What do Albert Einstein, Sammy Davis Jr., Elizabeth Taylor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg all have in common? All were of the Jewish faith and all made contributions to the world.
In 2006, President George W. Bush declared May Jewish American Heritage Month, a time to recognize and celebrate the contributions of all Jewish Americans.
The day has ties to South Florida, where Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Florida’s first Jewish Congresswoman, alongside with Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, introduced resolutions urging the president to proclaim a month that would recognize the rich history of Jews in America.
According to the Jewish American Heritage website, there are 7.6 million Jewish Americans.
There are many ways to celebrate the month. Visit the Jewish Museum of Florida-FIU in Miami Beach, which preserves the state’s nearly 250 years of Jewish history. Learn more about Judaism by watching television shows, listening to podcasts, reading books, watching movies or taking a class. Visit or join a synagogue.
You might learn a thing or two like Justice Louis Brandeis was the first Jewish-American to be appointed to the Supreme Court or that the poem at the base of the Statue of Liberty was written by a Sephardic Jewish American poet named Emma Lazarus, the last lines of which were set to music by another Jewish-American, Irving Berlin, as the song “Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor” for the 1949 musical “Miss Liberty.”