David Memet
UnHerd, Oct. 23, 2023
“… there is no more cosy mystery in the antisemitism of the Democratic Party; Representatives are affiliated with the Democratic Socialists and pro-Palestinians, calling for the end of the state of Israel — that is, for the death of the Jews.”
I grew up in a tiny Jewish enclave on Chicago’s South Side. When I first saw New York, in the Sixties, I was awed as by no subsequent marvel of nature: stretching north from Columbus Circle, up the West Side, was a Jewish metropolis.
New York, in my lifetime, had always been a Jewish city: the rhythms, the accent, the humour always felt to me like home. Because they were home. The populace, of whatever ethnicity, was formed or noodged by Yiddishkeit, much as the Chicago of my youth was by the culture of the Irish and the Poles.
The New York Times and The New Yorker were run by Jews; they were both our Rialto and our Bible. New York Theatre, in my lifetime, had always been Jewish. The playwrights were Miller, Odets, Elmer Rice, Ben Hecht, Sidney Kingsley; and, later, Arthur Laurents, Lillian Hellman, Neil Simon, Woody Allen, Norman Mailer, Wallace Shawn, and myself.