In my last post I did a review of The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas and I said that I was going to review her next book On the Come Up, and I still plan to.  However, I have been moved by the recent antisemitic attacks that have been in the news to address this issue by doing a review of another book first. This book is called In the Neighborhood of True, by Susan Kaplan Carlton, and it is loosely based on the 1958 bombing of a Temple in Atlanta, Georgia. The book is told in the perspective of a jewish teenage girl named Ruth, who moves from New York to Atlanta after her father dies. I want to review this book not only because I am Jewish and this issue is personal, but also to reflect on current and past anti-semitic events and how they affect everyone. Anti-semitism is a global and national crisis. In October of 2019 when I went to the  Hannah Arendt Center Seminar on Antisemitism and Racism; people discussed the origin of antisemitism, the Palestine conflict, and zionism, and how to address them now. In The Neighborhood of True is a beautifully written book that depicts the dark history of antisemitism in America and is still unfortunately relevant today.

https://jwa.org/media/temple-bombing-atlanta-georgia – 1958 picture of the Temple bombed in Atlanta, Georgia

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/12/what-monsey-attack-says-about-jewish-community/604228/ – 2019 Picture of supporters of the Jewish community in Monsey, NY that suffered a brutal antisemitic attack.