This Passover, my mother became enslaved by a modern Pharaoh in a new Egypt
By Bonnie K. Goodman, BA, MLIS
No, everything is not OK; three months into my mother’s hospitalization
By Bonnie K. Goodman, BA, MLIS
When the Covid-19 lockdowns hit North America and Canada a year ago this weekend, it did not affect me much. Living in Montreal, Quebec, except for the difficulty in buying groceries and essentials such as paper towels and soaps, the social aspects had nothing to do with my life. I was never a very social person; I did not go out partying, concerts, or sporting events. I am a writer; it’s an introvert’s life. I prefer buying a movie or music over the expense and crowds. As someone with dietary restrictions, I am allergic…
Grant’s General Order Number 11 and Anti-Semitism during the Civil War
By Bonnie K. Goodman, BA, MLIS
Introduction
Rise of Anti-Immigrant Sentiment
The Shylock stereotype was behind Union General Ulysses S. Grant’s reasons for ordering General Order Number 11, on December 17, 1862, expelling “Jews as a class” from areas of Northern occupied former Confederate states Tennessee, Mississippi, and the Border State of Kentucky. General Order Number 11 stands out in American history as the first instance of a policy of official anti-Semitism on a large scale. At the time, prominent Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise called it an “outrage, without precedent in American history.” [1] Historian Jonathan Sarna notes General Order Number 11 became known as…
The police and Canadian health care are overstepping their boundaries, and this has to stop
By Bonnie K. Goodman, BA, MLIS.
Every other day we hear in the news that police are shooting Black Americans. The Black Lives Matter movement began in 2013 in an attempt to protest these senseless killings.[1] The movement sparked after a jury acquitted George Zimmerman, who fatally shot 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. Zimmerman claimed he used Florida’s stand your ground self-defense.[2] Even when there are crimes, such force is not warranted, and Black Americans are overwhelmingly victims of the brutality. In Canada, Black Americans, indigenous, and visible minorities are often at the receiving end of such police shootings.
Dreaming of Equality: Francis Salvador, the American Jewish Revolutionary Patriot
By Bonnie K. Goodman, BA, MLIS
Dreaming of Equality: Francis Salvador, the American Jewish Revolutionary Patriot
By Bonnie K. Goodman, BA, MLIS
On this day in history, September 7, 1787, Jewish Philadelphia merchant Jonas Philips wrote to President of the Constitutional Convention George Washington asking that the Constitution grant American Jews religious freedom and equality. Despite the American promise of civil rights and liberties, American Jews did not receive them by most of the original states of the new United States of America. All of the states except for New York did not grant Jews equality for political participation in their state constitutions. New York again became the first to grant Jews full equality. …
Dreaming of Equality: Francis Salvador, the American Jewish Revolutionary Patriot
By Bonnie K. Goodman, BA, MLIS
On this day in history, August 1, 1776, South Carolina Provincial Congress representative Francis Salvador becomes the first Jewish casualty of the American Revolutionary War when a Cherokee native siding with the British killed and scalped him in battle. On January 11, 1775, Francis Salvador, the first Jew elected to a colonial public office began his tenure on the revolutionary South Carolina Provincial Congress. Salvador was a recent immigrant to America having arrived in Charleston, South Carolina from London in 1773, a year later, he was elected to the South Carolina assembly becoming the…
Dreaming of Equality: Francis Salvador, the American Jewish Revolutionary Patriot
By Bonnie K. Goodman, BA, MLIS
Dreaming of Equality: Francis Salvador, the American Jewish Revolutionary Patriot
By Bonnie K. Goodman, BA, MLIS
By the time of the American Revolution, there were 2,000 to 2,500 Jews living in the colonies, they only represented one-tenth of a percent of the American population, which was about two million.[1] According to Hasia Diner, “Each of the five Jewish communities that existed on the eve of the American Revolution — New York, Philadelphia, Newport, Charleston, and Savannah — has its own history. In each the process of initial settlement, the consecration of a cemetery, formation of a congregation, and the building of a synagogue took place. In each Jews, both accepted…
Dreaming of Equality: Francis Salvador, the American Jewish Revolutionary Patriot
By Bonnie K. Goodman, BA, MLIS
At the time, the American Revolution broke out there were only 2,000 to 2,500 Jews in the American colonies, most concentrated in the six-port cities, New York, Philadelphia, Newport, Charleston, and Savannah with less than a hundred fighting in the war. While the majority of the Jewish population lived in the port cities, Jewish traders and shopkeepers lived in the outlying frontier regions “selling goods to fur trappers, buying from the Indians, and speculating in lands.” [1]
Jews’ first impression of the American colonies was hostile. In September 1654, twenty-three Jewish refugees arrived in…
