlin. But my interest in this period was always confined to my maternal side—my grandmother, who was born in Frankfurt, is a survivor of Bergen Belsen. My paternal grandfather, who never spoke about his childhood, died months before I was born and his wife—my grandmother—was a fifth-generation American who knew little of her late husband’s German past. Some photographs survived, and with them, small scraps of information about a small Bavarian town and a once-thriving business, but beyond that, we knew nothing. For the most part, my grandfather, an aloof figure, wiped a clean slate when he stepped onto American soil.

About 15 years ago, my brother went backpacking through Europe and decided to take a detour to Ellingen. There, he met a retired veterinarian named Bruno Buff who had heard of the Berman family from the farmers he worked with in the countryside. Buff also volunteered his time working in the city archives and took an interest in our family. In the years since, the family has stayed in periodic contact with him, mostly through Christmas cards.

But recently, Buff began corresponding more frequently. He told us about a German doctoral student named Stefanie Fischer, who had unearthed archival information about our family and was writing her dissertation on the relationship between Jewish cattle dealers and German farmers. He also sent us a copy of a book about the town’s Jews that had just been published by a ragtag group of amateur historians. He asked: Would we want to come to Ellingen for a visit? After some convincing, my father agreed; this would be his first trip to Germany.

Ellingen is a small, picturesque town just a short train ride from Nuremberg. We arrived from the United States, Israel, and England—more than a dozen in all, from my two-year-old nephew to a 70-year-old cousin who was born in Germany but now refused to speak the language. Ellingen boasted cobblestone streets; flowers spilling out of windowsills; the constant, somewhat maddening din of church bells; and a castle looming at the entrance of the town. Walking through the idyllic streets, I couldn’t help but think that ours was a particularly painful exile; Ellingen in the summertime seems too good to be true.

For most of us, it was our first trip to the town. My aunt was one exception; she had been to Ellingen in the 1980s, and as the story goes, she asked for directions to the Jewish cemetery. When the town’s German-speaking residents drew a blank, she started yelling, “Dead Jews! Dead Jews,” repeatedly at the top of her lungs.

Our arrival in Ellingen was a much talked-about novelty. Before World War II, the town had just a handful of Jewish residents, and now everyone—from the carpenter to the mayor to the innkeeper of a local bed and breakfast—seemed to know the name Berman. Buff, in his 80s, organized the three-day tour for us. He had fought in World War II, and won us all over with his warmth, kindness, and deep-seated regret. It was Buff who introduced us to the entourage of locals who accompanied us along nearly every stop: the retired baker, didn’t speak English, but communicated through strudels, thrusting baked goods our way with smiles; the town’s lawyer and self-appointed historian, who co-authored a book about the town’s Jews, despite what appeared to be no special affinity for Jews; and the makeshift archivist, a middle-aged, unemployed woman with bright orange hair who lived alone with her dog and spent hours sifting through the old papers, documenting the lives of the town’s Jews.

She told me that sometimes she walks the streets of Ellingen and sees the faces of the town’s Jews who have since vanished from its cobblestone pathways.

“They have become my friends,” she said with a sad smile.

***
In the years leading up to World War II, the German countryside was intensely poor. A farmer who wanted to buy cows was dependent on credit that he received from his local cattle dealer, not the bank. My family’s business, Berman-Oppenheimer, emerged as the leading cattle operation in Bavaria in the southeast region of Germany. On any given week, they would send upwards of 150 cows to market, an astronomical number for most German farmers.

“No other group was assaulted so much when the Nazis came to power,” Fischer, the German doctoral student, said of Jewish cattle dealers. “They became synonymous with ripping off farmers.” Nazis mythologized the struggling farmers in the heartland who worked the soil, and pitted them against the relatively well-off Jewish cattle dealers.

German municipalities tried to promote “Judenfrei” cattle markets, but many farmers boycotted them—not because of philo-Semitism, but because “Aryan” prices were deemed too high. For a time, German farmers prohibited the distribution of the Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer at their cattle auctions because it kept Jewish cattle dealers away.

Soon, Der Stürmer began to publish names of German farmers who continued to do business with Jews, branding them enemies of the state. “Jews had no soil,” Fischer explained. “They didn’t milk cows. They only traded. People looked at Jews as if they didn’t work.” The aging farmers Fischer interviewed for her dissertation told her that it never occurred them that the Jews couldn’t own land. “They saw trading as part of the Jews’ nature,” she said.

***
Walking the streets of Ellingen, our guides pointed to various buildings where Jews had once lived, and to the former synagogue, which is now a private home. The deputy mayor gave us a tour of City Hall and then invited us to show off his elaborate garden and in it, a tiny but ornamented garden shed.

“This comes from Bernard Berman’s house,” he said, pointing to the letters “BB” formed out of the wrought iron that now decorates the shed’s window sills. Bernard is the name of my great-grandfather, but also my own father’s namesake. “My father got it, but I’m not sure how,” he said.

We tried to pry more information out of him, but we didn’t make much headway. “My father bought it after the war,” the deputy mayor repeated several times in his limited English, surprisingly unselfconscious. It angered me; I waited for the deputy mayor to put on a work shirt, take the tools out of his shed, cut through the wrought iron, and return the decoration to its rightful owners—but of course my waiting was for naught. He never offered it, and we didn’t ask. In fact, he never invited us in inside his home.

Later, I asked my father about that moment; wasn’t the decorative piece his rightful inheritance? “I didn’t want it back,” my father replied. “I don’t need anything from him.”

***

One afternoon, we were sitting outside our hotel, enjoying the crisp Bavarian afternoon and sipping German beer in the cool shade when Hermann Seis, the town’s lawyer-turned-historian, came to greet us. My parents had corresponded with him via email, but this was our first meeting with a man who seemed to know more about our family than we did. Seis talked a great deal, but when he took a newspaper article out of his binder and started to pass it around, our large and somewhat unruly crowd sat in rapt attention.

