Rosh Hashanah

Happy New Year to all my Jewish friends!

I was fortunate to grow up in a neighborhood in the Bronx where there were many Jewish families.  That also meant many Jewish merchants, and doctors, and dentists, and teachers, and ....the list goes on.  They helped make the Bronx one of the most exciting and culturally rich environments to grow up in, and for that I'm eternally thankful.

One of my lifelong friends, Jon Windholtz, forwarded me the following article from the NY Times. It's a great story, and a typical NY City story.  Greatness is such a commonplace event in New York City, that it's treated as..."no big deal".  But, here's a story that need to be repeated, and repeated, over and over, especially because of today's Holocaust deniers, and especially now, on the eve of one of the most malignant Holocaust deniers arriving in New York City -  Ahmadinejad, who today said  "The pretext (Holocaust) for the creation of the Zionist regime (Israel) is false ... It is a lie based on an unprovable and mythical claim," he told worshippers at Tehran University at the end of an annual anti-Israel "Qods (Jerusalem) Day" rally.


But, in response to this abomination from Iran, here's a real story, about a real guy from New York City....Max Fuchs....

On Oct. 29, 1944, at the edge of a fierce fight for control of the city ofAachen, Germany, a correspondent for NBC radio introduced the modest Sabbath service like this:

“We bring you now a special broadcast of historic significance: The first Jewish religious service broadcast from Germany since the advent of Hitler.”

Mr. Fuchs, now 87 and living on the Upper West Side, was 22 that day at Aachen.

“I was just as much scared as anyone else,” he said in an interview in his Manhattan apartment. “But since I was the only one who could do it, I tried my best.”

Well-known in its time, the battlefield service became lost in obscurity, where it might have remained except for an archivist’s chance find and then, fast forward, unlikely fame on YouTube

Here's the video....

Our salute to you Max, and Happy New Year to you, your family, and all our Jewish friends.........L'Chaim!