And The Delicious History Lesson We Need Right Now!

Most people have never heard of Peter Bergson. They’ve never heard of Jan Karski either. Or the story of Meyer Lansky and a group of Jewish gangsters who showed up — uninvited, unannounced, and unapologetic — to a Nazi rally in New York City in the 1930s and showed them why raining terror on innocent Jewish people wasn’t going to go unanswered in America. And most people don’t know much about Rabbi Stephen Wise, and the complicated legacy he left behind in the halls of the White House during World War II.

These four figures lived through the most dangerous moments in American history. Each responded differently, yet together — in their courage, their strategy, their failures, and their warnings — they left us everything we need to know about what they accomplished, and what we must revive at this moment, as history is being written again.

And make no mistake. This is our moment.

Meyer Lansky was not a hero in the conventional sense. He was an infamous gangster. When the German American Bund — America’s homegrown Nazi movement — began holding rallies in New York City in the late 1930s, Lansky didn’t write a letter to his congressman. He didn’t organize a peaceful protest. He showed up with a guy named Bugssy and a group of men who understood that some ideologies don’t respond to dialogue. So they........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)