What he passed around was a copy of Der Stürmer, dated December 1937, which none of us had ever seen. There, featured prominently on the front page was an article about my great-grandfather—“the greatest and most cunning of these Ellingen Jews”—who was arrested after he was accused of paying a farmer he worked with to murder a leading Nazi.

The article features three mug shots of my great-grandfather, presumably taken upon his arrest. We sat there, speechless, dumbfounded. My father had heard about an arrest once—not from his father, but from a distant relative who provided no details—but he didn’t know anything beyond that, and certainly not that it was front-page news. No one knew about the article’s existence. (It’s nearly impossible to get a copy of the paper in modern day Germany—wartime propaganda is kept under tight wraps by the country’s anti-Nazi laws—and so researchers need to jump through extensive hoops to prove their interest in the newspaper is purely academic.) To this day, we don’t know how long my great-grandfather sat in jail.

The article is long—more than 2,000 words in the English translation we commissioned—and it is extensive in outlining my great-grandfather’s alleged sins: betraying and displacing farmers, expropriating farms, destroying property, and causing poverty across the countryside. In the article, my great-grandfather is described as a “man of foreign race who corrupted farmers.”

“The Jew is a born criminal,” the article continues. “The strongest laws will not be able to change him.”

Later we learned that my great-grandfather was released soon after and fled with his daughter to London. He died there in 1943, but not before he settled his Ellingen city taxes from exile. If he were to return after the war, my great-grandfather wanted to be sure it would be as a citizen in good standing.

Presumably, my grandfather saw the article on the newsstands in Breslau, where he moved to establish another branch of the family cattle-dealing business in the mid-1930s. But he never mentioned it to his wife, children or grandchildren; we only heard of it for the first time over beer in Ellingen, church bells ringing in the background, from a man who was a stranger.

***
The next afternoon we visited the nearby town of Markt Berolzheim, home to another branch of the family cattle business. Hermann Bauer was our host. He had been mayor of the town for three decades and his father was the town’s leading Nazi politician during the war years. We talked in his garden and drank fresh apple cider. He asked my father how many cows he owned and when my father answered, the mayor blanched.

“That’s four times as many cows as in the whole village,” he said.

My father tried to downplay the success; he tried explaining how for Florida the farm is considered midsized. But it didn’t make much of an impact. Later, when we visited the home that once belonged to my grandfather’s cousins, the man who lived there shared with us a rumor that was floating through the town. “I heard that there is a man named Bill Berman who has more than 2,000 cows,” he whispered, wide-eyed, to my sister. Bill, of course, is my father, and the man’s estimate was off by half. Jews were reviled for their success in the pre-war years and here was my father being forced to return to the same situation; his discomfort—laced with pride, among other things—was palpable.

Before we left, my father took Fischer aside. “Tell the mayor we don’t sell cattle anymore,” he insisted.

Fischer obliged and the mayor nodded, as if in comprehension. But I’m not sure he understood what my father was trying to say. My father, and his father before that, were no longer traders. Family legend has it that until the day he died, my grandfather could look at a cow and remember where and how much he bought her for, even if years had passed. And though trading was clearly his passion, he wanted something else, felt it was essential to become something else. And here in Germany, my father—who has watched each of his five children choose career paths that have taken them away from the family farm—wanted to be sure that the distinction was clear.

Daphna Berman, a former Jerusalem correspondent for Haaretz, is now a senior editor at Moment magazine.

PRODUCED BY ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO. PHOTOGRAPHY BY AMANDA KOWALSKI

• Ambassador Michael Oren argues that the U.S.-Israeli special relationship remains crucial to American interests. Several folks, including contributing editor Jeff Goldberg and controversial professor Stephen Walt, respond. [Foreign Policy]

• An inside look at how the IDF creates its ethical rules. [JPost]

• Will the U.S. Senate get its first Jewish Tea Partier? Yes, if Adam Hasner, of Florida, has his way. [JTA]

• A new issue of the Jewish Review of Books dropped, with much attention given to the Arab spring, including a lead essay by Natan Sharansky. [JRB]

• Stay classy, pro-gun lobby. [HuffPo]

If it’s spring, it’s time for Chabad’s Mitzvah Tanks!

Issac Feder, a member of a small but growing Orthodox sect, owns two units in condos in Century Village, a gated Florida community—one where he lives during the winter, and another he’s converted into a makeshift synagogue. Another Orthodox synagogue is nearby, but apparently falls into the category of “the one where we wouldn’t be caught dead.”

This hasn’t pleased their less Orthodox neighbors, who don’t like the constant foot traffic or community pools being used as Mikvehs. They’ve gotten the county to initiate a code enforcement action against Feder. More recently—in a wonderful display of community activity, which really seems to be missing these days—the two sides overpacked a zoning board hearing to complain about one another. There will be Blood!

“It’s really not about zoning,” said Sam Koenig, 64, an Orthodox Jew who lives in a different Century Village building and is sympathetic with Feder. “This crowd doesn’t want this because it reminds them of an Eastern European shtetl, and makes them feel as if they’re going back in time.”
…
“I see their women davening and dressing like they’re in Alaska,” said Frances Merel, a Jewish resident in a nearby building. “I don’t want to see it. They feel like the rules aren’t for them. They’re arrogant.”

Her husband, Maynard, chimed in: “If they win, I’m going to turn my apartment into a mosque.”

Condo’s Turmoil Over Makeshift Synagogue Spills Over At Code Enforcement Hearing [Palm Beach Post]

The Forward’s Nathan Guttman explored the particulars of the race: How Meek, a four-term African-American congressman, overcame the initial lead that Greene, a self-made billionaire, had built; how establishment Democrats, most of whom back Meek, worry that a Greene victory will tamp down black turnout come November. And then there is how Greene has tried to take attention away from his personal life—which apparently at one point featured an L.A. “love den” that hosted Mike Tyson and Paris Hilton (not necessarily at the same time)—with subtle references to his background.

