Show Me the Way of the Hebrews: The Making of an African American Rabbi
…extravagant Ashkenazi style that I had only seen used by Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer. I was at Bethel on an assignment for The Washington Post, a cover story for the magazine about a new African American synagogue in DC started in 2008 by Mother Dailey’s grandson, Eli Aronoff. (Aronoff claims no Ashkenazi ancestry despite his surname—his father was from rural South Carolina.) Neither my story nor the new congregation succeeded—the Post axed the s…
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