The Jewish community in Gold Rush San Francisco was shaped by the chaotic and changing conditions of the growing city. A short history of how the earliest Jewish settlers in San Francisco grew from a handful of young risk-takers into an organized community.

There’s a dirty little secret no one likes to discuss in Israel: racism and discrimination. On the whole, you can hear talk of discrimination against Jews, but not discrimination by the European Jews against Russian or Ethiopian Jews. Yesterday Haaretz ran a story about how the courts ordered a white man to pay a black mizrahim woman 18,000 Euros for his outrageous discriminatory behavior.

There’s another problem with Benjamin Netanyahu’s “it’s 1938 and Iran is Nazi Germany” speech beyond its inflammatory rhetoric: its destructive power. People who are told they are no good often fulfill that prophecy, and Israeli politicians are once again invoking a painful memory. Is this a wise thing to do just to sell a war with Iran?