Did I say subtle? Yesterday, Greene took Meek on over Israel. “As a Jewish-American man who grew up in a Jewish household,” he said in a statement, “and whose grandmother, mother, and sister are Jewish educators, has studied in Israel and taught Hebrew—it is without a doubt that I have a better understanding of Jewish issues.”

Of course, two can play that game. On Sunday, Meek magnanimously “forgave” Greene for his attacks—at a black church. We all, it seems, have our own landsmen.

What Will Determine Florida’s Democratic Senate Primary? [Atlantic Wire]
Florida’s Jews Face Stark Choice in Senate Race [Forward]
Ethnic Politics in Florida [Ben Smith]

Wexler, who arrived late, stood by himself through the hourlong presentation, leaning against a wall near the back of the room with his soft black leather Dell briefcase between his feet. At 49, he was at least a decade younger than most of the other men in attendance, though he sports similarly silvered hair, and he kept his hand pensively over his chin for much of the talk. Dayan expressed his opposition to the current U.S. effort to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations using 1967 borders as the basis for a future Palestinian state. During the question-and-answer session, Wexler raised his hand and asked, pointedly, “General Dayan, how could it be in any respect a smart strategy to treat in this fashion your most important ally?” Dayan looked surprised. “Rabbi Wexler,” he began, before someone at the front corrected him. “I’m not challenging the White House or the so-important friendship with the United States,” Dayan said. “I’m challenging how important borders are.”

Wexler may have been unfamiliar to the general, but others in the room knew exactly who he was. In his six months as president of Abraham’s Center for Middle East Peace, Wexler has adopted an unofficial role as ambassador to the organized American Jewish community. As a congressman, he managed to retain support from both J Street, the dovish two-year-old Israel lobby, and the more conservative AIPAC, which commended him earlier this year as “one of the stalwart leaders of the American-Israel alliance in Congress.” After last week’s luncheon, hosted by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Wexler stayed behind for a quiet tête-à-tête with the president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Dore Gold, who served as Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations during Benjamin Netanyahu’s first premiership a decade ago, and who addressed the lunch gathering along with Dayan.

In March 2007, Wexler endorsed Barack Obama, breaking not just with other Jewish Democrats in South Florida but with his own long history as an early and fervent supporter of the Clintons, starting in 1992. Today, he is frequently mentioned as a potential ambassador to Israel—a position currently filled by James Cunningham, a career diplomat who went to Tel Aviv in the waning days of the George W. Bush Administration. “It’s a position he could have at the snap of his fingers,” said Stuart Eizenstat, who served under President Bill Clinton as a special envoy for Holocaust-era claims and is a special State Department adviser to Hillary Clinton on Holocaust issues. “He could do a world of good for the administration, because at the end of the day [the Israelis] have to have trust in the American administration, and there is no one better placed than Bob to make that argument.”

The visit to New York followed a high-profile dinner Wexler and Abraham hosted at Washington’s Newseum for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas during his visit to Washington in early June. The guest list included the billionaire publisher Mort Zuckerman and Lee Rosenberg, an Obama supporter who is currently the president of AIPAC, along with political heavyweights like Sandy Berger, Bill Clinton’s national security adviser, and Stephen Hadley, who held the job under George W. Bush, and his former deputy, Elliott Abrams, who oversaw Middle Eastern affairs under Bush. The center Wexler runs is “a meeting spot where people from all segments of the community can come together and hear reasonable points of view,” said J Street President Jeremy Ben Ami, who was also at the event.

Publicly, Wexler is probably best known for his 2006 appearance on Comedy Central’s satire show The Colbert Report, on which Stephen Colbert coaxed him into repeating the sentence: “I enjoy cocaine because it’s fun to do.” Wexler spent a dozen years representing Boca Raton, one of the most Jewish and most reliably Democratic districts in the House of Representatives. As a member of the influential Foreign Affairs committee, he was particularly active in establishing a congressional caucus on U.S.-Turkish relations and went out of his way to travel to places like Saudi Arabia and Syria, where, according to an account in Wexler’s autobiography, Fire-Breathing Liberal, President Bashar al-Assad gave him messages to carry to then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

“Serving in government is an extraordinary honor, whether it’s in Congress or in any other capacity, but there are other ways to participate in a meaningful way as well,” Wexler said in an interview in late June. We were in his Washington office, on the fifth floor of a building overlooking the colonnaded Navy Memorial plaza along Pennsylvania Ave., where he keeps the bronze plaque from the entrance to his old House office leaning against the windowsill. Framed photographs of him posing with various leaders—Netanyahu, Sharon, Obama, King Abdullah—compete for space with framed newspaper clippings from his Florida political career.

Wexler, who was in shirtsleeves, favors blue ties that match his eyes and tends to rap his fingertips on tabletops when he is particularly emphatic about a point he’s making. He refused to say whether he had been offered the ambassadorship, formally or informally. (The White House declined to comment for this story.) But Wexler has publicly, and repeatedly, said his decision to leave Congress was motivated in part by financial concerns—he has three teenage children—and acquaintances speculate that his hesitance about returning to government service, even as an ambassador, stems from the same pressures. (Members of Congress are paid $174,000 annually; Wexler declined to disclose his current salary, which is not reflected in the Center’s most recent financial filings.) Over the years, Wexler explained, “Danny would joke with me and ask when I was going to leave Congress and get a real job.” The jibe turned into a real prospect after Obama’s election invigorated Abraham about the prospects for reaching a peace agreement—an irony, he added, since Abraham, a longtime supporter of the Clintons, had initially been sharply critical of his decision to back Obama. Now he shuttles around on extra-diplomatic excursions—Israel and the West Bank, Turkey, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan—aboard Abraham’s private jet.

