Hip-Hop is ubiquitous; there are places without running water and electricity that hip-hop has touched. The culture and its expressions have begun the dominant influence on popular youth culture over the span of the past four and a half decades. That is a significant statement considering the culture emerged from a back to school party hosted by two teenagers in the cramped recreation room of their housing project forty-seven years ago.

Every June 19th was a special day for my family. In the first decades of the 20th century, fleeing the anti-Jewish violence in Eastern Europe, my grandparents and parents emigrated to America seeking a new life in a land where “all men are created equal.”

In the midst of our current pandemic, today’s New York Times carried a frontpage article about the outbreak in the U.S. of another type of deadly virus, Sinophobia, the irrational fear and hatred of all things Chinese. Anti-Chinese bigotry in the U.S. was common throughout the latter half of the 19th century…

My mother, Sabell Bender, died two days ago at the age of 92 after many years of painfully declining health. Even in her final years, when her assembly of medical conditions had left her immobile and robbed her of her booming and unforgettable voice, she clung to life with all the dedication and exuberance and yes, stubbornness, with which she had lived her nine decades on the Earth. Sabell was a born director and a force of nature, who, while acknowledging that she was a product of her times, also believed with all her heart that her abundance of talent and creativity made it possible for her to influence the times in which she lived.

Looking back at the human carnage and geopolitical disaster wrought by the American invasion of Iraq, you might conclude that there were no heroes to be found in this quagmire. You would be wrong, however.

Happy Hanukkah to our Jewish Friends and Supporters: May these lights of freedom shine on both our communities and all people of good will in these turbulent times.