(Jewish Group) Remembering the Hatred that Still Haunts the Earth

[Behind the Aegis]

I’m preparing an ordinary Wednesday night dinner, and after putting the finishing touches on a spicy lentil soup—a sure sign that winter is in full force—I reach for bowls and placemats and am about to set the table when I hear a proverb, unbidden, speak itself in my mind:

If you eat at the table without a tablecloth, the devil will come and put you down as a tablecloth.

I rewind my steps: placemats back in drawer, bowls to one side. I take a purple and white striped tablecloth out of the cupboard, open it with a crisp snap, and let if float down onto the polished wood.

The proverb was a favorite among the Sephardic Jews of Rhodes, and—despite my moment of domestic laziness—I have it, and many others like it, wired into my brain, because I’ve spent more than one hundred Saturdays spread over the past six years listening to stories about this now vanished community told to me by Stella Levi who, at nearly 100, is one of the last people alive today to have grown up in the island’s Juderia.

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1. It's hard to believe that in 2023 antisemitism is still rampant in America and Holocaust denial is o

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