Abraham, an 85-year-old World War II veteran, founded the Center for Middle East Peace in 1989, with Wayne Owens, a Democratic congressman from Utah who had served on the foreign affairs and intelligence committees, at its helm. Together, the pair met with Yasser Arafat in 1989, in Tunisia, then an extraordinary step, and went on to cultivate relationships with leaders across the Middle East. “They would come see us and the national security adviser and occasionally the president to brief us on meetings they’d had with various Israeli and Arab leaders and give us ideas,” said Robert Malley, who served on the staff of the National Security Council and as a special assistant for Arab-Israeli affairs in the Clinton Administration. He recalled that Abraham had called the White House from Israel with both Ehud Barak and Arafat on the line after the failure of negotiations at Camp David. Of Abraham’s center, Malley said, “It’s not going to change history, but in his position you can’t hope to do more than that—he has access and he can bring people together.”

Owens died unexpectedly in December 2002 after having a heart attack on the beach in Tel Aviv during a trip with Abraham, who subsequently wound down the center’s $14 million operation. Owens was deeply beloved in official Washington, but as a Mormon, he never had Wexler’s entree into the official world of American Jewry. Wexler, a Queens native who grew up in South Florida, where his father owned a deli, made his first trip to Israel on his honeymoon, after his wife, Laurie, said she didn’t like the idea of marrying someone who hadn’t been to the Jewish state. He was elected to Congress in 1996 after six years in the Florida State Senate and was drafted onto the Foreign Affairs committee by Lee Hamilton, a veteran Democratic congressman from Indiana who subsequently served on the 9/11 Commission and the Iraq Study Group. “He was a natural,” says Hamilton, who is currently president of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington. “He’s always been very close to the Jewish community and a very strong advocate for the Democratic Party, and I think he’s played a hugely important role in bridging the gaps that sometimes arise between the two.”

Now Wexler’s task is not just to maintain open channels among the Americans, Israelis, and Arabs—it’s to continue applying additional glue to the relationship between the Obama Administration and the American Jewish community. “My understanding with Danny was that I had only one red line, or only one rule, and that is that we would work in coordination and consistent with the Obama Administration,” Wexler said. “I believe the course that President Obama is pursuing is compelling in terms of what is in the best interests of the state of Israel.” He echoed recent administration talking points about the closeness of the U.S.-Israeli military and intelligence relationships and added another example to counter claims of anything like a rift between Washington and Jerusalem: phone calls made by George Mitchell, Obama’s special envoy to the Middle East, to voting countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development this spring encouraging them to accept Israel as a member.

None of that, though, speaks to the fundamental anxiety increasingly pervasive in some Jewish quarters about where the Israeli-Palestinian peace process is heading. Last week, Wexler met with Ehud Barak during the Israeli defense minister’s visit to Washington; he has extended an invitation to host a gathering for Netanyahu when the prime minister is scheduled to be in town next week. But, like everyone, Wexler is looking ahead to the expiration of the settlement-construction freeze in September, and like everyone, he can’t predict whether or not the current proximity talks will lead to a resumption of direct, Camp David-style negotiations. “The plan is to create the dynamic in which the Israelis and the Palestinians can engage in direct negotiations. That’s the plan. It’s tedious, it’s painful, and for every two steps forward there’s one step back, but that’s the plan,” Wexler told me. He deflected the question of whether he anticipated a grand proposal from the Obama Administration, in the event that the proximity talks fail to progress. “I don’t think it makes any sense to foreshadow what might happen four months from now, or five months from now, should there not be direct negotiations,” he said. “Because I am confident and hopeful there will be.”

That optimism is a hallmark of the style Abraham and Owens established two decades ago, during the hopeful era of the Oslo accords. “They had more fire and determination than anyone else on the block,” Malley said. “And Wexler shares this attitude of, ‘We have a vision, it makes sense.’ ” Obama’s election revived Abraham’s resolve to fight for the establishment of a two-state deal, Wexler said. “I think he felt that coming off the eight years of the Bush Administration, because of the Intifada and because of the two wars, the opportunity for negotiating a settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians and an end to conflict was so remote, that the next two or three years were the best last opportunity for a two-state solution.”

Wexler said that Abbas, at the Newseum dinner, warned about the increasingly vocal campaign among Palestinians against continuing to pursue the two-state model. “People need to understand that while the two-state solution may seem difficult to attain—it’s riddled with uncertainty, it’s riddled with risks and painful compromises—but the alternative is not paradise. It’s not some golden status quo,” Wexler went on. “The alternative is the one-state solution, and the one-state solution will amount to a state that is no longer Jewish. And I for one am not for that.”

I am all in favor of reparations for survivors—especially since, scandalously, one in four American ones lives below the poverty line. That said, I found it interesting that Col. Ellis Robinson (Ret.), a longtime Jewish Boca resident and (if I may say so) truly spectacular grandfather, is not also eligible for some Holocaust-based cash. The colonel was not a survivor of the camps; rather, as an officer who landed at Normandy, freed Paris, fought in the Ardennes, and crossed the Rhine at Remagen under General Patton, he helped free them.

So, I asked the colonel: Why isn’t he getting some cash now for his services?

He responded in an email: “Was glad to do it … FREE OF CHARGE.”

Former Nazi Slave Laborers Seek Payment from Germany [South Florida Sun Sentinel]
16,000 Floridians Get a Shot at Holocaust Pensions [UPI/Vos Iz Neias?]

