Bryan Schwartzman

3 weeks ago | hadassahmagazine.org | Bryan Schwartzman

Email Print Fagin the ThiefBy Allison Epstein (Doubleday)Charles Dickens’s depiction of the character Fagin in Oliver Twist is irredeemably antisemitic—even more so than Shylock, that other famously reviled Jewish literary character from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. Fagin, who takes in children off the street to train them in a life of crime, is, in Dickens’s description, cruel, manipulative, greedy, demonic and, as we’re told more than 300 times, a Jew.

Jan 21, 2025 | hadassahmagazine.org | Bryan Schwartzman

Email Print “Raise your hand if you’re a Zionist,” bellowed a man whose face was almost entirely covered by a mask on a packed New York City subway car as it pulled into the 14th Street-Union Square station. A menacing group, almost all hiding beneath masks and interspersed among crowded passengers, repeated the chant, as if under some demonic spell. “O.K., no Zionists,” the apparent leader continued.

Dec 6, 2024 | saturdayeveningpost.com | Bryan Schwartzman

As early as she could remember, Tabby Moskowitz was aware of a world beyond the sixth-floor apartment, revealed by the westward-facing living room window. From the two-bedroom dwelling she shared with her parents and older sister, Tabby would gaze upon the playground and green ballfields in the foreground — a perfect view of the first base line and left field. Sometimes, she’d fixate on a lone tree — a silver maple — that cast a late afternoon shadow over third base.

Aug 27, 2024 | hadassahmagazine.org | Bryan Schwartzman

Email Print On August 6, 1945, the Enola Gay, an American B-29 bomber, dropped a nearly 10,000-pound atomic bomb on Hiroshima, leveling the Japanese city, killing some 146,000 people and ushering in the nuclear age. A year later, the American public had only a vague sense of the human misery caused by the war-ending mushroom clouds at Hiroshima and, the next day, over Nagasaki. The public had only seen images that had passed through United States military censors.