{"id":443108,"date":"2026-09-21T16:50:15","date_gmt":"2026-09-21T16:50:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/443108\/"},"modified":"2026-09-21T16:50:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-21T16:50:15","slug":"a-lesson-from-my-great-grandfathers-poem-about-the-kkk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/443108\/","title":{"rendered":"A lesson from my great-grandfather\u2019s poem about the KKK"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yom Kippur is a day of fasting and prayer, but when I was growing up it was a prime opportunity for freeze tag. I\u2019d spend the morning running through the halls of Houston\u2019s Beth Yeshurun Synagogue, playing with my friends while our parents sat through services. Inevitably I\u2019d drag my friends down one particularly isolated corridor to show off the names engraved above a windowless study room \u2014 the names of my great-grandparents: the Pearl and Alex Schwartz Study<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I stood there again over the summer for a rededication ceremony. Reconstruction work had finally been completed after Hurricane Harvey, and so my extended family gathered to remember and honor our patriarch. I never really knew him \u2014 he died when I was just a baby. But Alex\u2019s story is the story of my family. In his youth, he had been studying to become a rabbi in his shtetl south of Vilnius, Lithuania. His father died of disease and his mother was killed by Cossacks, so he decided to make the long journey to America and reunite with his brother in Galveston. And thank goodness for that. He joined the military during World War I, ran a local soda bottling company and, along the way, contributed to Houston\u2019s growing Jewish community \u2014 notably serving as a foundational member of Beth Yeshurun, which would go on to become one of the largest Conservative synagogues in the United States.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He also happened to be something of an amateur poet. And, for the first time in my 40 years, I got to read some of my great-grandfather\u2019s poetry at the rededication ceremony. He wrote rhyming stanzas to celebrate family weddings, bar mitzvahs and \u2014\u00a0the one that I keep thinking about \u2014\u00a0a poem about how the Jewish community needs to stand united against antisemitism.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt makes no difference what you do,
Because to them you are only a Jew.
The Ku-Klux-Klan make no distinction,
All Jews they would bring to extinction.\u201d<\/p>\n

His message was that, no matter how observant or secular you may be, no matter how successful or wealthy, all Jews end up as targets of the same loathsome antisemites. There is no reason behind their hatred \u2014 and no way for an individual to cleverly elude it. We\u2019re all in it together.<\/p>\n

I remain struck by the similarity to Martin Niem\u00f6ller\u2019s famous \u201cFirst They Came<\/a>\u201d poem, except Alex\u2019s version is, well, kind of cute. And maybe even a little silly.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cYou may eat only kosher meals
Or like meat from the animal that squeals,
Whether you belong to the Zionists
Or you are friendly with communists
Remember, you are a Jew \u2014 We are all Jews.\u201d<\/p>\n

We\u2019re seeing this dynamic play out today, and not just for the Jewish community. The sad reality is that, ironically, hatred does not discriminate. Generations of integration \u2014 or even brazen obsequiousness \u2014 pose little obstacle to dedicated hatemongers.<\/p>\n

No amount of burnt orange or cowboy hats stopped Bo French from hating on South Asian students<\/a> at the University of Texas and viewing second-generation Texans as foreigners.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Muslim Republicans found that partisan alignment didn\u2019t protect them from being booted out<\/a> of the state GOP convention.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Even Catholic institutions have been targeted by the state in a politicized witch hunt<\/a> against efforts to aid refugees and other immigrants.<\/p>\n

Now more than ever we could use that sense of solidarity \u2014 not just for Jews, but for so many Houstonians who have become targets of hatred. We\u2019re seeing the political mainstreaming of explicit bigotry that had until recently been quarantined to the shadowy corners of U.S. society, and only by standing together and unifying across cultural and political divides will we be able to put it back where it belongs. The sheer fact that we all live in Houston means we have more that unites us than divides us, and sometimes we need to be reminded of that unity.<\/p>\n

So in that spirit, let me offer a few additional lines to my great-grandfather\u2019s poem.<\/p>\n

Whether you enjoy bagels and lox
Or follow a Pope who cheers, \u201cGo White Sox!\u201d
Maybe you built a big statue for Hanuman
Or fast all day when it\u2019s Ramadan
Remember, you are a Houstonian \u2014 We are all Houstonians.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Yom Kippur is a day of fasting and prayer, but when I was growing up it was a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":443109,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[56,58,57],"class_list":["post-443108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=443108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443108\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/443109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=443108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=443108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=443108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}