Passovers spent away from home are a long-standing tradition. Instead of hauling boxes of dishes out of storage, performing bedikat chametz, and spending days—or weeks—preparing kosher-for-Passover meals, observant East Coast Jews who could afford it once spent Passover at resorts in the Catskills and the Poconos. Guests would spend up to 10 days there, enjoy two seders, eat three hearty kosher-for-Passover meals a day, and work in a few wet rounds of golf, or some pinochle, or both. Not incidentally, cooking and cleaning were covered in the price of admission.

Most of those storied resorts are now closed, but Passover getaways are more popular than ever. Some are still held at modest facilities in, say, suburban New Jersey, but well-to-do Jews are increasingly spending the holiday in high style, eating sophisticated food and engaging in exotic activities, in far-off, luxurious places. “The evolution of Passover is to really start creating more resort experiences—rather than just catering experiences,” said Jeff Klein, vice president for food and beverage at the Fontainebleau Resort in Miami Beach, which hosts one of South Florida’s premier Passover packages.

These resort experiences are offered everywhere you can think of, including Israel, Miami, Arizona, Costa Rica, the Caribbean, Mexico, even Turkey. The organizers—generally an outside company that teams up with a resort property—might provide day camp for the kids and evening entertainment like comedians and singers, as well as the know-how and equipment required for an all-around kosher-for-Passover experience. The program at Miami’s Fontainebleau, for example, is organized by Lasko Family Tours, said to run “the Cadillac of Pesach programs,” which also puts on Passover programs at the swanky Eden Roc next door and at the nearby Hyatt Regency Bonaventure. The hotels, meanwhile, generally provide most of the staffing and overlay their own exacting standards of hospitality. “Every detail is accounted for,” says the Fontainebleau’s Klein, whose chefs work alongside those from the kosher caterer hired by Lasko. “They may say we want it plated this way, and we say it doesn’t fit our brand so we do it our way.”

The food on those plates isn’t limited to Eastern European—and, some may say, tired— classics like brisket and gefilte fish. Menus are traditional for the seders, but then comes the American-style barbecue, the sushi (made with quinoa instead of rice), and the afternoon tea rooms overflowing with kosher-for-Passover biscotti and cakes. The range of entertainment has evolved as well. In Miami, the 20-somethings spend quality time with their grandparents by day and go clubbing at night, thanks to a New Yorker named Dave Shine. During the week of Passover, Shine teams up with fellow promoters to throw huge, kosher-for-Passover parties at the city’s top nightclubs. “One night there are celebs, models, and VIPs, and the next night we cover the bar with plastic and table cloths, take every item off the shelf, and put up potato vodka and kosher-for-Passover wine and champagne,” Shine says. The corkscrews, cutting boards, and pourers are all new for the occasion. The parties—happening this year at Louis (in the Gansevoort South) and Klutch (formerly Opium Garden)—often pull in 1,000 people, many looking for potential mates. “At 5 a.m. when the lights go on, we still have to ask 400 people to exit the premises,” he says.

One’s choice of hotels depends, in part, on level of observance. Sam Lasko, who heads his family-owned business, says more Orthodox guests tend to end up at the Bonaventure—where the pool, for example, has designated times for women and men to swim separately. (At Fontainebleau and Eden Roc everyone swims together.) At Eden Roc, the hotel is dedicated entirely to Passover vacationers, which many customers prefer. But ultimately every family has to find the right fit.

Here are some Passover vacation options in the United States, Mexico, and the Caribbean. Prices are based on a 10-day (nine night) stay from March 29 through April 7, double occupancy, and include taxes, tips, and service charges. Be sure to inquire about last-minute discounts, as well as about family and children’s rates, which vary depending on age and room occupancy.

MIAMI, FLORIDA:

Fontainebleau Resort Miami Beach
This Miami mainstay is more chic than ever after a $1 billion facelift in 2008; the gorgeous design spreads across 1,504 new rooms, nine pools, and a phenomenal spa.
Prices: Starts at $4,999 per adult
To book or for more information, go here.

Eden Roc: A Renaissance Resort & Spa
A $200 million renovation in 2009 left this beachfront hotel looking stylish and hip but not flashy, with three infinity pools, a bustling boardwalk, and 631 comfortable rooms.
Prices: Starts at $4,624 per adult
To book or for more information, go here.

Marriott Doral Golf Resort and Spa
Sitting on 650 acres in suburban Miami, this true resort is a city within a city: five golf courses, five pools, and a full-service spa with 52 treatment rooms means there’s something for everyone here. And it’s all graced with warm, friendly service in a scenic setting.
Prices: $3,714
To book or for more information, go here.

Biltmore Coral Gables Florida
Built in 1926, this iconic hotel in Coral Gables (a national landmark) exudes timeless luxury and, although it’s far from any beaches, offers doting service, a pool, a prestigious golf course, and a catalog of amenities. Unfortunately, its residential neighborhood can get boring.
Prices: Starts at $4,350 per adult
To book or for more information, go here.

Fairmont Turnberry Isle Resort & Club
The Fairmont is a true luxury retreat set on 300 acres in suburban Miami. Although it’s just minutes from the Aventura Mall, it offers an award-winning golf course, beautiful pools, elegant rooms, and a spa which means there’s no reason to leave the premises.
Prices: Starts at $5,000 per adult
To book or for more information, go here.

ORLANDO, FLORIDA:

Regal Sun Resort in Walt Disney World
Kids will love staying across the street from Downtown Disney, where families will find shops, Cirque du Soleil, and DisneyQuest’s virtual rides. The hotel has a pool playground and game rooms for kids and runs a free shuttle to the parks.
Prices: Starts at $3,218 per adult
To book or for more information, go here.

Waldorf-Astoria Orlando
Just opened in October 2009, this pristine luxury resort on 482 acres is the first hotel to bear the flagship name outside New York. There’s a golf course, the Spa by Guerlain, and a free shuttle to the Disney parks (all of which are 10 to 20 minutes away).
Prices: Starts at $3,749 per adult
To book or for more information, go here.

LAS VEGAS:

Ritz-Carlton Resort & Spa, Lake Las Vegas
With the hotel set to close in early May, this Passover is one last hurrah for the Tuscany-inspired property overlooking manmade Lake Las Vegas. Thirty minutes from the glam of The Strip, this relaxing respite has luxurious rooms with comfortable beds and flat-screen TVs, a spa, impeccable service, nearby shopping, and even a small beach.
Prices: Starts at $4,774 per adult
To book or for more information, go here.

MEXICO:

Fairmont Mayakoba
Nestled in a gated community 42 miles south of Cancún, this hotel offers a luxurious return to nature and serenity. The beach sits along one of the world’s largest reefs, the Willow Stream offers massages among the treetops, and guests are transported around the property in lancha (covered boats).
Prices: Starts at $5,000 per adult
To book or for more information, go here.

ARIZONA:

Arizona Biltmore
A Phoenix landmark opened in 1929, the Biltmore caters to a sophisticated set and has played host to its fair share of celebrities and presidents over the years. In addition to having 36 holes of golf, eight pools, and a spa, the hotel is close to Camelback Mountain and the art scene in Scottsdale and Phoenix.
Prices: Starts at $5,186 per adult
To book or for more information, go here.

JW Marriott Desert Ridge Resort & Spa
Classy but family-friendly, this Phoenix hotel offers a lazy river, an 89-foot waterslide, and poolside entertainment for kids, not to mention family activities like bike rentals and stargazing. For “bigger” kids, the hotel has all the usual features: tennis courts, a 28,000-square-foot spa, and two golf courses.
Prices: Starts at $4,774 per adult
To book or for more information, go here.

Fairmont Scottsdale Princess
A stately white lobby and beautifully manicured grounds greet guests at this upscale resort set against scenic mountains. By day, guests have seven tennis courts, five pools, two golf courses, and a top-notch spa. Rooms all have terraces and oversized bathrooms.
Prices: Starts at $5,000 per adult
To book or for more information, go here.

ARUBA:

Westin Resort
The Westin lacks the glitzy decor and elaborate frills found at other Aruban resorts, which for most people is a good thing. A clean, modern beachside hotel, the Westin impresses with prompt services, a curvy pool, and the supremely comfortable Westin Heavenly beds.
Prices: Starts $3,749 per adult
To book or for more information, go here.

Jennifer Garfinkel is an editor at Oyster Hotel Reviews.

That’s because, according to Time, plenty of Rothstein’s allegedly illegal money went into state politics, which may in and of itself have broken campaign-finance laws. And most of that money, moreover, went to the state Republican Party … which currently finds itself embroiled in a brutal primary campaign. Depending on which side is more implicated—incumbent Gov. Charlie Crist or state House Speaker Marco Rubio—Rothstein could affect the outcome of the race. On top of which, the contest has implications beyond itself: it is serving as a proxy for the national intra-Republican conflict between moderates (represented by Crist) and hard-line conservatives (represented by Rubio). So very quickly, you can see Rothstein having a major national impact.

Finally, since the bulk of Rothstein’s political donations went to the more powerful state Republican Party, a political scandal tied to the Rothstein case could also conceivably help state Democrats. And maybe national Democrats too? The sky’s the limit for this guy!

Florida’s Mini-Madoff: Scott Rothstein’s Fall [Time]

Jewish Group Protests Passover Election Date for Wexler Seat [Sun-Sentinel]
Related: Wexler Quits Congress to Campaign for Peace

10 North Naples Middle Students Suspended for ‘Kick a Jew Day’ E-Mail [Naples News]

Christian School Wants to Simulate Anne Frank’s Hiding with Sleepover [SunSentinel.com]

But what if the governor, a busy man, can’t make the trip? No problem, said Crist: last year, he sent Florida State Senator Nan Rich on his behalf, giving her, he added, not only his note but also specific instructions on how to place it in the wall. Crist was even kind enough to share the exact wording of his notes to heaven. “Dear God,” they read, “please protect our Florida from storms and other difficulties. Charlie.” Amen.

Is God Protecting Fla. at Gov. Crist’s Request? [AP/Miami Herald]

“Overall, it was a pretty normal trip home.” >>

In many ways Shira’s story is a typical one of adolescent anxiety: she’s looking for love, fighting with her overbearing lawyer father, doing battle with snooty girls in her class. “I combine various forms of uncoolness,” Shira confesses, echoing so many beloved literary characters who never quite fit in. “Still,” she continues, “you wouldn’t think [sucking at sports] would matter so much at a Jewish high school.”

Token, written by Alisa Kwitney and illustrated by Jöelle Jones, is the final book published as part of D.C. Comics’ Minx line, which launched auspiciously in 2007, aiming to capture the teenage girl market with pithy, stylish graphic novels that were a clever hybrid of Young Adult fiction and comic books. This fall D.C. announced the line’s cancellation, in part because the genre-bending that made the books attractive also made them difficult to place in YA sections of major bookstores. Still, Minx titles were generally well reviewed, boasting feisty heroines involved in various levels of adventure (competing in a martial arts competition, joining up with a group of artistic renegades, heading out on a road trip) while navigating the troubled waters of adolescence, where there were plenty of crushes, parents, friends, and insecurities to contend with. With snappy dialogue and striking black and white illustrations, the graphic novel format made these standard tropes feel fresh. It also proved friendly to characters with a specific ethnic or cultural identity, those outside what Kwitney calls the “default, mainstream Christianized culture.”

In Token, much of Shira’s angst plays out in the context of her Jewishness, most dramatically as her father starts dating his non-Jewish secretary, Linda, and Shira herself gets involved with a Spanish guy named Rafael. The whole book is riddled with Jewish cultural shorthand. “Remember when we took that trip with Elderhostel?” Shira’s grandmother asks Minerva. “You couldn’t stop kvetching about being constipated!” Sitting on the beach, the two discuss whether the pastrami they’ve brought with them is spoiled, and—doing the stereotypical Jewish grandmother thing—note approvingly that the bathing suit-clad Shira has “a very nice shape. Very voluptuous.” The saleslady at Woolworth’s calls Shira “Maideleh.”

In visually representing these characters, Kwitney told me she was definitely not looking for “the Betty and Veronica thing, where they have the same body, but different hair.” The Shira she envisioned, and who Jones brought to life, is “large-breasted and short-waisted…she [did] not have legs up to her armpits.” Madison and Mallory, Shira’s bitchy classmates-cum-adversaries, are rendered more like classic, idealized comic book women: tall, with pouty lips and luxurious hair. Here, Shira’s specificity is directly tied to her Jewishness; it’s a way to make sure she stands out, both physically and otherwise.

One night, trying hard to ingratiate herself, Linda prepares a special dinner for Shira and her father, Alan: chicken parmigiano. Shira bluntly informs her that cheese on top of meat is not kosher. “But the chicken is kosher,” Linda objects. “It said so on the package. I thought it was red meat that couldn’t be cooked with cheese.” She looks defeated. “I called up my old friend Naomi Hyman from high school! Naomi said it was just the red meat.” Alan steps in to reassure her, and says they’ll eat what she has cooked: “Sometimes you have to bend the rules a little.” Incredulous, Shira refuses, stirring up fury in her father. “You’ve eaten milk and meat together before,” he accuses. Hand on her hip, Shira returns fire. “I ate a pepperoni pizza once, four years ago. When I was 12. Since you’re sending me to a Jewish school, it seems to me that eating milk and meat together would be completely hypocritical.”

Shira wields her adherence to kosher laws as her own brand of rebellion, claiming the moral high ground for herself in the face of her father’s sudden ambivalence. But while she may have won this battle on principle, that’s not really the point. “I don’t really care that much about keeping kosher,” she reflects soon after the dinner incident. “But my dad always cared. And now he’s changing all the rules.” As if to reinforce it all, for Shira’s 16th birthday, her father gives her a Star of David pendant, the same night he presents Linda with an impressive engagement ring.

Even as she’s holding tight to this particular principle, Shira’s breaking some other rules by shoplifting and hanging out with Rafael. Both come with an intoxicating sense of risk, but what really draws Shira to Rafael is an equally classic aphrodisiac: his difference from her. One day on the beach, they talk about different ways to mark becoming an adult. Sixteenth birthdays aren’t a big deal in Ibiza, Rafael says, but at 15, you have a Quinceañera, which is “supposed to mark the end of childhood.” Hearing this, Shira perks up: “Like a bat mitzvah.” Rafael is confused. “That’s the big Jewish coming-of-age party,” she explains. “Although mine wasn’t really big. Or even much of a party. I just memorized a lot of prayers in Hebrew.” Rafael looks surprised and seems to begin to say he didn’t realize she was Jewish. But instead he changes the subject, and they make out in the surf.

Token’s 150 pages seem like scant space to develop a story of much depth or nuance, and it’s true that the plot’s various threads are tied up a bit too hastily. But in exchanges like these, Kwitney leaves her characters appealingly exposed, exploring complicated, bittersweet emotions with real sensitivity. There’s plenty of room for more stories that share this approach, and it’s a shame that Minx—the line of books designed to encourage this kind of storytelling—didn’t quite take off.

Eryn Loeb is associate editor of Nextbook.org.

Unlike a lot of people I know, I speak to my parents regularly, so it was many months ago that I first heard of the e-mails being circulated in some quarters about Barack Obama. I’d call home to parse a debate performance or rejoice over a particularly miraculous primary victory, and find myself on the receiving end of dark and embittered mutterings from my father.

“Aren’t you happy? You should be happy!” I would exclaim. “We love him! He’s going to transform our reputation overseas, fix the economy, and give us all healthcare, remember? And the war! Don’t forget about the war.”

“I just don’t want to get too optimistic,” he’d say ominously. “There’s all this stuff getting passed around that I think could really hurt him.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh you know, these e-mails, smearing him, saying he’s a Muslim, that he’s bad for Israel . . .”

“You don’t believe those, do you?”

“No! But some of the people around here . . .”

I’d guffaw. “Let’s not overestimate the voting power of the Jewish population of Omaha.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about. It’s the people in Florida, in the retirement communities . . . you know . . . I sent you that article from the New York Times, remember?”

He had. I find it a continual source of puzzlement that my father, in Omaha, feels compelled to send me, in New York, stories from my local newspaper that I have already read, but it’s for added emphasis. This particular piece was a doozy. It quoted several Jews in Florida—not a single one under eighty—repeating the various tropes of misinformation that seemed to be festering around the shuffleboard court: Obama is a Palestinian, he’s bad for Israel, his wife is so angry and rancorous that the campaign is deliberately keeping her out of sight.

I sighed. “Those are the same people who couldn’t figure out the damn ballot in Florida. Frankly, I’m surprised any of them even know how to read an email.”

“Exactly.” My father would pause, for effect. “Exactly.”

Still, I wasn’t terribly worried until I finally received one of these emails myself, just a couple of weeks ago. It wasn’t the political ramifications that I found troubling—if these sorts of rumors are as widespread and credulously received as their progenitors might have us think, then the Jewish community is waging a battle for its soul.

The email was forwarded to me from an unfamiliar address, by someone going only by “Etan.” Scrolling down the screen, I could see that it had been forwarded to Etan from someone called “Pat.” Pat had tacked a slightly sinister proviso of his (or her) own onto the message: “God still has plans for Israel. They play a major role in the Lord’s dealing with mankind and the end of the ages.” I inferred that this person was one of the Christian Zionists who have managed to insinuate themselves into some echelons of the conservative Jewish community due to their unbending support for Israel, despite the fact that their zealotry may have less to do with the welfare of the Jewish people than with hastening the arrival of the Rapture.

Following Pat’s pithy preface was a message from a woman called “Ruth.”

Ruth was asking me, or rather pleading with me—Jew to Jew—to reconsider any warm feelings I may have entertained towards the Senator from Illinois, as she possessed incontrovertible proof that he meant harm towards my people and our ever-imperiled homeland. She raised all the familiar and well-worn specters: the Senator’s association with Jeremiah Wright, Reverend Wright’s association with Louis Farrakhan, the presence on Obama’s advisory team of Zbigniew Brzezinski (former National Security Advisor in the Carter Administration, seen by many as no particular friend of the Jews).

But there’s an even more troubling item in Ruth’s email missive that sets her argument apart from any mere vestigial fearfulness. While she understands that we in the United States are terribly excited and self-congratulatory about the prospect of electing our first black president, she would like us to know that Barack Obama is not truly black.

She isn’t referring to his white mother, although she does take special note of Obama’s Caucasian ancestry. She’s speaking of his Kenyan father, who she asserts was not really “African Negro” (as she quaintly puts it) but primarily of Arab descent—to the tune of 87.5 percent. Even discounting the pesky fact that Barack Obama Sr. died in 1982, long before one could easily swab some saliva on the end of a Q-Tip and promptly receive a letter in the mail declaring one’s descent from the ancient Kings of Ireland, Genghis Khan, or some other conquering ancient inseminator, I’m unsure as to how someone can be 0.5 percent of anything.

No matter, states Ruth. Barack Obama Sr.’s Kenyan birth certificate lists him as Arab (how she managed to access this document is unclear). Therefore Barack Obama Jr. is an Arab too, making him unfit to lead, bad for Israel, a closet Islamic radical, and an anti-Semite.

And then she plays the trump card.

“Obama definitely antagonistic towards Jews! This reminds me very unpleasantly of the days when I was nine years old and living with my family in the place of my birth, Wiener Neustadt, Austria. I spent most of my days hiding in our coat closet with my doll and teddy bear, waiting for the dreaded knock of the SS on our front door. SS is short for Hitler’s Schutzstaffel, the group primarily responsible for the crimes against humanity. They were set apart from other Nazi organizations by their distinctive black shirts and the insignia of the death’s-head.”

I can only imagine this addendum is intended to edify the Gentile recipients of Ruth’s email, Christian Zionists like Pat, for example. Because there is not a Jew alive who doesn’t know exactly what the SS is, exactly what it means, and exactly how afraid we should be when they are mentioned in conjunction with any public figure or policy. As it’s played here, this information seems somehow meant to excuse the whispered charges, the muted bile, the hushed mendacity that comes before it. All this talk about ethnic backgrounds, secret conspiracies, and sinister allegiances is eerily familiar. And it isn’t just the ladies playing mah-jongg by the pool in Boca. It’s the guy in his early twenties who leaned toward me at dinner and whispered confessionally, Jew to Jew, “Barack Obama? You mean Mohammad Hussein? That’s his real name you know. Did you hear that he went to a radical madrassah?” It’s the speech Joseph Lieberman gave on the stump for the Republicans, in which he stated “[The choice is] between the one candidate, John McCain, who has always put the country first…and the one candidate who has not.” As Marty Kaplan, writing for the Huffington Post, eloquently pointed out about this statement: “What is to be made of this? Does Joe Lieberman not realize he is using one of the oldest anti-Semitic tricks in the book to paint Obama as the Islamic candidate?”

Propaganda is effective because it insidiously presses our buttons. It finds the sorest spot, the rawest hurt of a given group and burrows under our skin, forming a stubborn, inexorable splinter of doubt and resentment that, given enough prodding, can flare into a full-scale infection. For the Germans of the 1920s and ’30s, the humiliating defeat of World War I and the economic and social disaster it wrought (not to mention the brutal streak of nationalism and bigotry running beneath the veneer of a pluralistic society) made them uniquely receptive to a message laying blame for their current woes at the doorstep of a shadowy Other, a parasitic race of unassimilable exotics whose essential rottenness could not be renounced or repented for, but was in their soul, their spirit, their blood. And we know how that turned out. Jews understand the terrible price that hatred and intolerance extract from humanity—not just from the victims, but their antagonists as well. When one group is demonized for their customs, their tendencies to dress differently, to look different, to hold themselves apart from society at large, we all suffer.

It’s hard to deny that anti-Semitism is in resurgence. The hatred of Jews and the Jewish state is all but institutionalized in much of the Muslim world, and even in some liberal arenas, it’s hard not to detect a certain smug triumphalism in critiques of Israel and Israeli policies—an alarming note of, “Well, we gave you Jews the benefit of the doubt after six million of you were murdered, and now look at all the trouble you’ve caused.” To dwell on this sort of criticism ignores the deeper truth that in America today Jews are a more integral and accepted part of society than ever before in our history (I wasn’t there during the Golden Age of Maimonides, but I think it’s a pretty safe assertion.) But does being a part of mainstream society mean abetting xenophobia, taking part in the decision of who belongs and who doesn’t? For Jews to be mainstream, do we have to hate like the mainstream? Don’t we know better than that?

This is the dark psychic underbelly of years of victimization, and it isn’t pretty. If you disagree with Senator Obama’s policies or politics, then by all means, cast your vote elsewhere. But to use our tragic history as an excuse—or worse, a conduit—for lazy judgments and outright lies, and to give into the kind of latent but destructive prejudice of which we have all too often been on the receiving end, is outrageous. It’s an insult to those who lived, fought, and died before us.

And let’s not give my father any more things to worry about. He—like all of us—has already angrily forwarded enough emails for a lifetime.